wacomme

I have a rest week coming up next week (3 week/1 week periodization), and I'm wanting to pump up my FTP for a 40K TT June 16th. Is there any benefit to doing three consecutive days of hard intervals (W, Th, F) with a rest day Saturday vs. alternating interval days? I'm also planning for a long endurance ride Sunday followed by a 2 x 20' set Monday before starting my easier week of training. My ride yesterday was a mix of 1 x 25' interval at 105% FTP and several VO2Max 5-6' hill climbs. I'm planning for 2 x 20' @ 100% FTP today, and tomorrow will be 5x5x5 for VO2Max training (teammate wants this workout for Friday).

I took Monday and Tuesday off (mostly due to training, but also work obligations) following a similar three day interval schedule. Yesterday I upped my avg. 20' wattage 10 watts, so the process seems to be working. I don't want to overdo it, but if my legs are thrashed come Monday evening, I can rest for two days followed by mostly recovery rides the remainder of the week. Then I can enter a peaking week followed by my race prep week for the race. This should give me time to recover and "peak" for the race.

Thoughts?

waterrockets 

When you say "hard" intervals, are you talking about threshold intervals that are shorter but over threshold, or are you talking about shorter duration VO2Max and AWC intervals?

I don't think I'd get much benefit from a 3rd consecutive day of threshold intervals, but have done some three day stints with threshold one day, VO2Max one day, then AWC the last day. Different systems though, and the last two are not well aligned with building threshold.

If you want to overstress before your rest week, with just threshold work, I'd just dial up two threshold workouts with an easy day between them, and bump power on those threshold workouts to near failure.

climber7

basically agree with what waterrockets said.

another thought, though. don't take two days completely off in a row unless work obligations absolutely demand it. i usually do one day completely off every couple of weeks, but otherwise i think active recovery is more effective. it can just be an hour easy or something - REALLY easy, not even endurance - but spinning a little is better than nothing.

...and i'll just add that if you feel like you need two days completely off every week or two, maybe the three days of intervals isn't such a great idea.

wacomme

I'm not familiar with the AWC acronym.

My idea is to have relatively short but intense workouts for three consecutive days. Yesterday was a combo of threshold and VO2Max efforts (push/pull FTP). Today is push FTP with 2 x 20' at FTP. Tomorrow (though probably backwards) is to pull FTP with 5x5x5 VO2Max efforts. I'm sure I can complete day 2 (today's) workout to completion, but VO2Max efforts tomorrow might be near impossible (don't know).

My thought is that all of these workouts will help improve FTP. Am I mistaken?

caloso

+1 to what WR said

caloso

What I would do is make today's ride longer and much easier. Maybe 70-80% of FTP.

wacomme

So, essentially, three hard intervals days of similar type doesn't reap the same improvement benefits (FTP increase) as alternating interval and easier days, correct?

caloso

That has been my experience.

Homebrew01

Might depend on your recovery. I did 3 hard days of intervals once. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Set me back about 2 weeks while I recovered .... but then I'm an old fart.

waterrockets 

Anaerobic work capacity: increased through 30-120" intervals clearly above VO2Max intensity.

Go here and look at rows 3, 4, and 5 of Table 1, then look at where the check marks are in columns 3, 4, and 5 of Table 2. There is threshold benefit to VO2Max workouts, but it's not the leader (the winners for VO2Max are hypertrophy of slow twitch muscle fibers and increased muscle capillarization). The other components of FTP are better served by tempo and threshold (and that's why sweet-spot training is effective).

wacomme

I'm old too. Perhaps three hard consecutive days isn't a good idea. I'll do a tempo ride today instead. Then intervals (5x5x5) tomorrow, easy day Saturday, endurance Sunday, 2 x 30' FTP Monday, then rest week.

Creatre

Everybody is a little different. I prefer days completely off the bike because it's not as taxing mentally and I have a hard time doing truly easy recovery rides. Recovery is unique to every person, gotta do what the body tells you to do.

waterrockets 

Very true.

FWIW, we have two national champions (recent and current) here in town. One was a guy who's coach published his national championship training plan, and the other is the coach who published the plan. The training plan had two consecutive days off the bike every week. No recovery riding, no bike, no cross training -- just days off.

HMF

But I'll tell ya, I never thought I could do what I'm doing now.

M: 2x20's
T: SST 40min
W: 2x20's
T: SST 40 minutes
more to come this weekend.

Just started this week, but it's Thursday and I feel great. Wednesday morning I felt like a train wreck, but I went out anyway because I've never pushed through it before, and I wanted to see what happened. I came back feeling better then when I left, and the next day I still felt good enough to go out for SST. I'm glad I went out Wednesday.

Next week my goal is to push SST time up to 1 hour and see what happens.

MDcatV

you can do 3 days of intervals targeted toward FTP development and be fine.

do it like this:

day 1, this is your highest intensity day. do something like the friel pacing workout (google it or search this forum) or 8x5' w 1' recovery at a pace above threshold but below vo2max intensity

day 2, 2x20s or 3x20s at ftp

day 3, do 12 (or more if you have time and can) x3' at ftp or just above/2' at 50% of your best ever 5' power, this is just a structured way of doing what everyone calls SST

also, there's nothing wrong with taking 2 days off the bike to recover. i know coaches who advocate it after a really intense build cycle.

mollusk

I think that this all depends on how much "base" is in the OP's legs. If it is enormous, he should be able to do it. If it is skimpy, he will hurt so bad that he needs at least a week off to recover.

wacomme

Hmm. May be I should go easy today, do the VO2Max work tomorrow, easy Saturday, then SST work Sunday and Monday. After all, my TT in 3.5 weeks is 40K.

During rest week I'll try to get in 2 SST efforts for 1 hour each in aero position, recovery the remaining days. Peaking week will probably see 3 SST/threshold efforts (1 hour) in aero. None of the hard efforts will be on consecutive days.

A plan?

wacomme

I have decent base.