Hi, 49 Male here, been riding since I was very young, racing bmx since age of 6, MTB and lots of off-road and road riding.
I’m currently following TR sustained power build plan with 3xintensity efforts a week. I like to include 1 Zwift race a week, I find these really help me push my limits and I get good response /adaptation from them.
I do them on a Tues even when my plan has an interval workout scheduled - I do a 20 min warm up INEOS race prep, 40-45 min race (Cat B/C - I fluctuate between Cats!) then 10 min cool down. My current way to replace a workout is to total the TSS from the above then look in plan for a interval session that is closet to the TSS and switch it out, so I don’t overload.
Is there any harm in switching a Vo2 one week and a threshold another week as replacement or should I just stick to the one that is closest to summed TSS score?
Depends on what you need, and what adaptations you feel you’re getting from the racing.
I wouldn’t match them by TSS, because all TSS is not created equal and TSS != adaptations.
If your plan has 2 Threshold days and 1 VO2 day, I’d probably always leave the VO2 workout in and take out the easier threshold one, as the harder threshold one is the key one of the two.
Well it kinda depends on the zwift race. If youre going up the alpe, thats a threshold WO. If your doing crit city, thats kinda like an over under ish WO. If it a flat race, that SST or threshold. Probably not getting enough continued time in Z5 to be better than a z5 WO
When replacing prescribed workouts with other activities such as races, I’d recommend replacing the workout that best represents the effort of the activity.
If your race had lots of surges above FTP, then I’d replace a VO2 Max or Anaerobic workout with it. If it had long steady efforts (think Alpe Du Zwift) it would probably make sense to replace a Threshold workout with that race.
If your race is a bit of a mixed bag, I kind of like your idea of replacing a VO2 workout one week and then a Threshold the next just to ensure that you’re keeping things balanced.
Let me know if this helps and if you have any other questions. The forum is a great place for these types of discussions!
Thanks for the feedback this is all useful, for example here is a race I completed last night Log In to TrainerRoad - hopefully it’s viewable. 73% of the race was spent in Tempo and above with 22.4% in Threshold and 19.1 % in V02 and above. So a pretty even split between the two.
So would it make sense to review the upcoming workouts that are threshold or v02 ,see what percentage of the workout is in those zones, then use that to map that effort from my race and warmup and see what correlates the closest and then switch out said workout? Of course I could be just over thinking this
As for type of race - I have no preference - Tuesdays are the time I have free to do a race in the evening so I usually pick the one with the largest field and jump in. So I suppose as my racing si a mixed bag the switch-a-roo approach may just work best
I wouldn’t overthink it too much. This was a shorter race too (around 30 minutes) so if this is the case most of the time I’d say alternating between the two wouldn’t be a bad idea.
With almost 20% of the ride above your threshold though, this definitely was a punchy effort!
