Thank you @Coach.Mac.C for that much needed and appreciated response.
It is great to hear that GvA and the Minions actually want to keep us around in order to ensure that we are able to suffer for the right reasons well into the future!
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This is a fine choice, of course. BUT, I wish that the SUF team was more communicative, earlier, about this change. I’m training for a mid-May event and built the early portion of my training intensity/volume around the ToS prep plan (and the ToS), based on the ToS prep plan characteristics as they have been for the last few years. Now, having recently realized the change and quantitativley assessed the reductions between 2020 and 2021, I’m behind in my training. Very disappointing.
Well I was losing fitness so switched away from this plan
As a MD I’m not so happy about the idea that SUF, without asking me, is decreasing my training to protect me from Covid-19 (I’ve had the infection and I’m getting vaccinated so I really don’t need that help). SUF is responsible for my fitness and I am responsible for my own health!
In the future I expect SUF to let me decide the level of intensity of my training, thank you.
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Hi, @Nico . Welcome to the forum.
I understand that a person with your kind of knowledge can make a more informed decision but please keep in mind that SUF caters to all kinds of people. Me included, and sometimes I need a bit of protection from myself. 
The prep plan is available for anybody to choose, if they like. It shows your planned workouts before selecting to apply it to your calendar. There are plenty of other great plans with more volume or intensity available. You can always pick whatever you like.
I always felt the Sufferfest Team was very straight forward when it came to the expectations of this years tour. Different people have different tastes, I guess, and that’s very fine.
This thread alone should give some great insights on how to scale up the intensity, if you desire. Otherwise there is always the option to ask here in the forum, the minions or even get a customized plan from the SUF coaches.
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We understood that the tour was dialed back but there was no mention that the prep plan was also reduced.
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Again I want to point out that the primary difference is low-intensity volume, in that last year’s plans had higher volume weeks because 70% of the sessions were at reduced intensities.
That being said I apologize if some of you feel you been done a disservice for the start of your 2021 training. What I can say is that you have been doing high-quality training for the last 3.5 weeks, albeit with less volume than you would have happed.
For those on the advanced plan looking to turn things up in the final 10 days before backing off for the tour, here would be my suggestions (and I’m not saying anyone explicitly should or needs to do this, and it might be too much, but you’ll have to judge that for yourself)
1/29 - replace Cash Register with Who Dares
1/30 add Open 30 before Chasing Legends
1/31 replace Half the Road with ITSLA with FTP reduced to 70% and MAP down to 65%
2/1 ride NoVid Recovery Spin
2/2 Replace The Frozen Road with Open 45
2/3 ride The Frozen Road
2/5 replace GCN Ready Set Go with NoVid Cadence Drills
2/6 replace Open 60 with Half the Road
then keep the rest as is.
Again, I wouldn’t say this extra work is necessary to get a large fitness boost from the plan and especially the ToS (when you do more stages at or near 100% being a little fresher). You can make all these swaps or just a handful. At this point I will leave that up to you as individuals.
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Thank you @Coach.Mac.C for making a suggestion catering for those who feel the need to crank it up a notch for the last ten days.
However, although a few workouts are similar, the suggested changes are to the advanced plan applied with the «no recent tests»-option. Those of us with fresh FF numbers have a plan that differs slightly. That said, I am sure we will be able to adjust ourselves in a similar manner if talking a closer look at your suggestion and comparing it to our plan 
Thanks @Coach.Mac.C for some guidance here. Some may not care much about TSS per week or time per week, but some do. Perhaps this is better directed to the ‘feature request’ thread, but I would appreciate some weekly summary info right on the calendar; maybe this could be toggled on/off by the user.
What is ITSLA? It Seemed Like Thin Air? ISLTA?
Correctamundo.
I’m probably in the minority here. I’m actually finding the prep plan to be “just about right”.
First a little background. At the end of September I was completely drained. Job loss. Chronic low grade sinus infection. Competed in a 100 mile MTB race over the summer and a 12 hour solo MTB race in September. Completely drained. Internal motivation tanked.
I did the XC prep plan Oct - Dec. it was lower volume than what I had been doing and felt really good. Got the sinus infection under control. FF at end. Huge increase in NM power! Went from Rouler to Sprinter with repeated efforts weakness.
I’m doing the intermediate prep plan which seems to be using my NM improvements to help with the repeated efforts. Based on what the stages are, this is exactly what I need.
I guess that is the challenge of “out of the box” plans - what might be right for one person may be too much or too little for another.
I’m hoping in the future the SUF/Wahoo team can leverage AI to give us even better + adaptive plans based on our goals.
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With the pandemic, I have no races on the horizon and I’ve also lost a bunch of fitness due to injury, holidays, and non-bike stressors. So, the intermediate plan is just right for me. At initial glance the plan seemed a bit too easy, but now that i’m in it and taking harder looks at the actual workouts, I’m finding them plenty difficult. Often I expect the inspiration and no-vid workouts to be close to recovery workouts, but looks can often be deceiving.
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Sounds like we had similar struggles over the last 6 months.
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One thing I’ve definitely noticed is that even with the reduced volume, I’ve been able to crush workouts that I normally struggle with. The quote from coach Sir Mac is an indication that perhaps I’ve put too much emphasis on driving my CTL higher.
In reality what matters is what I’m able to do while riding, not what some chart is telling me. There’s more on the issues with TSS here, also by Sir Mac.
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@Sir_Brian_M There is also a similar article that Mac wrote:
What IF and TSS Mean in a 4DP World
In general I just follow the plan. I was using intervals.icu to track training stress but found that except for the occasion where I went harder on an outside ride when I was supposed to take it easy or I added some extra rides, I stayed pretty close to where I was supposed to be.
Something must be amiss with your setup. When I follow an Advanced Road plan with my 4DP dialed in so that I can just barely get through The Shovel, my CTL number typically gravitates to a number around 58.
My view is that CTL underestimates the fatigue impact of HIIT. When I do high volume training, I get up over CTL 80 with little perceived fatigue. It just takes a lot of time out of my schedule. To get that high a CTL with HIIT I would have to do Nine Hammers every day, 7 days a week, which is clearly impossible. For the off season, I sometimes focus more on volume and cut down on craziness like Violator. That gets my CTL high, and then I can better withstand the onslaught of The SUF’s HIIT training as race season approaches.
That’s a fascinating article there from TrainingPeaks. Thanks for that. After reading it, I’m impressed again with how both the TSS number and its meaning can diverge from expectations. In that article, I would be a “Rider A”. When I do Violator, I actually end up with an IF of above 1.2, because my sprint is extremely high relative to my FTP. So in theory, if I wanted to raise a lot of TSS without overtraining, I would focus on sprints and openers. But it actually doesn’t work that way at all. Sure, I can do those very short intervals well, but I feel the effects of those sessions the next day much more than I do from long endurance rides or even SS threshold work like Team Scream.
So, the upshot is that CTL is probably best used just as a measure of your base fitness. And base fitness is an indication of how much training you can withstand in the next training block without breaking down, and how you would fare on longer, hilly classic-style road races when you peak. On the other hand, if all you want to do is 45-minute crits, then you should probably basically ignore LSD and CTL, and just follow the SUF Advanced Road plan to the letter–especially if you don’t have a lot of free time in your daily schedule.
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How high your CTL can get during a training block depends on where you are starting from. Also I am on the TOS plan which is a 6 week plan, so it has half the available time to build fitness.