Here we are again! Past month has been pretty uneventful. I stuck to the plan like glue (aside from blowing out my TSS on 7/11). CTL is steadily going up up up.
Covid numbers are up in my area so I opted to do more rides indoors this time around. Erring on the side of caution I guess. I probably did too much in ERG mode during the week but I feel like I really nailed the sweet spot work on the weekends.
Only other hiccup is that my knee is feeling a bit sore this week. So I might take it extra easy and skip tomorrows workout since it’s a rest week for me. Going to wait and see how things are in the morning.
I’m guessing that Phil’s Fondo won’t be happening so I might need to readjust my goal. Maybe next month we can talk about that.
Good to hear the training has been going well! Looks like it with all the GREEN! Nice work! I find being on a plan really makes the days go by faster. A 3 week build followed by a rest week and you have nearly gone through one month.
Yeah you have done great building up your CTL! You ramped up to a nice 86 over the last block. That is a really good spot to be. Highest point in the year so nicely done with that.
As far as using erg for your sweet spot intervals during the week that is actually fine. The one time you wouldn’t want to use it is if you were doing burst or full gas efforts. Just because you never know what you are capable and you want to feel those out. So like when doing sweet spot burst you might want to take off erg and go at it. Train your body to go hard and then not letting the power up. With erg it does it for you and might hold back the maximal power you put out during the burst.
Looking at your ride on the 22nd you absolutely smashed that ride! Did a great job getting a ton of sweet spot! You actually did nearly an hour in the sweet spot zone, while most of the ride was zone 3/4! So working hard. Did actually 250 TSS in 4 hours which is really hard. On this ride you did have an hour long climb that you did at sweet spot but impressively you basically rode an hour of sweet spot on the flats before even getting to that climb. So way to work hard and keep that pressure on the pedals.
The following Sunday you were suppose to do 45 minutes of sweet spot and actually kind of went over. I would suggest not going too hard on both weekend days. Just so you stay a little fresher for the week. On the Sunday that followed you did a 30 minute sweet spot effort around the Jungle in Zwift, but then did the Alp and over an hour at 83% of your FTP so lowest end of sweet spot. We considering 84 - 97% of FTP your Sweet spot zone. Get a bit more zone 2 so you don’t burn out. And then when you actually do a sweet spot effort make it higher like 88 - 96%. But this is also nitpicking .
The weekend of July 18th and 19th you did really well. Did your sweet spot ride on Saturday and then stuck to zone 2 on Sunday. That would allow you to recover well and complete the last week on before the rest week. The zone 2 ride was on the lower end but you did ride a little longer to reach your TSS and workload which is great! Then the sweet spot ride was good as you rode at the lower end since you know you were going to be at it for 2 hours. That is a really long sweet spot effort indoors!
The ride on July 11th wasn’t terrible. When you decided to ride longer and up the climb you would have benefited from just keeping it at zone 2, especially coming off a race where you were averaging 93% of your FTP. Nothing wrong with riding zone 2, other than I guess it can be tedious. But adding zone 2 time won’t kill you its when you ride harder and then just keep fading till you get done. That is something you don’t want to do. If you are struggle to hold tempo / sweet spot don’t push it, just do zone 2. Don’t over do it. There are still great aerobic gains to be made by riding zone 2. The good thing for you was that on Sunday was only an hour and you kept to it so again it allowed you to recover well before the week ahead of that.
This is the ride from the 11th. This is the slope down we probably just don’t want to see. Just keep the power steadier and hold it. You had plenty of effort in the first event before the climb. Even if you save some early on and then finish off the last 10 - 20 minuets of the climb at a harder sweet spot pace would be good practice! Training your body to perform after 2 - 3 hours.
As far as what to do if Phils Fondo is canceled, there is nothing wrong with doing that plan. It will give you some good intensity and also a great practice run of build up and taper. Then the day of the event you can do your own big ride and test yourself! Find a hard route with some climbing and see how the legs responded to that lead in with the training. Then if there is something we feel like that might benefit you more from tweaking we can do that. Just a great opportunity at a dry run.
Hope you are well! It’s been another 30 days. Hard to fathom that it’s September already. Figured I’d reply here instead of starting a new thread so I could keep all this information in one place. Hope that’s OK.
A little more red and yellow this past block than previous blocks. Life got in the way a bit. Also did a couple of weekend rides without a power meter. Wanted to not ride in traffic so busted out the MTB and the gravel bike and tried to ride by HR. Mixed success there I’d say.
Also, did my first criss-cross diabolical workout this morning. That thing sucks. Can’t say I’m looking forward to the next one.
Two things I have questions about:
When I set up this plan, I truncated the 18 week plan by 2 weeks in order to get the full Phil’s plan in before the fondo. Since that’s not happening, is there an easy way to get those missing weeks planned (as well as a rest week) before I start the Phil’s plan? Or maybe I didn’t and the last block is only two weeks?
The group I sometimes ride with prefers to ride on Sundays. Any problems with me occasionally switching the Saturday and Sunday rides going forward?
It is best to just keep everything we do on this thread! Good to keep everything together so glad you used!
The good news is that you haven’t been losing any fitness and have been slightly increasing with the bit more red and yellow. So it hasn’t been terrible and you have been progressing. With the 18 week sweet spot plan that is what we want to see. We want to see that increase in CTL.
Riding your mountain bike right now is fine! Without Phils happening and with it being late in the year it is good to start having some soul rides. Just out and enjoying your training without worrying too much about the exact power or staring at a powermeter. Enjoy yourself.
Now to answer your quesitons.
I would have been happy to put in the last 2 weeks of the 18 week sweet spot but it appears that you have all the weeks. So you are set. What I did do is changed up the first week of the Phil’s plan. Coming off two hard and intense weeks it is not the best idea to come into a field test on a Tuesday. So I went ahead and made it a recovery week of sorts. This way you can start the following weeks of Phils Fondo plan fresh.
You can swap your Saturday and Sunday rides. If the only group ride you have or are able to do is Sunday that is what you will do. There are some downsides to this and you will have to see how it goes for. One is if you do the Sunday ride on Saturday you will go into what most likely will be the harder day, the group ride, a bit more fatigued and tired. Then also it may lead you a bit more fatigued for Tuesday’s hard intervals. But you do get Monday’s off and if you recover well you should be ok. But you will have to see how that plays out for you. Keep me posted and we can adjust your plan more.
Thanks for the reply (and for rejiggering my plan).
I don’t think i’ll be swapping Sunday and Saturday too much (if any). I rode on Sunday this past weekend and this week has been pretty difficult so far. Lots of crying in the dojo as it were.
