I recently bought the “18 Weeks of Sweet Spot plan - advanced” for the upcoming winter. After a short overview, I have two questions.
Some of the workouts during the week contain the pre-activity comment to extend the time in zone 2 after the sweet spot or tempo intervals if possible. How much longer appears adequate to still FtFP, as this will raise the duration and the TSS of the entire workouts? Is there a recommendation based on your experiences to clarify the restriction “as long as it doesn´t affect recovery and further workouts”?
In addition, I have seen that there are only two FTP tests before and after the training plan which seems like a rather long period of time. Should I include another one in a regeneration week in the middle of the plan? Honestly, I was riding very much in the last two and a half years so I would expect just a moderate increase during the training plan.
Normally an athlete may add an extra 30 minutes of zone 2. That should be more than enough for those weekday rides. The Advance plan has plenty of training time. Just monitor your TSB. Watch how low you go and make sure that during the regeneration weeks you are getting back in the positive end. It also depends on how much training you are accustomed to doing. You don’t want a huge increase in training load and trying to cram a years worth of training in 18 weeks.
As far as field test the only reason to do one is if you feel that is absolutely too low. Than yo could do one during the regeneration week as opposed to the weekend workout. But also there are other ways to determine FTP. Such as from races or group rides.