Just bought the 6 weeks to CX Nats plan which is advertised as: BEGINS THE LAST MONDAY OF OCTOBER
Loaded the plan to start today and it appears to have an extra week (maybe from there being 5 Mondays in October this year) because it shows:
Also, the Thanksgiving week block is late by one week. Should I load it to start on the 24th or omit a week somewhere else?
James
You should maybe try choose end date of plan as opposed to start date.
You have the Friday plan which is day 47 (week 7 actually) of the plan and December 9th. So week 6 of the plan is the week before and then week 5 of the plan is the week of Thanksgiving.
So I believe the reason it is not lining up for you is that the plan is a 6 week plan however the race falls on the 7th week making it a 7 week plan. Make sense?
yes, thanks for the help. I just switched it to start on 10/24 and it all lines up correctly now.
Also on the 6wks to Nats plan…after doing the 24wks CX resistance & SS plan, then the CX Summer SS/skills/running plan. Took a fairly easy week then rolled into the 6wks to Nats plan. I did a couple races the weekend of the 22/23rd before starting (also starting on the 24th). Was feeling sore so I took an extra day off, just did a few sprints on Wednes (vs the Tabatas) and then reduced a bit hoping to recover more (subbed some sprints on Sat. vs racing). But after the 3hr Z2 ride yesterday, my legs are SORE.
So, I’m worried about really being ready for the coming week’s workouts…go for them, or try to recover more?? Don’t want to do the dreaded “burn out too early in CX season” thing… 
@Wocketman,
I would try the workouts as planned. Sometimes you feel sore or tired and think there’s no way you’ll be able to do the workout on tap for the day, but once you start and get warmed up, the body comes around and you actually do have a good ride. If you find that you aren’t hitting your numbers once you get into it, you can bail out and do a recovery ride. No harm done and you know you need more recovery rather than guessing.
I wonder what it means if I can’t hold the prescribed threshold numbers for extended periods, however for shorter anaerobic sessions I can usually exceed the assigned targets…??
For instance, this morning I was supposed to hold 230W for 15min, and I could barely average 220W for 10min. However for the subsequent assigned 1min sessions @ 264W (called “flat out”) I could hold close to 300W for the 1min.
Well, some people naturally have more fast twitch muscle fibers which would make you a better sprinter, which could be the case. Also, if your threshold fitness is a little low (which it sounds like could be the case), your Anaerobic effort targets are going to be set low because those percentages are an estimate based on your FTP test results. I.e. 150% of FTP or something, right? So if you tested low on the FTP but naturally have good anaerobic capacity, then those targets will be set too low and you’ll easily exceed them. Keep working to improve your FTP and don’t use ERG mode for your anaerobic efforts so you can truly go all out and not be limited by the low targets.
