I have 14 Vise Grips in Week 11 of my training plan.
Can I do 4hr zone 2 outdoor ride instead?
14 Vise Grips is MAP-focused. FF is upcoming in the following week. My goal is improving or sustaining my FTP (according to Half Monty latest FTP).
Any advice is welcome.
Good evening Sir! I wouldn’t hesitate to do it unless it is a beautiful day and outside riding is simply calling to you. The taper week looks pretty solid. Of course, if it is really concerning, you could just do it four times just to make sure you get a good suffering feeling out of it 
100% do 14 Vise Grips. Improving MAP will improve your FTP. The SUF Scientists have said precisely this. Also, as Sir @Daniel_Boren notes, the taper week is perfect as is.
A 4 hour Zone 2 outdoor ride (which sounds AWESOME by the way) may do wonders for your mental well being but I don’t think it will do anything for your FTP at this point.
Your Sunday ride is a zone 2 anyway, so id be tempted to ride outside on the Sunday instead. If that isn’t an option then it’s perfectly possible to do 14 vice grips outside. Do a warm up, write down the intervals (or put them on training peaks and send to your head unit) and do those outside. Once you’ve finished do some low zone 2 until you’re home. Just be careful of not doing too much that weekend. Whatever you choose at this point, it’s unlikely to have a massive impact on your FF result, unless you dig yourself into a really big hole by doing too much.
Thank you for your advices.
I will stick to 14 Vise Grips and Outskirt 1 on the training plan this weekend.
Hope the legs will not be over-cooked during FF next week,
As others have said it’ll be better to do 14 Vice Grips.
It’s placed in that final weekend before testing to ensure you get some hard efforts in but don’t overdo it the weekend before testing.
I would like to think that an 11 week training plan is not dependent upon one sole workout right at the end. Differently put, would I dramatically impact my goal event (a FF test, a race) by not completing one Focus workout?
If I was in @simplz position, and the 4 hour Z2 ride was a group ride with mates, I would likely do the outdoor ride on Saturday and do 14 Vise Grips on Sunday as Monday is rest day and Tuesday FF prep week starts. So Coach, to what extent would I be jeopardizing my FF test that is 7 days away with 2 of them rest days?
Riding outdoors and with mates would likely place me in a mentally stimulated better position than knowing it’s an inddoor weekend again, regardless of the weather, having the elements in my face is rejuvenating.
Gosh, done 14 vise grips today… deep-etched memory resurfaced how deep those grips were…
2nd 2-min-effort, the video froze at 1min30sec… i stopped and the video resumed in 3 seconds, got to go nuclear to get powers back up. unforgettable!
Overall feel: It felt good to keep those MAP numbers in check.
The Quads were certainly burning from the effort. Time for a big breakfast!
