IamSpartacus wrote:
Firstly thank you for coming on here and helping people out.
I’m mid season (Southern Hemisphere) doing mostly sprints.
I have done specialty plans to try and keep that power up and see that there is a lot of v02 stuff. Even on oly distance plans.
I’ll be honest and say that doing one a week every week through the season is hurting. His far I’m not having a great season either bike wise. My training in v02 is a bit hit and miss- some days I’m ok some days days it’s a hard effort and find myself pausing a workout or lowering the %.
For short course work would doing something like sweet spot base 1, where most work is 88-100% ftp be sound for sprints? Ie, am I doing myself a disservice by eliminating a v02 session a week? Just feeling a bit blurgh! At weekly high end stuff which I have done since August of this year. That feels like a lot of givens, mist, dade under my legs and I’m burning after 12+ weeks
It sounds like you are doing the Specialty Plans on repeat, is that correct? How long have you been doing this for and at what volume? It sounds like you may be dealing with a bit of fatigue and you may need to dial back your training a little bit, however, I would not recommend removing your VO2 max session.
For sprint distance triathlons, the VO2 max work is hugely beneficial for your race day performance. For the short bike leg seen in a sprint, VO2 max work is a huge asset that will help improve your FTP and your ability to maintain high percentages of that FTP for the short duration of your event.
If you regularly have issues with VO2, you can try reducing the intensity by 5% at the very beginning of the workout, and also extending the rest periods between intervals. What really matters for these workout is that you complete the work periods, so if you need an extra few minutes to be ready between intervals, that's totally okay.
If you do need to remove some volume, start by removing your easiest rides and runs from your routine and see if that has an improvement on your overall training and energy levels.
I hope this helps!
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