Do you have two trainers and can ride together? My partner and I try to do this as much as possible and it’s really effective for motivation and extending duration.
We do, but we don’t live together, so more often it is one of us pretending to ignore the other’s suffering over a movie. Which is its own sort of motivation I suppose. (His lease is up in the summer. I haven’t figured out how to fit two trainers in the living room yet, but it’s in the works!)
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Yeah, huge metabolic load for you, so eat a ton, sleep as much as you can. Your start is reasonable based on your background… just a metric buttload of work coming for you. Good luck!
SST is just “easy” threshold. You’re training the same thing, just with less “cost”.
This would be my guess, first question: @AgingCannon how are you assessing FTP? 3x15 is a starter set for most of my athletes. If they’re totally new to structure, I’ll give 3x12, but if FTP is accurate and TTE is short (say 30-40 min), 3x15 at 90% should be manageable and progression should be kinda quick. What @AgingCannon is describing sounds a lot more like a threshold progression to me.
Why not VO2max?
What’s the goal? FTP is not a number you just increase, though. TrainerRoad and Zwift and these programs that have FTP settings make people believe you just change it by typing in a new number, but physiologically that’s not how it works.
Short answer: if you’re doing 60 min at FTP (or just under FTP, not 90%), and have no need to push TTE to like 80 min, then it is probably time to train something else. VO2max is one suggestion, but periodization matters here, and this can be one problem with doing a bunch of actual FTP work in the winter.
To your other point, I wouldn’t “change” FTP, but you could “assess” FTP and see if indeed you have moved it up. The thing about riding at threshold for well-trained people is that it doesn’t always drive FTP up, so assuming that you can do 60min at FTP means your FTP has gone up isn’t necessarily true. It just means you can do FTP for 60 min.
FTP has little to nothing to do with 60 minutes. That’s a misconception printed by Hunter Allen that Andy Coggan doesn’t agree with. That needs to be said here, too.
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Can you explain more? I might be misunderstanding, but I was under the impression it takes a bit of time post-vo2 to see FTP gains (around 4 weeks?), so it would seem better to err on the side of doing the vo2 block earlier to make sure you have enough time for the gains to materialize. Wrong?
Again depends on periodization and when you want to GO. I’ve seen gains materialize immediately after recovery weeks and I’ve seen them take 6 weeks, the problem is if you do VO2 early and then get gains and train at FTP six months before you need to apply it you risk burnout from hard training.
That said, you could essentially taper into rest and do it all over again. There are people out there who do that (train as if there’s an event when there is not), and then work to force a second “peak” and I can see the benefit of doing it, provided the individual is significantly intrinsically motivated.
But the risk of burnout in this scenario is really high and it has to be managed.
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ok… I will follow your advice and continue training as you suggested.
I usually train 4x a week…
I have such a plan in mind for the next two weeks, followed by 1 week of recovery
During the week
2x Vo2MAX Workout
Weekend
1x Long SS Workout (Over/Under or Just SS 2x 40 or like something like this)
1x Long Z2 / Z3 Ride
Do you suggest something special?
What style of Vo2MAX Workout?
So, basically first push the curve to the right by progressively increasing TiZ as ongoing process after base. When “satisfied”, for lacking of better term, a vo2 block to go up. FTP will follow the changes naturally. It’s more a result of training and a guide to set targets than a goal to be achieved. At least I like to think this way, am I in the right path?
So, I’ve just finished my sst 90% progression to 100min TiZ doing 5x20min. After that I did an Alpe du Zwift tt at 96% for 63min and today finished a 3x20min (alternating 2min at 95%/105%) over under workout.
Would there be any merit to upping the power like 5% and restarting the sst progression? Or is a vo2 block the better way to go?
I’m a long time away from my goal event in the Alps which will require long efforts at high tempo.
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I don’t have the answer, but is it not dependent on the Fractional Utlization of VO2max @ FTP?
If FTP is only 75% of VO2max there is no reason to do VO2max yet. Still room under the ceiling. So better to start a new progression at higher wattage.
If FTP is closer to 85-90% then doing VO2max-work could be necessary to raise the ceiling before doing more FTP work.
At least that is my understading. By the way, I have very similar goal event, Maratona Dolomiti, which is several high-altitude climbs at Tempo pace and hardly any anaerobic efforts.
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I can easily see that 3x15 would be a “starter set” for most athletes who are hiring a coach. But the contrast I’ve been phrasing is: in what kind of athletic condition are those athletes starting from?
Even after a few years of riding, I am still a “starter athlete” in the very first stages of the journey: training is low-vol and inconsistent, I’m 80 pounds overweight, I finish in the last 2% of running races I enter, I’m in the bottom 5% of the Intervals.icu population for W/kg, and so on.
It makes sense to me that my ramp rate is so much slower than for most most people… for now. That’s part of why I commented, just to show how different things look from the other end of the performance pool. 
But yes, @kurt.braeckel, I could be wrong and a great deal of my difficulties could be from something else, like a too-high FTP. I have no idea whether that might be the case: I’ve always used the ramp test, and now AIFTPD, to set it.
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OT how do you and others with similar events plan out the season for these events?
Sweet spot not only is base but also race specific so I’ve always been curious as to how others approach these events.
Ditch the weekend Sweet Spot, just do VO2max during the week and endurance on the weekend, like 3hrs easy, around 60%.
Recover and hit VO2 again the next week. You’re not going to lose anything this way, and your legs will have a much better time of the VO2 work. I recommend hard-start/high-cadence max effort intervals. There’s a whole thread on the forum dedicated to it.
Yep.
VO2, IMO. (See a trend developing here?). But again, this is simply my preferred approach… but you’re already doing 63min at 96%. You need to raise the ceiling IMO.
You can do the VO2, then hit some FTP work to solidify the gains for a couple of months, and then you hit a lot of extensive SST/Tempo/LT1ish type work as your event approaches. This is a “reverse” periodization (which is kind of a BS name because it’s still doing General → Event Specific prep).
Sure, but you don’t need WKO to figure this out. For most people, if you do an extensive SST block, and it’s then evident that FTP went up because things like HR stay much lower and the efforts feel easier… you’ll know if FTP has gone up substantially. Then you can test and make a decision. If you got a big jump in FTP, repeat the progression and extend TTE at the new threshold.
Again the advice I’m giving is in a vacuum and will vary based on training background and history. I go into this assuming most of the posters in this thread are fairly well-trained, and likely beyond the point where an extensive SST block alone is going to elicit large changes in FTP. As always, YMMV.
Yeah it’s possible. Hard to say without looking at training history and some proper testing. Don’t sell yourself short though, W/kg and weight don’t necessarily reflect aerobic fitness, and that’s really what we’re talking about here. FWIW, my experience with TR athletes who use AIFTPD is pretty good, but it is very much a black box - you get out what you put in. The ramp test is a disaster.
Answered above. “General” prep in this case is Endurance + Tempo → SST progression → VO2 → FTP and then “event specific” is SST/Tempo and LT1 progression and volume is key along the way. I sprinkle in cadence manipulation along the way to get large motor units involved since there’s not a ton of “anaerobic” training in this philosophy. This is just mapping out a general approach here, and shouldn’t be taken as dogma. It depends a lot on athlete history, age, etc.
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Agreed… but my point is precisely that I’m not very fit yet! My best watt outputs this year are all sub-20th percentile, my race results are literally 2nd percentile, a 13:45/mile pace for a 10K speaks for itself, etc.
But that’s not “selling myself short”, nor is it remotely reflective of my potential. Hell, no. I’m just trying to illustrate my current condition/performance for y’all, in comparison to many pointy-ender posters, and note that there are a bunch of TR users like me who:
- really are cycling only 2-4 hours per week,
- must understand and accept their current performance capability,
- must understand and accept their current capability to improve performance per unit time (ramp rate),
- and then intelligently work from there to get faster and stronger.
Part of what got me into trouble for the first couple of years was reading this forum and not realizing how strong the selection bias was! Most posters/conversations are at the pointy end, and for all of you things like “3x15 @90% is a starter workout” are entirely true and reasonable.
Nothing wrong with that at all, of course! I’m just saying, those at the feathered end of the arrow need to think critically about what we read, and some pointy-enders might consider that the TR arrow extends a lot further back than they think.
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Yep, context matters for sure. Thanks for sharing!
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I take it then that the VO2max block is not just for raising the maximum ml/kg/min but also for raising the FTP.
And following the VO2max block with a FTP-training block enhances that effect even further?
So first we do a tempo/sweetspot progression to enhance our overall aerobic performance and “move the PD-curve to the right”. Then a VO2max-block to boost the aerobic engine further and “push the PD-curve up”. And as an icing on the cake a Threshold-progression to once again move the TTE @ FTP to right, and hopefully also raise it even further.
Then, in my (and @jz91 's) case, with an A goal event which is essentially a 7 hour ride with 5 hours cumulative of tempo. The last race-specific preparation block could be another tempo/sweetspot progression.
Essentially this:
- Tempo/sweetspot (3-4wks ~10hr/wk)
– Recovery week - VO2max block (3wk ~9hrs/wk)
– Recovery week - Threshold progression (3-4wks ~10hrs/wk)
– Recovery week - Tempo/sweetspot progression (3-4wks ~11hrs/wk)
– Semi taper week - Race Week (end of week)
If I back calculate this from my Goal Event the above scheme starts at the beginning of March.
Considering the fact that I am away for 10 days at the end of February on Snowboarding-trip, this gives me approximately 11 weeks to fill. So enough to complete my current Endurance/Tempo progression, do VO2 block and FTP-block.
So two cycles: Tempo > VO2 > Threshold > (short break) > Tempo > VO2max > Threshold > Tempo > Event.
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You got it
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Also sounds like a pretty solid training approach for any 6-10 hour gravel race where there isn’t a lot of riding in a group. Might be my plan for the Rift in July…
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Assuming the VO2 Max block is hard as hell, stick an easy week (not 3 or 4 days - a full week or more) in before you get back into Threshold work.
Yeah that could work, but I would caution against a second VO2max block because you probably won’t need it (or want it) in that short of a time frame. Again, very athlete dependent. I have yet to prescribe more than one in a training year because they are tremendously stressful, and normally what happens is you’ll get a relatively large boost in FTP, and so the rest of the season is then spent adapting to that new threshold in terms of TTE and sustained efforts.
For ultra events like you’re describing, yes, I usually do more SST extension, then tempo, then race pace/LT1 type work as the event approaches. It depends on the event, though, and the athletes pacing goals as to what the specifically looks like. If you’re just aiming to finish, a lot of base endurance riding. If you have a specific goal in mind, there’s going to be a lot of time spent at tempo/sweet spot climbing and a lot of time spent around ~70% of threshold, in all likelihood. So train accordingly!
The second sweet spot progression in this case would be less about overall TTE and more about prepping for specifics. E.g. if there’s an hour-long climb as part of it, a workout might be a 1x60 SST as part of a 3-4 hour endurance ride.
100%. If you do it right, it’s gonna take more than 3-4 days to recover from. I don’t think I felt right for a month after mine last year (but I did a crazy protocol that you probably don’t need). 1-2 weeks of big time recovery is normal for most people, and then gains might manifest right away or take a block or two to show up. Depends on the person and anyone’s guess as to why that is…
Previous years when I did more reasonable protocols I usually needed about 10 days to get right (in my early 40s).
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