Training Log: Build Me Up, Week 11

Welcome to my week 11 “Build Me Up” (BMU) training log.

About this Series:
I’m journaling my way weekly through Zwift’s “Build Me Up” training plan and calling out tough workouts, minor bugs, and Zwift feature suggestions along the way. For your reference, my FTP is set to 321W, as detected by Zwift’s ramp test at the start of the plan.
Past weeks: Week 1 // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4 // Week 5 // Week 6 // Week 7 // Week 8 // Week 9 // Week 10

This was the final “real” week of BMU, and it included more TSS than any other week, by a good margin. Heading into it, I just hoped to complete all the workouts (7 hours of workouts!) without dying.

Did I do it? Read on to find out…

Workout Journal – Week 11

Saturday, May 27: Aspire

See activity on Strava

The first of two big 2-hour workouts in BMU’s final hard week, “Aspire” was basically a lot of what I’d call “threshold over-unders” followed by a set of 1-minute VO2 surges:

5x 2 minutes 105% FTP, 2 minutes 88% FTP
5x 1-1/2 minutes 105% FTP, 2-1/2 minutes 88% FTP
5x 1 minute 105% FTP, 3 minutes 88% FTP
7x 1 minute 115% FTP, 1 minute 55% FTP

The first 20-minute over-under was the toughest, and I just had to focus and keep pushing to finish all three for a total of 60 minutes of hard work. Those final 7 VO2 surges were tough on tired legs, but I knocked them out, finishing the workout without needing to hit pause or lower my FTP bias. Winner!

The ride gave me new power bests for 58 minutes all the way up to 2 hours, so it was definitely a butt-kicker of a session!

Monday, May 29: Breakfast Returns

See activity on Strava

Last week’s sprinting workout wasn’t too bad, so I thought “Breakfast Returns” would be pretty doable as well. But I was wrong.

This was a classic set of 30/30 intervals, except the recovery wattage was at 70% FTP (225W for me), meaning I wasn’t getting the sort of recovery I’d get when pedaling super-easy between sprints like you’d do in most 30/30 sessions.

I’m not sure if it was just a bad day for me physically, or if it was the workout itself and those cursed “non-recovery” intervals. But as I progressed through these the heart rate kept creeping up. Finally, halfway through the final set of 10, I had to hit pause and spin for 3 minutes. And even after doing that, knocking out those last 5 was really tough!

Tuesday, May 30: Thew

See activity on Strava

TIL that “Thew” is a fancy word meaning “muscular strength”. This workout is basically a fancy VO2 session, with 6 blocks of this:

1 minute ramp from 115-140% FTP
1 minute recovery at 50% FTP
2 minutes at 115% FTP
3 minutes recovery at 65% FTP

The 1-minute ramp wasn’t too bad (especially since Zwift’s ramp algorithm means you never actually get to the top-end wattage stated for the interval). The 1-minute recovery was helpful but short enough that I wasn’t recovered heading into the 2-minute VO2 interval, which was the hardest part of the set.

This one had me close to the limit, but I held on and finished it with no cheating.

Wednesday, May 31: Ruckus

See activity on Strava

This 60-minute workout looked like the easiest one of the week, so I scheduled it the day before doing one the final tough 2-hour workout of week 11.

Ruckus was made up of two sets of the same intervals:

7x 2 minutes at FTP (320W) at a comfortable cadence, 1 minute 75% FTP (240W) out of the saddle
6x 2 minutes at FTP (320W) at a comfortable cadence, 1 minute 75% FTP (240W) out of the saddle

This was tougher than I thought it would be, but it was also easier than the other workouts for week 11. Was this because my legs were tired from the previous workouts, or because I underestimated the difficulty of this particular workout? Maybe a bit of both. Those standing intervals kept my heart rate from recovering, which meant it stayed up over threshold for a good portion of that final 6x block.

Thursday, June 1: Tenacity

See activity on Strava

And just like that, here I was: at the last real workout of BMU.

As it turned out, scheduling got a little crazy in the final days of week 11, because this happened:

That’s Grae Monica Vanderwall, our first grandchild, born on the morning of May 31! As you may (or may not) recall, one reason I began this Build Me Up journey in mid-March was that I knew I’d be a grandpa soon… and I wanted to be a fit grandpa.

I thought I might have to put off this one last workout of week 11, but then schedules changed and I was able to sneak it in before we hopped in the car to drive a few hours to see Grae and her parents.

This workout didn’t look as tough as the other 2-hour session (Aspire), but it certainly wasn’t easy either:

2x 30-minute Z3 blocks at 86% FTP (275W) with 200% FTP 5-second surges
2x blocks of 4 1-minute at VO2 (115% FTP, 370W) with 1 minute recovery

My legs were definitely feeling the accumulated work from the past few days, but the 275W was mercifully a bit lower than the regular sweet spot 290W, and I just kept turning the pedals over. The final VO2 surges were just a matter of keeping the cadence high and looking at that finish line arriving in the distance!

It was a huge mental load off to finish this workout before heading out to see baby Grae. That “mission accomplished” feeling never gets old!

Whine of the Week: Mixing FTP Test Types

It’s odd to me that Zwift has me doing the “full” FTP test (20-minute test) to wrap up the program in week 12, when I began the program with the ramp FTP test. Comparing the results of the two feels like a bit of an “apples to oranges” comparison, since it’s well-known that the ramp test tends to overstate power for riders with stronger sprint/short-term power like myself.

My guess is Zwift does it this way because it’s hard to properly pace the full test, so doing the ramp test gets people into the program easily with a semi-accurate FTP setting. (And by the end of BMU, you should be able to pace the full test quite nicely, having done so many intervals at or just above FTP).

But it feels like Zwift may be shooting themselves in the foot a bit with this approach, as many people will get a lower FTP result from the full test at the end of the program than they would from a ramp test. I wonder if many riders have taken that full test in the final week and were disappointed with the results.

So my plan is to do the full FTP test as prescribed but also a ramp test afterward to compare apples to apples. Stay tuned for those results.

Summing Up Week 11

This was the toughest week of the entire BMU program, no doubt. With a huge jump in TSS, and the accumulated fatigue of previous weeks already in my legs, I was intimidated heading into week 11. But I finished it (even if I had to hit pause for 3 minutes on Breakfast Returns)!

Week 1: 274 TSS
Week 2: 343 TSS
Week 3: 363 TSS
Week 4: 212 TSS
Week 5: 312 TSS
Week 6: 358 TSS
Week 7: 430 TSS
Week 8: 217 TSS
Week 9: 388 TSS
Week 10: 441 TSS
Week 11: 521 TSS

One to Keep, One to Throw Away

I think each week of BMU features a key “cornerstone workout” and another which doesn’t really need to be done, so I thought it might be useful to call those out each week, in case your schedule is tight. For week 11, here are my picks:

Key Workout – Breakfast Returns: It’s hard to pick a key workout for the week, but this is a strong 30/30 session that will push you to the limit (it sure did for me). 30/30s are a proven workout that fit perfectly into the final weeks of BMU.
Throw Away – Tenacity: I’m not saying this is a “bad” workout, and in fact, I almost didn’t pick a throw-away this week, because I think it’s a great goal to complete all 5 workouts in the final week. But if you had to skip one, I think Tenacity is the one that feels most like an easier repeat of another work (Aspire) from the same week.

Coming Up Next Week

Week 12 is the last week of the program, and consists of 3 easy workouts and an FTP test.

It’s odd to me that Zwift has me doing the “full” FTP test to wrap up the program, when I began with the ramp test. Comparing the results of the two feels like a bit of an “apples to oranges” comparison, since it’s well-known that the ramp test tends to overstate power for riders with stronger sprint/short-term power like myself.

So my plan is to do the full FTP test as prescribed but also a ramp test afterward to compare apples to apples. Stay tuned for those results.