You win some and you lose some...

So the Trainerroad 'Sustained Power' build plan is now complete. The final week was basically a rest week before I moved onto the next stage of the training program. For me, this is the 40km TT Specialty plan which should have me fully prepared for the spring Hardrider series. 

Tuesdays session kicked off with a rather painful set of 4 intervals for 10 mins each at FTP with 2 mins recovery. So basically 2/3rds of a 25 mile time trial at 4:00am... how I didn't vomit I have no idea. Somehow I not only managed to hold the vomit down, I managed to hit the required power output without any major issues.

Wednesday was a recovery day so incorporated accounted my normal commute.

Thursday was a different story... VO2 Max intervals at 115% of FTP, 4 min duration, 3 sets of 3, 3 mins recovery between intervals, 6 mins recovery between sets. This should have been my specialty. I have generally always been better at short high intensity intervals. I can do 380W for 8 mins and 290 for an hour. Holding 334W for 3 mins each should have been relatively achievable. For some reason... I failed miserably. I could barely hold the first set. Power was dropping off quickly. By the second set, I couldn't even hold FTP, let alone 115% of it! I cut the second set down to a weak 2 mins and missed the third set all together. I have never felt this rubbish before... 

I currently have great form following my rest week so it can't be down to lack of recovery or over reaching/over training. 

The psychological effect of this epic fail was brutal. Feeling lethargic and generally a bit low I failed to wake up in time for my Saturday workout. I snoozed the alarm a few times and even after waking, I continued to waste more time until I knew I had to get on with the DIY. Saturday turned into an unplanned rest day.

Delaying the inevitable... I started to really dread getting on the bike on Sunday morning. 

Rather than missing the Saturday workout (which is one of the key workouts in the week) I completed it on Sunday. Leaving Saturday as a rest day (instead of Monday) and pushing Sundays workout to Monday.

This workout was another killer of holding sustained power. I wasn't looking forward to it in the slightest. The failure of Thursday was playing on my mind and my motivation was low. Alarm went off... got up... had a coffee and got to work. 

4 x 12 mins intervals at 95-99% FTP... 

I'm not entirely sure how it happened... but I smashed it. As soon as I started I just felt strong. Rather than hitting 95% FTP I decided to up it to 100%... and for the final couple of mins of each interval I decided to add an extra level of pain and took it to 105% FTP.

So all in all, its been a bit of an odd week. An epic failure middle of the week and some great sustained power Tuesday and Sunday. The only thing I changed this week was my diet. Rather than eating carbs at lunch I have doubled my salad/vegetable intake. In an attempt to reduce calories but add valuable vitamins. I'm not going to blame the diet just yet as I am really enjoying it and really want it to work. I will keep it going through next week... if I have another repeat of it this week then I might have to re-think a few things.

This weeks training plan is going to be mixed up a bit at the end of the week. Sufferfest and holding the Tour of Sufferlandria. 9 days of workouts with double workouts on days of the weekend. Total Training Stress Score (TSS) of over 1100. My current training is approx 800 TSS. This is going to be a serious case of 'overreaching'. I will be keeping an eye on my Fitness/Freshness graph to ensure I taper/recover enough before hand and allow enough recovery time after. Its going to resemble something similar to a training camp. I will do a full write-up on it throughout the duration of the 'tour'.