Hi. Curious on some thoughts on training plans for someone with a large amount of weekday training availability.
Essentially I have a trainer and my WFH basically means I can ride whenever/however much I want while I work. My setup is well dialed for ergo and usability with the bike.
Given that I’ve got (at most) 30 hours of Monday to Friday (plus some weekend time), what might be the best use of that time. Obviously stacking 30 hour weeks is not the plan, but how could this time be used efficiently, specifically for the base phase training and improving fitness.
The custom plan builder seems to really want to push sweet spot + threshold plans, but I think that it’s geared towards lower volume (sub 8 hour) general usage. My current plan using this is pretty much that combo of workouts (with endurance too).
Would longer low intensity endurance rides be better or just keep the plan builder at the current volume be ideal.
Rough plan is just to get some great fitness and maybe race next year. Have training experience so can handle reasonable volume. In the 35+ age range.
In running, all the fast people do doubles or triples. The theory being that getting an aerobic stimulus 2 or 3 times per day several days per week is beneficial.
I completely understand that in cycling tradition, the top people do 4-5-6 hour rides. I’ve heard some cycling coaches say that volume is volume and even easy bike commute miles add up to increased performance over time.
if I were work from home like you describe I’d try and implement double and or triple days several days per week to increase volume. I’d keep the number of interval sessions where they are.
Personally, I don’t like being on a trainer for 2+ hours and I would find 3 hours impossible. But, 45-60 minutes 2-3x per day would work for me. I’m actually going to try something like this next winter for base and build and see where I get.
I have searched for studies on high frequency training and pretty much came up short. 2x1hr per day versus 1x2hr versus 3x40 minutes would be interesting!
Here’s and approach I’ve used with some success - Let plan builder continue to serve up a training plan and follow it for your interval workouts. And then use whatever additional time you have to load on endurance/Z2 work (no need to create or follow workouts for this, just do the work and upload it). You’ll have to manage the volume/ramp. Don’t go from current load to 25 hours per week immediately, but ramp up as you can still hit your interval sessions and recover. On interval days, preferably knock out the intervals before loading on Z2 work (at least to start). At that point, you are using TR to manage your interval progression and you are basically in charge of your overall training load. It’s an approach I’ve been using for a number of years and I like the mix of structure for intervals and less structure for endurance work. I use intervals.icu to help manage my overall training stress (it looks at TR workouts and all other rides as well). You can also try to alter your TR plan to incorporate all the additional time you have to train, but I personally find it easier to just manage that outside TR and then rely on TR for the interval work. It really just depends on how much you want to manage your own training and get into the details. TR will consider all the “non-TR” work in the Red/Green/Yellow alerts and in AIFTP as long as you upload them, so those features continue to be useful tools.
Given that you also have a good training history, adding Zone 2 to your TR custom plan as you see fit can be a great way to add volume without risking overdoing it, plus you’ll have our fatigue management system’s guidance as well. Following your structured workouts (intervals) will ensure that you’re training in a way that allows for repetition of stimulus, recovery, and adaptation.
Thanks for the suggestions! I like the idea of adding the lower intensity work and letting the plan builder do its thing. I usually keep Sunday as an off day so the double up might be a nice fit.
I suspect TR will serve up lots of yellow and red days as the volume gets slowly increased over time, but that’s not a bad thing in moderation :). My plan was to add one ride every two to three weeks and see how the volume feels.
