Build Me Up support thread

General Discussion
121

Yeah, for me that was definitely part of the problem early on in BMU.

Trying to find a reasonable FTP has been a bit of a journey for me and it’s not yet done :slight_smile: I was using the ramp test to set FTP before I did the Beginner FTP Builder plan, and I had no issues with that plan, so I figured maybe the ramp test was a good indication for me - though I did know the FTP builder plan was very low intensity compared to BMU. Given that I did another FTP test ahead of BMU, that put me at 289, but I found the Red/Yellow/Orange Unicorn workouts to be too hard at that level for me (always died in the last interval set), so I signed up to intervals.icu which set my FTP at 276 based on past rides, and I’ve been using that since. I set it to 276 just prior to the Purple Unicorn and still had issues with it. So I’m not done tweaking, but this week so far everything seems a bit too easy, so I’m going to wait until I fail another workout before modifying it further.

I have looked at the last two weeks of the plan, and yes they look very painful.

When I get enough of a rest I will do a 20 min FTP test, but I don’t see a good opportunity to do that until I’m done with BMU at this point given my schedule. I won’t be good at pacing it either, so I figure I’ll need a few tries at it to get a good number out of it anyhow.

122

When your FTP was set right, what about your nutrition/hydration during this unit?

This gets more and more important as the training sessions get longer and more challanging.

123

I should have eaten , yes, and drink more. Definitely an overlooked aspect at least for me. I have good and tested nutrition practice in cycling outdoor but for some reason, maybe b/c of being at home, i don’t give such aspect the right importance.

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What is your weight?

125

I started BMU at about 79kg, am about 77kg now.

Nutrition is also likely one of my issues with the Unicorn workouts. I haven’t had many issues with any of the 60min workouts. For my first unicorn workout I had nothing but water, so that was probably bad. For the next I tried cutting up an apple, the next I tried some orange, then sliced grapes. I find it difficult to eat much when I’m trying to recover heart rate. So… Today for my 1:30 workout I decided to try drinking Gatorade instead of water, that seemed to work ok for me, but my stomach didn’t feel great after I chugged a bunch of it, so not sure if it’s the best option either.

If anyone has a great nutrition option that works for a difficult 1h30min workout I’m all ears :slight_smile:

Edit: I just realized I missed an opportunity to color code my nutrition experimentation to each of the unicorn colors - Red: Apple, Yellow: Banana, Orange: um… Orange, Purple: Grapes… Ah well.

126

Week 6 done. It wasn’t great, but that wasn’t BMU’s fault. I was skiing Sun/Mon/Tue, and threw my back out on Tuesday (bad enough that I am still walking sideways, and can’t fully sit up on the bike), then was left with 5 days and 5 workouts, so it was a bit of a pain.

This is where it would have been nice to be able to just pause a workout for a few days. Hopefully that ability is coming soon.

That said, this was the easiest week for me from a BMU perspective. For the first 4 workouts I felt I could have bumped up the difficulty, and I ended up bumping up the difficulty on the last one I did as a test (Uphill Battle) which wasn’t a problem for me.

Next week is Kirizuma, Cucumber, LOX, Spaded Sweetie, and Giza. LOX looked bad enough until I took a look at Mosaic and Threw… I’m not looking forward to the weeks following week 7, they all look brutal to me.

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I have issues with nutrition on the bike too. I find I’m not physically hungry and eating food is hard since my mouth drys up and I’m not actually hungry, but I have found it does help. I have found I’m ok with Gatorade, but take it as well as water. I drink it slowly and nearly always follow a swig of Gatorade with a swig of water.

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128

OK, week 7 “done” I put it in quotes because this one wasn’t pretty. David’s quote above is exactly how my week started. I felt great coming off week 6, even felt like it might be time to bump up the difficulty except for 15.9 in week 6 where I felt more would have been bad. Turns out with LOX more WAS bad. I got through 3 of the intervals but failed miserably halfway through the 4th of 5. Instead of doing something smart like turning ERG off and spinning lightly I took a quick break and tried to power through. I think that decision is what wrecked me because I had to do 5 workouts in 5 days given my schedule, so there was no rest day to be had at all. I don’t think I shook the fatigue at all.

Giza was ok, that was as close as I came to a rest day. I made it through spaded sweetie too, but that one was rough, it took all I had and I BARELY made it. I knew I had to do Kirizuma and Cucumber in the two days after Spaded Sweetie, but they both looked ok on paper to my overly enthusiastic eyes. Turns out they were not ok for me.

I died on Kirizuma in the middle of the third interval. Then had to take a rest and bump the difficulty down a bit before completing. Cucumber by all reasonable accounts should have been fine, but I think I just toasted my legs before it, so while I made it through the first set of intervals I was crushed after the hour mark and was in a world of pain in the last interval set, requiring rests a few times.

What I have figured out: the big difference in the 10 week and 12 week program is there is no “rest week” in week 8 for the 10 week program. So next week for me is week 8 but includes the painful workouts in week 9 of the 12 week program: Mosaic, Mélange, Circus, and Malevolent. Oh goody. That and I really want to try one of the category enforcement races next week too… hmm…

Considering bumping down my FTP for next week because seriously: How can I possibly complete Mosaic if I got wrecked on LOX? The first third of Mosaic is basically LOX.

129

Just began the program, did the last wo on week 2 earlier this evening, the Orange Unicorn. It was much easier than expected, so i rode on and ended up doing the 25 laps on Volcano flat.

Week 3 seems tough.

130

Holy crap folks. I kicked the crap out of Mosaic this week! I have no idea how I went from failing LOX to getting through Mosaic…? I had a day of rest before LOX, but I still died on the 4th of 5 VO2 pushes in LOX.

So… I was going to lower my FTP for Mosaic (since the first part is basically LOX so clearly I was going to fail) but decided to just see if I could get through the first interval set, then my plan was to lower my FTP through the rest once I failed that… When I didn’t fail it… I just kept going at the same difficulty… I felt I was going to collapse, and decided to focus on each section one at a time, and told myself I was going to go to failure. Then, somehow I made it through the second set of intervals, then who knows how, but I made it through the whole thing? I have no idea how given my performances last week. I felt like I was on some weird high after hitting the cooldown. Holy crap.

I tried to explain this victory to my wife but she did not get it, but it was the highlight of my week. So maybe someone here will… Ha :slight_smile:

The funny thing is when I sat on the bike I thought it was a 90 min workout, I didn’t know it was 2 hours until about 20 mins into it…

Anyhow, this week was my best week so far, I did have a problem on Circus, I had to drop the difficulty by 2% after the first interval, and failed on the peak of the very last interval, had to take a very short break and then finished it right away.

Malevolent however was one that I somehow managed to fight through. After the first spike I was convinced I would need to drop the difficulty, but I just kept promising myself I would do one more section, and somehow got to the end. It wasn’t pretty, I didn’t hit all the cadence targets, but I did make it… somehow.

Mélange felt like a Z1 workout in comparison to Mosaic, so I was thrilled with Mélange.

So nailed malevolent and mosaic, that’s success to me.

Anyhow, next week looks like a serious pain: Serrated, Exigent, Baffling Beau, Exemplar, and Potpourri.

Guess it doesn’t look as bad as the week after next… Wish me luck.

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131

Hi all,
Today I did the last workout of week 3 and am now looking forward to a kinder weak 4.
However, I also today participated in a race, and as a result Zwift decided to up my FTP with about 10% (which I think is really good after three weeks.).

So my question is; should I stick with the new FTP for the BMU plan or go back to the one I was on before the race?

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How did you feel on week 3’s Yellow Unicorn, and how accurate do you think your initial FTP was when you started? If you got through Yellow Unicorn no problems then you might be fine to take the FTP increase, if you struggled on Yellow Unicorn I would leave it as is. Purple Unicorn this week is the ride that will really test you in week 4, so if you bump it and still make it through purple unicorn you are good to go in my opinion.

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133

Hi Aaron,
Week 3 felt really good, challenging at times, but never close to too much. The Yellow Unicorn wasn’t easy, at all… but I could have put in more effort if required. For The Amalgam I actually upped my FTP with a couple of percent.
My starting FTP was based on an FTP Xert gave me through their platform. It was higher (about at it’s current value) at the end of last year, but then Covid hit me and I was away from the bike for a couple of months.
I’ll try to work with the current FTP (which btw is the same as intervals.icu comes up with) as I assume it’s not really a bad thing to lower it a bit if the sessions become too hard. And from what I understand, the weeks become harder after this week (4).

Thanks a lot for your input!

//Matt

134

Aaron,
Do you feel your pedalling technique has improved? Just as you, I had a horrible time trying to to the one-legged drills the first time out. I mean really, it was embarrassing.
My second try will be later this week, and I don’t assume it will be any easier or feel more natural.

//Matt

135

Not sure how I missed your second question. Yes, actually, in the second set of pedaling drills I did I was much better at not clunking all over the place in the single leg drills. I didn’t do anything outside of the plan to work on it or anything like that, so I’m not actually sure why it was better, but I’ll take it :slight_smile:

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136

@Aaron, I should have tagged you in my reply, as in this case. :slight_smile:

That’s great to hear! I did my second drills yesterday, and if I’m being optimistic it felt slightly better, but on one side the clunking was ever so present, on pretty much every revolution.
I’m considering throwing in some drills every now and then to improve my technique.

On the other hand, I talked to my bike fitter (who now works with a pro team on the tour here in Europe) told me to just forget about any special drills and just ride. :open_mouth:

//Matt

137

Hello Folks - late to the party here since I’m at the tail end of Week 9. I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one finding the Unicorn series particularly challenging, as are the VO2Max efforts in weeks 5-7.
I had to drop down to 97% on Mosaic, and even lower to 90% to get through Circus… mostly because a 52 year old male should probably not be seeing a 199 heart rate. More proof that results will vary on a person-by-person basis.

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Pretty sure my entire body would be seeing the floor before I’d be hitting 199 HR :slight_smile:

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Oh, and I forgot, welcome to the thread @Leonidas_IceBear_Po , I’m also hurting on any of the VO2 Max workouts, and I have Serrated tomorrow, so I will probably be having nightmares about it tonight and also will probably find a lot of excuses to procrastinate the start of it tomorrow too.

On a positive note I personally found Baffling Beau (coming up in your next week) a bit better than Circus. Circus was a pain!

140

Thanks @SeattleSauve - I hope you survive Serrated in one piece.

Malevolent certainly lives up to its name. Is it insanity for me to hope that my experience with these workouts will be different than what everyone else is saying on the forum? :crazy_face:

I had to step it down to 87% on the final 2 intervals when it became obvious I could not hold the prescribed 90% FTP “recovery” power anymore. I suspect I am flirting with Overtraining since:

  1. My perceived exertion is getting harder
  2. General fatigue off the bike that never really goes away
  3. Motivation is waning somewhat
  4. Heart Rates over 190 are a constant worry for me on training sessions
  5. Wife has commented that I am getting grumpy with the family recently.

This was the last of the 4 training sessions this week and I get Friday, Saturday and Sunday for a social recovery ride or two… hopefully I can get my spirits up for the next big session on Monday. Only a couple of weeks left!