As a long time follower of your plans, I though the subscription would be an ideal step up for my training this year.
I’m intending to compete in the UCI GF in Whistler this year as my ‘A’ event.
I’ve purchased the weights+SS1,2,3 plans, with the GF plan tagged on the end ready for September.
I started the weights phase (which I’m still doing) but find that I’ve had to drop the Power phase in order to fit in the SS start, and still get the rest of the plan to line up.
My queries are:
Does my schedule (ATP) look correct?
There appears to be a dip in CTL from the finish of SS 3 and start of Fondo training. Is this correct?
Should I be doing any race specific intervals in August, in prep for the event?
This is a considerable investment for me, in both time and money, and I’d like to get it right.
You are doing it right and have set it up correctly! So what you are looking to do is build your CTL up till about SS3 / 6 weeks till your event. Then you do need to do intervals. Good thing about the Fondo plan is it does have interval training and you get threshold work. Also with the SS3 plan it is a good mix of aerobic and anaerobic work! So you get a bit of both worlds.
What are your club events that you have this spring and summer?
Also I see you have other events on your calendar as well. So the best thing to do is not training right though these with the the training plan is. The great thing about the coaching subscription is that every 4 weeks we can go through your plan and adjust based on your schedule. So as these come up lets go through your plan and make the proper adjustment so you are getting the most out of the training and events.
The other thing we can do is make sure you do have race specific intervals before the Fondo. But these would come more in the 6 week before the event. This is when you would benefit from them the most. I will have to look at the ride profile and get an idea of the demands of the ride. The Fondo plan does have efforts that fit for most, but we can even get more specific.
The one thing I did for you now is I put in your first field test the week of April 6th. This is 4 weeks after you finish your strength training and is the best time to perform one. There is one planned for the first week of May and we will take that out. So once you complete the field test which is in four weeks reply to this thread and lets go over your previous 4 weeks, look at your power test and discuss the next 4 weeks and make changes as needed. You don’t need to complete a field test every 4 weeks. We will probably want you to do another one 12 weeks after the first one. But there are other ways we can determine FTP without testing.
The rest of your first 4 weeks here looks pretty good. It’s a good start to the base building period. Going to slowly ramp up your CTL. Just let us know what your club events and especially that first KOM #3 event is. Maybe we should put in a specific workout the following weeks that would help but not interfere with the training.
Thanks for the in-depth reply. This is just what I’d hoped the Subscription would give me!
The Club events would be just training events that I’m happy to miss if the bigger picture dictates.
I add all the club events to my TP at the start of the year, so I know if I can swap out a race instead of the SS group ride (the effort is about the same!)
The KOM series starts too soon for me to compete this year, and the KOM #3 would probably be the only one I would have any fitness for. Again, I’m happy to miss this.
Great! Yeah so if the club events are basically just sweet spot group rides just roll into them as is! The only reason I mention maybe something different with the KOM series is sometimes its good to have these little test along the way. We can also do the same with one of the club events if it lines up. Basically treat it like the week of the Fondo so do a similar week this way you are use to that routine and see how that works. But we will discuss that in the next 4 week block when those start.
Just #FtFP and you will be rolling! Looking forward to seeing how the 4 weeks go for you.
You are just coming off the resistance training phase so your legs should be starting feeling much better on the bike. Less soreness and fatigue from the weights. You are actually just coming off your first rest week in a while so hopefully you got some good sleep and legs are feeling good. I see you posted they felt flat on Saturday which is surprising coming after the field test. I wouldn’t be surprised they felt flat but being the day after a field test is a bit more since that is such a big effort. Hopefully two solid days of training back to back helped with a little rest yesterday and today. Should be ready for the next couple of weeks of sweet spot training.
So the first thing I looked at was your performance manager chart. You have been doing an outstanding job building your fitness. This is the blue line. It is your CTL (chronic training load). We want to continue to see this rise as you go through the sweet spot plans. That is the purpose of these plans. To build that aerobic engine and give yourself a great base! You can see how it will steadily increase over the next several weeks with the blue dotted line which is based on you plan TSS.
The next thing looked at was your field test. So the first 10 minutes of this started really good! Right on track with a 277 watt average. The last 10 minutes you did seem to struggle a bit. So I was curious if maybe your FTP was a little lower now, not uncommon coming of the resistance phase, or if you were just having a bad day. It could be a mix of both. The focus on the resistance phase is building muscle and strength so you do very little to work on that maximal power effort. You have just started with the last 3 weeks of sweet spot work.
So here is a screenshot of your field test. Can see that first 10 minutes was really good. Then it got a bit inconsistent and power average was slightly lower.
But I still looked back at your sweet spot efforts to see if we should lower your FTP for the next few weeks. After looking at your sweet spot efforts I don’t believe we have to at all! You have been hitting your marks pretty easily and even on March 25th with the 3 x 12 minute sweet spot efforts you went above sweet spot and actually had a 12 minute effort, the last one, that was similar to this power test effort! I’m assuming you didn’t feel like you were full gas on this effort? So you may have just had a bad day this past week. Not a bad day, but not just a perfect one.
Here is a screen shot of your 3 x 12 minute sweet spot workout. You can see you did really great here and had some great power! You did 98, 100 and 102% of your FTP! So above your sweet spot zone and actually the second one matched this sweet spot effort and the third one went above! But don’t get use to doing that and going through your other efforts you did much better job staying in the sweet spot zone. It’s important to stay in the sweet spot zone so you receive all the benefits of sweet spot. If you go above with sweet spot it takes away all the benefits.
So you had another test day on the next regeneration week. There is no reason to do this one. You just completed one and we don’t need to test every 4 weeks. But lets put one in the following regeneration week which would be the first week of June. This will come after completing 12 weeks of sweet spot work. Here we should great place to match you previous best or even go above!
