A question about recovery weeks and when to start base 2

Training
1

Hi,

I recently finished base mid plan 1 and was sick in my recovery week (just a cold) so I took the whole week to rest and didn’t do any recovery rides. This weekend a few mates and I did a reasonably tough 70 mile ride and my legs felt a bit dead but now ok after a rest day. My question is should I do the ftp ramp test today or wait till my legs feel fresh and also what effects on my training would having another week off to have fun rides (zwift racing) do to my ftp potentially?

Thanks all!

2

I think you want to test ftp when your legs are reasonably fresh, which is the point behind testing again after a recovery week. I don’t think you will lose any fitness at all by taking another easy week after your cold, as I seem to recall reading somwhere that you don’t begin to lose the fitness you’ve worked so hard to cultivate until after about 1-2 weeks of complete inactivity. I’d take an easy week anf then start base 2.

3

Slightly similar situation here. I was one week in to build, had surgery, took a week completely off.

Now I have reloaded the recovery week from the end of base and I will start build again after.

4

Hey there,
I have somehow the same question. I crashed in the last week (recovery week) of SweetSpot Base II. after 10 days completely of the bike I finished the recovery week of SSB II. Now I have no idea if I can go into the build phase with another ramp test.

Should I take one more week of aerobic riding and maybe with one hard effort to see how it feels before I go on with build phase?

thanks and happy new year

5

It’s a non taxing test. Do it if you feel 70%+. Unless you have a lot of muscular pain or not fully recovered from surgery a little tired won’t kill the test. I’ve done traditional 20 min tests at all points in the season and freshness.

If you feel after week 1 that was not a good test result you can sneak in another one and adjust ftp and keep rolling.

Last point that comes to mind - there are other threads about this - SSB I to II doesn’t result in a large ftp bump and in some cases goes down. Build is where you see that so don’t freak if it’s not what you were expecting.

Worst case - sneak in another ramp test and see what happens.

6

So i ended up leaving it another week and doing some more Zwift racing. Turns out I jumped from 289 to 305 ftp in Base I, Super happy! onwards and upwards

2 Likes