Yes, I was doing hard start. I definitely found 12-15 minutes or work much more manageable.
I also experimented with the ladder intervals in the Vaccari paper (did them hard start) and that was kind of fun. I did 30 minutes of total time which works out to 15+ minutes of time in zone.
Week one in the books. Iāll write up a recap in the coming days. Lots of learnings
Week 1 recap
Training week.
Mon - Rest
Tue - VO2 4x5 min TR workout Cramer
Wed - VO2 4x5 min TR workout Cramer
Thur - Easy Enurance .56IF TR workout Griffin
Fri - VO2 7x3 min TR workout Mount Deborah
Sat - Easy Endurance .61IF TR Workout Freeborn
Sun - Outside Long ride - 3hrs easy IF .63
Notes: All VO2 done inside on trainer per Kollieās advice. All at 110rpm +/- 2-3 rpm. Started 1 gear harder than I thought I could handle for the whole interval and when I felt my RPM dropping below 110 I shifted down and hung on for dear life. Forgot about power, just went for it and gave it everything I had for that particular interval.
Learnings: Put ego away and focused on the process. Hit the rpms and worry about everything else after the fact. By the end of the week I could sense my rpms dropping and would increase it by feel - even with my eyes closed and close to crying (lol). Focus on the interval you are in at the moment - give it all you have. Donāt worry about what comes next. Just go deep and deal with the recovery and next interval when it arrives.
Post session fatigue is real. Even though, because of the higher rpm, you arenāt mashing the pedals so your quads arenāt fried - the CNS fatigue is something else. I really felt that in the legs during the easy days. I felt āfineā and ārestedā but once I started pedalling and, oh boy. Thankfully after about 20 mins I settled in and got the endurance done. Actually felt they helped me finish the week strong as I ārodeā away the fatigue.
I did the two 4x5 workouts back to back as I was expecting the fatigue, but man come Saturday that endurance ride my legs felt like they weighed tonne. I originally was going to have two easy endurance days in between VO2 workout 2 and 3, but I felt recovered enough on the Thursday to hit another VO2 session.
Saturdayās endurance ride def helped the legs as the legs felt pretty good on the Sunday. I must say I even felt like blasting a few of the climbs (placebo I know).
Next week I am making both endurance rides at .56 IF (same session).
VO2 workouts will be Tues/Wed - 6x4 TR workout Mount Alyeska. Fri or Sat? 7x3 Mount Deborah
same endurance and long rides.
Other stuff:
Nutrition: Using easy days to get my caloric deficits. (Iām running a small deficit as I approach race season. <200 cals a day) Not fuelling the VO2 sessions as they are 1hr in length, however, I am eating approx 60g carbs 15-20 mins prior just not fuelling while riding. That works for me as I donāt do well with stomach stuff under load. I also get most of my calories from food. I do not eat under maintenance plus workout cals on hard days. Deficits only on easy days.
Sups - before bed (creatine and magnesium (hard days) or VitC, VitD and Zinc (easy days) in a drink. All in powder form. This is long term use and not just for this block.
Recovery: aiming for 8 hrs min in the bed each night. Achieving that pretty consistently. Sleep has been normal.
Overall - feel like I had a solid week of training. Learned a lot from session 1 and session 2 around how to pace intervals so I can get through the sessions. Also around how they feel. Terrible. Terrible is the answer. I now know how to get my heart into the zones and how to keep it there without blowing my legs apart. Figured that out after the first interval. Oh my. Spin fast is the answer. lol
Thereās lots to unpack and figure out and many things going through my head - but Iām putting my faith in the plan and having a crack. How that translates to performance Iāll only really know in a few months but for now Iām focused on consistency and the things I can control.
Iāve purposely left out posting numbers and data points etc as I feel like sometimes they derail the conversation from the process and controllables to arbitrary nonsense.
Thatās it for this week. If nobody cares let me know and Iāll save myself the time writing this. Iāll just go tell me dog how awesome I am.
Have a great week everyone and I will report back after week two.
That sounds tough, I wouldnāt run a deficit during a VO2 block. You need the energy even during easy days to recover from the work.
def tracking it. Deficit is so small that itās barely noticeable.
Ouch! Iām impressed, but also, I would be dead.
Good stuff.
The three cautions I would give for the general population here:
Back-to-backs. Personally if this is your first go at a structured VO2 block, I wouldnāt. The people I have stack these workouts are very few and far between. I do not typically coach the truly high level client like Kolie does, but Iām pretty choosy who I even offer that option to.
Again if this is your first structured block, I donāt recommend doing 24 minute workouts. MED applies to these, for sure. 15-21 minutes is plenty for most mortals IMO.
Caloric deficit - no. This is not the time, IMO. Itās going to catch up to you.
Otherwise all the stuff you describe about the execution sounds pretty good, particularly your description of āCNS fatigueā moreso than leg fatigue. To me, thatās an indication youāre doing these right. Nice work!
Donāt diet doing vo2s, and you should not run a deficit, even a small one. Add more rest. And even if youāre not posting your numbers, absolutely be should paying attention to the numbers though, since if youāre not recovering between workouts you may not be getting much if anything out of a focused training block. It matters in evaluating the process, which cannot exist in a theoretical vacuum.
Thanks for replying. I am tracking my numbers. Both cycling and sleep. I always do so I have a pretty good data set to compare.
Iāve taken onboard the nutrition advice and Iāll cease the deficit for the next two weeks.
FYI - Iāve managed over 55 mins at 95%and above MAx HR for the three sessions this far.
Thanks for the taking the time to reply. I appreciate the feedback
Thanks for the reply Kurt.
The things you mentioned were some of things ruminating around my head during week 1 around rest and recovery
Taking feedback Iāve ceased the deficit and am eating more as of today. Even tho my deficit was small I also see the reasoning why not to.
As for the session length thatās an interesting one. I only have 2 sessions at 24 planned. The rest are all at 20+21.
I figured they would be the peak sessions of the block.
Iāll think about it more and see where I fall.
Thanks again for the feedback. Your contribution to this thread is what I based a lot of my original plan around. Yours and Kollies of course
The key is overall stimulus, not single-workout stimulus. So if a 24 min session is going to push you over the fatigue edge and cost you one more 20 min session, we can all recognize that 4 < 20 and thatās a mistake. This is why knowing when to pull the plug in these workouts (and blocks) is critical. Iād be more likely to give 24-25 min sessions to someone doing 1x Vo2s as part of a mixed block than I would to someone doing a block of 3+ Vo2s every week, for sure. Even then, I find that 15-20 min in a session is plenty for most of my athletes in mixed blocks. Variance comes with volume, experience, training history, etc.
TL;DR: Iād rather you give me 20 quality minutes 9 times than 20 quality minutes 7 times + 18 quality minutes and 6 minutes of square pedaling dog 
twice. 
all good advice I appreciate that. I have the 6 x4 scheduled today and am leaning towards ditching the last interval and keeping it to 5x4.
I also would like to apologise to @empiricalcycling if I have bastardised your podcasts into some sort of improper protocol. I guess the challenges of self coaching are evident in my posts and I appreciate all who loop in and offer advice so that collectively we can all be better cyclist.
Youāll know when you get there I bet. 
Also: āsquare pedaling dog ā is a highly technical coaching term.
I effed around and found out. I leaned all the way out of that last interval with your words " Iād rather you give me 20 quality minutes 9 times than 20 quality minutes 7 times + 18 quality minutes and 6 minutes of square pedaling dog twice" ringing in my ears.
I felt I had the last interval in me if I dug out of it with my eye lids but the above made too much sense
Sound advice. I appreciate it
Hey no worries, everyoneās memory is wonky with these things, including mine. All that research on memory, eyewitness testimony, and whatnot. Iāve definitely misattributed things, remembered references and conclusions wrong, etc. At the end of the day whatever advice you get, tweak it until it makes the most sense for you, and start small to sneak up on a dose thatās both effective and sustainable.
Week Two recap
I made some changes to my original plan based on feedback from @kurt.braeckel and @empiricalcycling. Namely around my nutrition plan and session types.
See below for the week 2 recap:
Training Week: Mon rest. Tue: VO2 Mount Alyeska (amended to 5/4 and not 6/4). Wed: Easy IF.55 Thu: VO2 Mount Alyeska amended Fri: Easy IF.55 Sat: VO2 Mount Deborah 7x3s Sun: Long End easy.
Notes: All VO2 done on the training in standard mode. All at 110rpm +/- 2-3rpm. Pushed ag gear harder than I thought I could hold for the interval then dropped as necessary to allow for 110rpm goal. Initially I had back to back sessions planned and 2 x 6/4s. I switched the 6/4s to 5/4s and put a rest/recovery ride in between VO2 sessions. Overall volume stayed the same.
Learnings. Improved execution from week 1. Was able to hold power more consistently per interval as a result. What I changed was rather than going out the gates like a psycho I hit the initial burst and as soon as I got to the 110 rpm I steadied rather than going above and trying to prevent dropping below 110. I hit 110 as quick as I could and held it. The result was I could hold that higher gear around another 10-15 secs or so from week 1. Changing from doing back to backs as per Kurtās advice helped me feel much better during the VO2 sessions then week 1. The CNS fatigue I felt last week wasnāt as present this week. Although the āflu like symptomsā Kollie mentions in the VO2 podcast series were alive and present.
The added recovery from not doing back to backs helped a bunch towards my improved execution.
All sessions I was able to hit 95% Max HR for extended periods all over 16mins per session. Above 90% I went 20 mins per session.
Mental: Continue to focus on the interval youāre in. Donāt let your mind wander to the next 4 or 5 left. I used a mantra of again after each 10 pedal strokes and that kept me focused on my execution and helped me stay in the moment. Choose your music wisely as well. Before each interval I would say aloud ānext set best setā as a way of focusing and using positive self talk. Really helped at the back end of each session.
Recovery
I felt pretty good this week albeit a little leg tired Monday morning. I stopped the caloric deficit and ate maintenance calories as per week 1. My supplements stayed the same and my sleep was the same - except for 1 night when I watched the tour. The next day was an easy endurance day so I felt ok. Was able to execute each session well and never felt like my energy was waning or that I wasnāt recovered. My garmin BB agreed.
Other stuff: I forgot to mention last week about strength training. Before starting this block I was doing 2 x strength per week at a moderate to hard level of about 50 mins per session.
For this VO2 block I went back to 1 session a week and am doing what I would call a light to moderate effort of about 50 mins. I wonāt add any particulars but needless to say I am being careful to not add to much system fatigue. Mainly working through the full ROM and keeping the load light to moderate. Resting more between sets and basically going through the motion.
Overall: Another solid week of VO2. My power numbers are actually getting better (I think that is due to me understanding the efforts rather than any real gains) Iāve managed a 4w improvement on the intervals for the week but as I said I think that is due to me learning how to do the efforts properly rather than any real gains. Iām still feeling good and strong, however, Iād be lying If I didnāt say Iām thankful this is the last week of the block as this is some of the hardest training Iāve done in some time. Mentally I am looking forward to the next block where I hope to use any gains made and settle into to some threshold and sweet spot work to truly bed in any fitness I have made.
Next week. 3 x VO2 session. 1 x 7x3s. 1 x 5x4s and 1 x 4x5s to end the block. All the same TR workouts as in previous posts executed in the same way. Everything else is the same as well from a training, nutrition and recovery aspect.
Thanks for reading if you did and Iāll be back next week with the wash up of my first block of Kollieās VO2 protocol.
Thanks. Apologies if this was posted above - why did you decide to do this block?
Hey great overall feedback and Iām glad the adaptations to your plan seem to be working.
I tell people (and I am pretty sure Kolie does as well), NO leg lifting during VO2s.
Solid plan. To make sure you understand whatās ānormalā here, power and HR typically will both decline for the same interval duration during these blocks as you accumulate fatigue. That said, there are numbers you can look at to make sure youāre on track, but generally if you āprogressā interval duration downward to account for the fatigue, you will likely be putting out slightly higher power because itās easier to do that for 3 min than it is for 4 min.
So my advice would be to flip your progression this week: go 4x5 then 5x4 then 7x3. My typical 3-week, 9-workout block goes from 3x6 ā 4x5 ā 5x4 ā 6x3:30 ā 7x3 for most people and lots of people have had success with that.
After this, you need to be really conservative with when you get back to hard training. Take a bit more recovery than you think you normally need. There are some workouts you can do to kind of ātestā when youāre ready, but generally if things are lagging and your legs feel heavy, take more time. Itās not uncommon for people to need well over a week to bounce back and be ready to go do threshold stuff after these blocks. When I had an Empirical coach myself, I did a more concentrated block than this and it took me a full two weeks to be back to where I thought I could push threshold. In my athletes I give this style of block to, I see it take 7-10 days for most. Maybe one guy has come back faster than that and been ready to really work.
Typically Iāll have the first workout back with intensity be a shorter (for that person) sweet spot effort because a lot of people will really struggle to do sustained power after a block like this. So rather go out and try to nail 3x20 at FTP or do a long form FTP test right away, Iād recommend doing something more low key, maybe 2/3s of your normal SST volume (e.g. if youāve done 3x30, hit a 3x20 at 90%), and then start into your FTP work or testing. If that 3x20 feels about right, then do some threshold work for a few weeks and Iād bet things come around. If it feels pretty easy, then test. Typically people will adapt to the VO2 work within 2-6 weeks, but Iāve seen a couple guys take longer before testing is really warranted.
Plan was to take a full recovery week off then work into some SS work 3 x 10s or similar and some threshold work 70-80% ish before tackling a bigger block in about 6 weeks. I donāt plan to test FTP until the end of the next block (5 weeks time).
Appreciate the feedback Kurt. Iāll switch the sessions around as per above.