mvenneta wrote:
grumpier.mike wrote:
Sounds too ambitious to me. You are riding 7 days a week and you have your recover rides at 60% of FTP, which I think puts you well into the endurance zone, not recovery. It is also only January. The 5x5@115% sounds pretty hard if you want to be going well still in August and VO2max is less important than threshold work for building FTP. I tend to just focus on quality because I don't do any crazy long stuff. I also figure I have enough years of riding to leave most of the garbage/recovery miles behind. If it were me I would drop Mon, Wed, Friday and maybe swim a bit. Tuesday would be 2x20@97% (hard but not as devastating as 105%). Thursday is the 60@88-92. Saturday is the hard day 5x5@105-110% and then cruise at 60% for endurance.
Random question. Why not do lots of 60 min Zwift races - on the flat course it’ll be almost all out for 60 mins. Otherwise you’ll get a max 20-25 min effort on the rest of the days.
Repeat as many times / week as your body can handle
That’s what I’ve been doing, but I’ve also plateaued a bit. It’s also a blast for me and I have so much fun
Is the above more effective?
If you race all year long, which I consider Zift races to mimic, you can hold maybe 90% of your potential all year long. You miss the build/recover/build/..taper/4-6 weeks of 100% potential.
The continuous anaerobic and neuromuscular efforts really do a lot of damage so it is hard to recover and there is the mental fatigue to deal with as well. (Religiously sticking to a training plan can also suck, so if you feel like throwing down on a group ride in January, go for it. Just don't make it the only thing you do).
There is a good article in Velo magazine this week on the same basic idea. Not a bad general read.