There’s a couple schools of thought here: 1) It’s never “too early” to improve your aerobic capacity; 2) what do you do from Feb-May?
I don’t think it’s too early. People tend to think of VO2 blocks as race prep, and I don’t see them that way. I think you could easily do a VO2 block → FTP training → race prep, with race prep featuring some over/under work and maybe some MAP intervals (just working specifically on 2-5min power not worrying about cadence, etc.) and then into anaerobic work for your crits.
The downside is that doing hard training incurs a toll, both physically and mentally, so you need to be cognizant of recovery and honor it, plan to take days away from the bike, etc., all so you don’t burn out on training in April when you should be peaking motivation for your May races.
That’s how I view it, with the caution pointed out above.
Circling back to this - hard start stuff I generally use as race prep as I view them as good proxies for breakaways and paceline work. So I’ll give hard start sustained intervals during race prep, usually sweet spot. I also like to do hard start over under with more advance athletes too. This can be like 3 min at “over” then 30s/1:30 or so over/unders - over at like 5min power, under at 85-90% or so. Bridge to a paceline breakaway.
Again, how old are you and what’s your training history?
Generally speaking I don’t mix proper VO2 with threshold. I’ll do maintenance VO2 with threshold for super masters athletes, but that’s like 8-10 min of VO2/MAP intervals, not 18-24min.
42 and I’ve been riding for +/- 10 years, FTP around 4.1/4.3w/kg.
My main focus in the past was MTB XCM, I didn’t have power meter, a couple of years with coach, a couple by myself. Another portion just riding for fun, and so on. I like to intercalate some hard years and a “just for fun” one. Ride a bike must be above all fun for me. Just hitting number and doing workouts every time isn’t something I love.
The mixed Vo2 and Threshold would be exactly to maintain, as my plan is to finish 12 weeks in mid February, from that I’ll see specificity.
Historically, I’m not very good at 5 min power, and my strength would be 2hrs. Sometimes I can do amazing climbings after 2hrs of riding, which even I don’t believe I could. Although when I’m fresh at the beginning of the ride I usually struggle with short surges. Looks like I’m slow twitch as per definition. Don’t know if I should work on my weakness or streneghness, to be honest.
Thanks for the feedback. Your second point is what I’m wondering now.
And to your point about recovery. This is why I want to do the block in January. My work is going to be the lightest time of the whole year (like 20 hours per week less) and I have the time to not only train but to add an hour of sleep or other recovery time. My best VO2 block I probably did less than 2 hours on the bike outside the VO2 workouts. It was basically an easy spin or nothing.
A few weeks after to recover. Then probably Threshold work. But that still leaves me some of March and all of April to figure out what to do.
I wouldn’t go this route with you then. Mixing VO2 and threshold at your level isn’t necessary to maintain and it’s going to incur a bunch of fatigue for little return.
You can maintain your VO2max with enough volume and your threshold by doing sustained sweet spot and even long tempo work. I’d focus on that until you’re ready to get to the hard work, then focus on what you need for your events - higher threshold? Do VO2. More TTE? Work that. Or specific stuff.
Doing threshold and VO2 to maintain for 12 weeks you are likely to be pretty tired of training hard by the time it comes around that you actually need to train hard.
It’s not too early IMO, because you don’t know when your gains will manifest. If you’re a slow adapter and it takes six weeks, you’ll still want to extend things a bit at threshold and that will take you into April. If you get gains and solid TTE in six to eight weeks after VO2 and you’re into late March then it’s still only six or so weeks of race prep. That’s not too much. You’re just on the higher side of what I’d do, but nothing specifically wrong with this periodization IME
Here is my example from a month ago. And like I said, at that moment, I could even extend it 15-20min.
So. Is a SST progression usefull? Start my progression at a higher power? Re-test FTP?
I have a question re my plans for 2024 - My focus is gran fondo’s typically lasting 5-7 hours (most climbs <60min) and have been cycling since 2021. I last did a sweet spot progression ahead of the Maratona this year in june ending with a 1x45min, this was alongside 1xVo2, 1xThreshold per week, with as much extra z2 as possible (so standard TR LV plan but SS workouts swapped for progression).
Due to start general base until Feb (2xSS and 1xThreshold), build (1x Vo2, threshold and SS) until March and then Speciality until end of April for Mallorca fondo.
My original plan had been to approach the base phase with 2xSS progressions, 1xVo2 and z2. However having read this thread, would I be better dropping the Vo2 and threshold until build and sticking with 2x SS and as much z2 for volume? Would you add anything ontop of the 2x SS progressions/week?
My original plan had been to approach the base phase with 2xSS progressions, 1xVo2 and z2. However having read this thread, would I be better dropping the Vo2 and threshold until build and sticking with 2x SS and as much z2 for volume? Would you add anything ontop of the 2x SS progressions/week?
Cheers!
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Personally I like doing an achievable / maintenance VO2 workout every 2 weeks in base phase (30/30s, 1 min reps, etc. it doesn’t need to be a lot and should be easy to recover from). Rest is filled with volume, sweet spot an occasional threshold. But that’s me…
I’ve been doing 2 SS workouts a week for the past 1.5 month, the rest endurance. I find when doing 60-90 mins TIZ of SS I don’t need a 3rd day of intensity. I ride about 9-11 hours a week. I’m slowly building my long endurance rides out further than I have before. So I give myself ample room for recovery and I can really nail those hard days. I’m hoping to be getting 90+ mins TIZ after this block.
I’m 40 years old and have been training “seriously” 4 ish years. Everyone is different, I’ve thought about adding another day of intensity but haven’t found a reason too.
I am doing also something like you, but a little different. I don’t focus on 2 SS sessions but I use LT1, tempo and SS in a progressive approachv, the rest filled with normal Z2 (60-65%).
This is my base approach. Weekly hours around 12h and TIZ increase of those 3 ‘zones’ to get higher load per week. No treshold yet.
Here my PL’s. I aim to increase them around 0.5-0.7 per week. After a first base block (3-4 weeks) I also start doing some treshold progression.
Is this a good approach? Or should I not focus on increasing the PL’s with the adaptive training?
Currently around 85CTL so if I only did pure Z2 as base I need 14-15hours to stay on that level. And mostly I have around 12h a week.
Yes and no, the PLs are a good way To compare workouts, and how hard they might be. I do use the PL’s to pick workouts but sometimes I may pick a lower PL because I’m shooting for more time in zone. The PLs are based on intensity and other things so you could have for example, 3 x 20 at 88% versus a higher PL would be 3 x 20 at 92%.
Last weekend I did a PL 8 SS Workout 3 x 25 at 90%, it was hard (plus it’s the busiest time of year for me) so on Tuesday I actually picked a lower PL 6, but with longer sustained Intervals.
I have two main goals that’s in increase time in zone and try to do longer intervals.
I would still have you do a SST progression, but then your build would be VO2 + Threshold/SST/Over-Unders rather than a block style because you’re on lower volume. 2x intensity per week, not 3 IMO. Your key rides should be the two intense sessions, then a 3+ hour ride on the weekend. Anything else during the week moderate zone 2 like 65-70%.
This is common, and I’ll say when I get people like us (mid-40s masters+) up near that 90 minute range of TiZ for one workout, their second intensity session usually becomes tempo at a high time in zone. It’s not uncommon for me to have guys do a 75-90min SST session and then a 2hr tempo (TiZ) session on the weekend.
The only other thing I add is neuromuscular work once a week. This can be as simple as sprints or spinups inside an endurance ride, or something more organized like cadence ramps or big gear accelerations/short tempo intervals.
Bottom line for those reading through this thread: if you’re out of “noob gain” territory, IMO block style is the way to go assuming your volume is around 10 hours or more. If you’re in your first year or so of training, mixed protocols work well, but they’re going to flatten out pretty quickly because the stimulus just isn’t that great, and to make it bigger, you end up burning yourself out because you’re just going HARDER all the time 2-3 times per week (sound familiar?).
Once you’re at that initial plateau, that’s where block style becomes effective IMO, and you end up achieving a larger stimulus by really focusing on one aspect of your riding at a time: endurance, VO2max, threshold, repeatability, etc. Sweet Spot/Tempo progressions are essentially endurance work.
The people I tend to do mixed periodization for are newer athletes, athletes on lower volume (e.g. sub 10hrs), and super masters (like 60+ depending on their background).
