not sprinty at all. At 300w ftp at 60kg, yet my “sprint” is around 700 watt. I’m a veery aerobic rider.
Try a few and see. The hard start is just to get your heart and lungs going, so you’ll benefit from varying the power and duration of the hard start to try to get yourself to 90%+ of VO2 Max nice and quickly without completely gassing yourself.
So, I’m about to finish up a block of sweetspot/threshold work, and I’m ready for something new. Inthink I’ll attempt vo2 starting in 2 weeks, when my rest week finishes.
Does VO2 Tuesday and Thursday, keep my kitchen sink saturday group ride, everything else easy zone 2 sound reasonable?
Yeah, although I’d probably go for Z1 on Wednesday - but that’s just me.
For me, not a chance in hell unless the group ride was noodling around and chatting. 
I’m feeling my way through my 2nd VO2max block. I did a 5x5.5 - finished the workout just fine but it took me a week to recover.
I throttled back to 6x2 to test the waters. Recovery has been better but it will still be 3-4 days. I’ll probably try 4x3 or 5x3 next.
I’m also thinking of the mixed block per previous discussion. A mixed block could be one vo2 + group ride per week.
YMMV
I should also mention I ride around 10 hours a week. The saturday ride is always the hardest day of the week for sure though
@Junk_Miles & @kurt.braeckel Genuinely curious: When you say you don’t like ERG bc VO2 Max ints are “supposed to be all out”, you’re talking specifically about attack style ints, like the first pic, not other styles like long supra thresholds, second pic, correct?
Or no… all VO2 Max intervals you should be going all out? I’m confused… I thought many were set targets of 120%, 130%, etc.
Personally, I dropped my group ride when I did my vo2 block. With how condensed the block was, trying to add that in would have killed me. That said, I didn’t end up being able to add it back in before a big race like I intended (work reasons, not training reasons) and my performance suffered for it. I.e., I am and was definitively stronger, but I had been missing those hard 70+ mile days for months, so my legs were not thrilled with me by the third day of racing. If you don’t have an event, though, and are just aiming to bump ftp, I’d drop any race-pace rides for a few weeks.
Personally I would avoid doing anything other than VO2 and z2 or recovery doing a vo2 block. If done properly the intervals really take a lot out of you and adding any stress on top of that is really hard to deal with and can easily derail a good block. If you have the energy to do a hard group ride I would lean towards adding an additional vo2 workout to get a bit more training effect going.
Got some time to kill? Ten Minute Tips #28: FTP and VO2max Thoughts and Listener Questions - Empirical Cycling
(I, personally, do use erg mode on the few occasions I elect to do very, very short sprints / anerobic work indoors because I can actually do more power faster in erg mode + a sudden cadence change than I can trying to jump back and forth between a handful of gears on my poorly indexed old mechanical trainer bike that drops its chain every 4th time–but that’s a me problem.)
Hmm ok interesting. Ok then alternate plan…since i’ll still be outside on a group ride at least once a week…
Is 2 VO2 days enough? This would be paired with a bit of zone 2 during the week, a zone 2 day sunday, and I’d just chill at the back of the saturday group ride and stay with everyone that gets dropped, ride zone 2 most of the ride, maybe a bit of tempo.
2 vo2 a week?
2 Vo2 workouts a week
It just depends on your goal. You can see improvements from just doing 1 very hard VO2 workout a week and sticking with your current weekly plan, especially if you haven’t been doing them recently, but that’s not really a VO2 block… If you want to do a focused VO2 block, do that and don’t mess around with adding other stuff that’s going to sabotage your VO2 block. A VO2 block is going to be focused and HARD.
I think 2 good vo2 intervals a week would be hard, but kurt is def better at this answer.
Some stuff TR says is vo2, isnt vo2.
I’m off the reservation. No plan, i’d start with 6 x 3’
Broadly, any work above threshold (with some obvious exceptions). If I’m training MAP/VO2, I usually use either 30/15s, 40/20s or 3-6 min intervals. Each of those is max repeatable.
I will typically prescribe a broad range of power like 105-130% in the created workout, but I am specific with my athletes that for “long” VO2 or max aerobic sessions, I’m looking for “max repeatable power”. That will decline as they go. The point is I don’t want someone to go out way too hard and not be able to do the workout. But I never prescribe a set power for workouts like this.
@kurt.braeckel interesting. Sorry; can you explain what you mean by these three things above ?
I’d suggest going back and reading though this thread. There is a ton of good advice, and Kurt has been an active participant, along with a few others. I have learned a ton by taking the time to go through it all.
Not Kurt but 30/15s and 40/20s are potentially vo2 intervals if you are very untrained but are better utilized for MAP and race sharpening imo. Your more typical vo2 intervals are 3-6ish minutes and done at a high cadence and all out. You can also make them hard start to bring up your respiration rate quickly.
I would give a read of the thread as well as a listen to the empirical cycling episodes on vo2.