I just got the training subscription and added you guys in on TP. I achieved some really high fitness this year (almost 110 CTL) using the 18 week Sweet Spot plan and SS part 4. I fell ill at the beginning of week 5 of SS part 4 and have since let my body catch up on some rest so I can start an early off-season.
I’d love some help with when I should start my plans, and which plans I have time to fit in before my first A race (Tulsa Tough). I haven’t done a VO2 build this year, and with my CTL sagging down around 50 right now I’m not sure if there’s time to do one before starting the 10 week resistance phase.
Going off of my TP data, do I need to do all 18 weeks of Sweet Spot or should I have a decent base roll over and afford to only do SS2, SS3, and SS4? If I can afford time to ride more than the 12-16 hour average, where should I add the time in? I’m looking to upgrade to Cat 2 and have a strong summer with a lot of racing, granted that race organizers are hosting events.
FIrst of all no reason to start a Vo2 max build right now. You just did some Vo2 work coming off the sweet stop 4 plan. Plus you should have solid base in your legs before doing some higher intensity intervals. With having the last couple of weeks light / of while recovering it may not be the best thing to jump into intensity like that.
With it being September and focus is on the road with Tulsa Tough it just makes sense to start your preparation for 2021 now. So we start that with fall foundation, into resistance training, on to base training (sweet spot) and then finally switching from base to race with intervals.
The best thing to do is count backwards from Tulsa Tough to now to see how much you can fit in. With quick count starting next week would leave you with 44 weeks. So plenty of time!
Our traditional offseason training plan is 32 weeks with fall foundation, 10 weeks resistance training program and sweet spot 1 , 2 and 3. Once you finish that you would want to do a 6 week interval plan, most likely our criterium plan. So that is 38 weeks of training. That would leave 6 weeks to fill.
So what to do with those 6 weeks. Could have a couple of options. Option one would be to start with just sweet spot 1, or just the first 6 weeks of the the 18 week sweet spot plan you have now. Since you CTL dropped so much with being sick and recovering might be beneficial to get a little base heading into the winter. The other option is after the offseason plan and before completing the interval plan you could do the sweet spot 4 plan. So a good mix of intensity with the Vo2 max intervals but still some base work with sweet spot training.
This is basically what you are trying to do right here!
