After feeling unwell over the weekend and missing my Sunday ride which happened to be on my recovery week during my SS1 plan (basic).
I’m concerned looking ahead at this week 5 and still not feeling 100% that my plan has sweetspot workouts for Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.
This appears to be excessive even if I was on top form with the recent debates about sweetspots and over training.
Can anyone please put me at ease about the workload with the two weeks that I have left before doing sweeetspot Pt2 that I have planned.
Hi!
Are you not feeling 100% because of illness or due to fatigue? Hopefully after your recovery Monday you will be feeling better. If from fatigue you believe start the ride on Tuesday as sometimes that can be the hardest part. You might feel better as you open up.
Also make sure you add a rest week between the end of sweet spot 1 and the sweet spot 2 plan. Best thing would be to just repeat the last regeneration week you did.
Here are some tips to help you recovery as well which can really make the difference.
Hi Jake
I do use the whoop to monitor my recovery and ironically during my SS1 recovery week my actual whoop recovery data for the week was poor(weird) but I guess that was related to extra stress at work I was involved with.
On the Friday the whoop data was better but not great and on that same Friday I had a very hard work related day and still a tempo workout scheduled to do which I done later that night and found it tough but not impossible.
The next day I felt very fatigued with headaches and did nothing for two days.
Week 5 and 6 looks to be the hardest weeks of the training program and I suppose it should get tougher towards the end of the program and I’m worried that it’s going to be too much?
I should mention I’m 56 years old and I’ve noticed that as you get older the more recovery is needed.
For this week you could just substitute an easy zone 2 workout for 60 minutes on Tuesday. Give yourself an extra days of rest. Then do Tuesday / Wednesdays workouts on Wednesday and Thursday. Give yourself an extra day to recover. Sunday you can just do zone 2 as opposed to the sweet spot. Try that out and see how you feel.
You should be ok with the sweet spot basic plan as it would fit just about anyones needs, even a beginner and someone who is older.
The other thing is making sure your FTP is set properly. Sweet spot should feel like working but it shouldn’t leave you overly exhausted. That is one of the great benefits of sweet spot. Also remember even though the workouts have power targets, they are zones. So zone 2 can be anywhere between 55 - 75% of FTP and sweet spot 84 - 97% of your FTP. So if you need to back down the target but back it down to where you are in the zone you are good.
One more note is if you did your FTP test outdoors remember that power indoors is usually harder. We lose a lot of energy through heat and since riding indoors leaves us hotter we have a hard time doing the same power. On average you can expect a 5% drop in power.
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