Hey there. Been rolling along in my SS 18-wk training plan. FTP has seemed to be set just right for all the workouts.
However, yesterday had the lovely SS Bursts 3x15 (5sec burst every 3 minutes). Got thru the first 15 minutes but it was tough. In the remaining 3-min SS intervals, I had to back pedal or stop for 30s to a minute on almost all of them to get through the workout. I did do all the bursts.
Curious, is this just a really hard workout (aka The Sh*t that will kill them) that I will get better at over time or is there a chance my FTP set too high?
It is a challenging workout! 45 minutes of sweet spot with 15 full gas burst. But you should be able to manage to hold sweet spot after each burst. Without seeing your data it’s hard to say if your FTP is set too high. I just believe you are not able to recover fast enough after a quick anaerobic efforts, yet. That time should come with more training and continuing with these type of burst efforts. That is the point of doing these. Pushing through the initial 30 seconds of pain to recover on the fly.
How did the shorter burst workouts go for you? This is just one of the longer burst workouts and it is a tough one. Look at the intensity factor of that first interval. Was it over your FTP (1.0 +) That makes it a difficult workout, but on track.
Sweet spot is 88 - 96% of your FTP so you don’t have to come back at 96%, you can roll at 88 - 90% if need be to continue the workout and get through it. Also if you are indoors that is going to make it even tougher than if you were outside.
Not related to Op’s question but why do you say it’s tougher indoors than outdoors? New to cycling so no idea why and genuinely interested in the answer to this.
Hopefully I just need to adapt to the training. Surprisingly, I was falling back into SS for 30-45s after the sprints usually but then losing it and having to rest.
The only other burst workouts so far have been a SS 4x8 (burst every 2-min) and an Endurance with 3 sprints (every 10-min). Those went fine. All the SS workouts up to now have gone fine. Occasionally there is some ramp on RPE/HR on last SS interval.
Is there a way to check the IF In TP on the first interval of it is subdivided into lapd for each 3-min SS and 5-sec sprint?
@brunocfeijao, if you look up “ Adjusting Your Functional Threshold Power for Indoor Riding” on Google, Training Peaks has an article on this that’s really informative.