Mark Cardinale's Micro Thread

Mark Cardinale

Hi Coach P.

I want to get your thoughts on a hack to the GF plan.

A little background….Finished the november out season and then did swim camp and jumped into week 5 of the GF plan.  I'm now finishing up week 6.  In the GF plan both the Tuesday/Thursday bike workouts are both VO2, leaving the only FTP bike sessions on saturday.  During today's bike i really struggled with the FTP part of the ride.  I feel like i burt a lot of matches on the FTP session and i struggled to maintain my watts on VO2 and ABP.  I'm wondering if i've lost some FTP fitness because i haven't really done any hard FTP work since i retested in week 14 of the OS and hit my all time high FTP.  After that it was on to swim camp and then GF, where i'm not really doing any FTP work except on saturday.  What i'm thinking is to replace the tuesday VO2 session with FTP work like 2 x 15min or 2 x 20min.  That leaves me the VO2 session on Thursday and then the combo FTP/VO2 on saturday.  Does that make sense or do you have any other suggestions?  Thanks!

Coach Patrick

Mark, thanks for checking in. My question to you is where is the "gap" you are feeling. IOW, are you struggling because you aren't fit enough to do the work you WANT to do or simply because the plan has you tired? Let's not forget also that the point of SC is to have you recover (you will lose a bit of fitness here, but that's okay) and the GetFast plan is to give you a different type of stimulus than the OS.

Bear with me here...when you exited OS, you had an FTP. What % of that number are you riding right now? If you exited with a 240 FTP and are riding the FTP work at 220-240, consistently, then you are fine (up to a 10% range). Anything larger than a 10% delta is sustainable FTP power now vs OS exit amount will require some modification.

Let me know!

Mark Cardinale

Thanks for the reply, Coach P!

I don't think i'm feeling general tiredness.  I got 8+ hours of sleep prior to doing my saturday ride and on friday all i did was swim so i feel i came into saturday well rested.  Also i swam 3000M today before doing today's run and i nailed my numbers and extended my run to the prescribed 85min and felt great.  So if it's general tiredness, i'm not feeling it on the swim or the run.

In terms of specifics, on my ride last saturday (on the trainer) for the FTP segments i finished with an IF of .95 and .94 (FTP 255) which is within the 10% range you mentioned in your reply.  However, it felt like i really had to dig deep to meet those numbers.  Almost like FTP testing deep and because of that effort i felt very spent by the time i got to the VO2 and ABP segments.  Because i had to work so hard to meet my FTP numbers, that's why i'm wondering if i should reintroduce some more FTP work, or is a slight dip in FTP to be expected given the different focus of GF as you mentioned in your reply.  Or, i could be entirely over thinking things

thanks as always for your advice!

 

Coach Patrick

Mark, I think that you can continue...what we are seeing here is a very specific dip...not across all sports and not affecting your rest or regular training cycle (great run the day after). When I see that stuff start to bleed into other areas of your life / training that's when the red "Do Not Train" flags come out....so let's continue onwards for now!!!!

Mark Cardinale

Hey Coach, P.!  Congrats again on your dominating performance at IMTX!

 Question for you on how to structure my next 10 days.

 I just started camp week (wk15) in my build for IM Boulder on August 2^nd.  On Saturday June 27^th I will be traveling with my family to western NY to visit the in-laws.  I will be there for 8 days coming back to Colorado on Sunday, July 5^th.  I will be traveling with my bike and with it being my in-laws I will have the freedom and the ability to train a fair amount.

 For this week I will stay on plan through Wednesday the 24th.  Then I’m thinking of doing a long run on Thursday.  Doing my RR swim on Friday.  Saturday will be a travel day.  From Sunday, June 29^th through Saturday July 4^th is where I will be in western NY and where I would like to do some big bike volume, something like 2 days back to back, around 100miles each day and possibly a brick after one or both.  Where I could use your advice is how best to structure the days from 6/29-7/4.  I will have access to a pool as well.   If you need more info, please let me know, otherwise, thanks in advance for your input!

Coach Patrick

Mark, forget me, congrats to you!!! Great race! I like where your head is at for the travel time and Western NY is great riding (apart from the convicts). I am not really worried about bricking off these bikes...you run well and I'd rather you get in a good long run. Think Tues / Wed as bike, Thurs as your long run...Monday and Friday swim...Saturday what you want before Sunday off to travel home.

Honestly I'd like 2 x 6 hour rides (or 100, whatever comes first) where the last 1 to 1.5 hours is pretty solid effort...so start smart, fuel well and finish strong. I'd recommend not too epic of a ride....so you can loop it as needed, etc. Feel free to post the route if you want...but I think you are in a great place...hell, if you just rode 50 miles a day and put in 300 ish that wouldn't hurt you either (but I dont want them to become out-laws either!).



Let me know what you think!

~ Patrick

Mark Cardinale

Thanks for the quick reply, Coach P.!  It's crazy but i've actually thought about the the 2 escapee's because they were most recently reported in the Allegheny area where i'll be riding. 

Anyway, i like the idea of the 2x100mile/6hr rides.  This past weekend i did 107 on saturday and about 66 on sunday.  I was pretty gassed during the last hour of my saturday ride - partly because i covered 6000+ feet of elevation gain and partly because i think i overrode early on during the ride.  I finished my saturday ride with an IF of .739.  Sunday i ended up riding .766 on much easier terrain but it was a challenging ride simply because of the fatigue i was carrying from saturday.

The moral of the story is, that i think i will benefit more from riding long 2 days in a row with an emphasis on making my last hour of day 1, my best hour and making day 2 as solid as possible.  Also, as you mention, i think this approach has less family impact than trying to squeeze in 5 or 6, 50 milers.

Thanks again!

Coach Patrick

Nice...your lessons learned are syncing up with what you need to do. Now the only other thing to consider on that tough Sat ride is the fueling as well. Don't hesitate to up the early calories (esp fluid) worst thing that can happen is that you have to pee!