Post VO2: rest and test decisions

You should have just done a “Rest and test” block. Time to make another decision on where to take your training.

In this block of work you have checked in once again on your fitness with some efforts - the ramp, 5-minute time trial, and hour of tempo. These are efforts you have already done at least once. Now you want to make a comparison against your past efforts.

Has one system changed and not the others?

Having just done a block of VO2 training our expectation would be that our VO2 system would have improved. Did this happen for you? Training doesn’t always affect us in the way we expect.

If you found that you were able to improve your efforts within the VO2 block, but that your testing efforts degraded, it is probably time to change your training approach. You should turn your attention back to your aerobic system. Here you will have to make a decision based on your level of fatigue:

Feeling tired? Then you can put in a two week block of endurance and co-ordination training. Coming off a VO2 block this will develop your aerobic system while allowing you to rest up.

Feeling ready to roll? Jump into the Tempo starter and plan on doing a couple of blocks of tempo training.

Making your decision

When making your decision as to how to proceed you need to consider more than just the testing numbers. You need to consider the broader training approach:

• Maximizing your aerobic system - What are the training zones

• Consistency - thinking through day-to-day, monthly and yearly timelines, managing your overall training load so that you never have to take a break because you have reached “burnout” https://www.sanschaine.com/post/burnout-what-s-in-your-bucket

• Training takes time - true training adaptations to become a better rider happen over a multi year timeline, patience is key

• The best athletes in the world don’t do hard training all the time, in fact it is mainly aerobic

Consistency and repeatability are the path to your continued development. We all want to push more watts, but that isn’t always the way to improvement. Carefully think about how costly doing some more hard training will be and consider whether a good aerobic block is the way to go.