This is how a couple of the Fascat plans I’ve used in the past were laid out, pretty effective and fun to follow as it allows for flexibility at the weekend if you want to do a group ride or a practice event.
That seems like a red flag to me. 400 tss is a big load and unless tour ctl is like 200, that should have some serious impact
It’s all just relative to what you are doing. With a steady dose of 1000+ TSS weeks, you might only have a CTL in the 130’s (because rest weeks keep it down). But if your body is adapted to those 1000+ weeks, a 400 TSS day isn’t going to leave you wrecked (depending on the nature on the ride). When I’m building for Unbound, I’m typically doing 3 days a week that are 300+ TSS. Throwing a 400 tss day in is bigger than typical (and would trigger yellow day), but it’s not creating any “serious impact”. I did trigger a red day last sunday after a ~360 TSS day, but that’s because I basically took a couple very easy weeks off after Unbound (dropping CTL into the low 100’s). I’m pretty sure that was my only red day of the year besides the day after Unbound.
It’s certainly possible. I played with plan builder early in the season to see if it could support a high volume plan on 4-5 days per week. My approach was to double up workouts on Tues/Thurs (intervals + endurance). Obviously, those days can be done without actually splitting the workouts (just do the endurance work after completing the intervals). I can’t remember where the total weekly hours ended up, but it was over 15 hours per week.
Get faster on 10 hours
Get even faster on 15 hours.
During an ultra endurance event you will be clocking that up, and more, day after day after day. Sure it has an impact, but does not prevent you doing same again the next day. It is all relative to what you have built up to, and adapted to. Plus whether you are slow twitch or fast twitch dominant matters, with it taking a lot more out of the latter.
Yes.
Although since I have to spend 6~8 hours/week commuting and running errands on my bike (mostly in Z2), I instead opt for 3 TR-scheduled workouts per week of 1 + 1 + 2 hours in total.
That’s assuming you can handle 1,000+ TSS weeks on the regular and recover. If you can, kudos. I mean it. But few people can.
… provided you can recover. That’s the bit that’s almost always forgotten. Many people with regular jobs cannot handle 10–15 hours/week of structured training (≠ riding).
Unless working stupid amounts of overtime, or early days in a start up then work takes up less than 25% of your weekly hours. Eat and drink well, sleep well and you will recover. The ones not recovering are often working lots of overtime, on their phone, or answering work messages out of hours. Plenty of people in regular jobs can thrive on it, if they have their work / life balanced appropriately for it. All depends where you focus your time, and how much you allocate to each. If you haven’t set appropriate boundaries with your work colleagues, agree thst can eat into your time.
Sure many cannot, but many can, and a fair few more probably could if it was a priority and they cut out other non productive distractions.
Plus you have to remember the amount of high intensity does not increase in proportion to hours increased. Try and scale 5 hours built on high intensity to 15 hours built on high intensity and sure you are going to run into problems. Just as scaling your 100m pace to a marathon does not work. You need to slow it down…
Plus remember the context here. The OP wants to ride an ultra long event. They are not going to perform well if their every day stresses mean they cannot recover from more than 5 hours of training a week.
I am bummed that I pay for a training program to make me faster, yet all it does is give me 10-12 hour weeks. I finally just gave up on “following the plan” and went rogue scheduling longer weekend rides and have yet to hit a red day. However, the plan keeps giving me 10-12 hour weeks going forward. It’s kinda frustrating that it sees I can handle multiple weeks of higher volume without actually being smart enough to adapt the weekly volume (yes, I have dynamic endurance turned on)
at this point, it feels like they are actively trying to limit weekly time in order to stay true to the tag line of getting fast on 10 (or less) hours per week. I call it paid de-training.
I agree that it’s going to be tough for many due to other priorities in their lives, but I don’t think it’s a physiological limit in most cases. I’m a 57 year old dude without any special genetic talent and I can handle consistent 1000+ TSS weeks without getting beat down. And there is weight training and long hikes on top of that. I’ve got the luxury of being retired though, so pretty easy to be diligent on recovery and nutrition compared to when I was younger. I do think a lot of the dialog around training limits for masters athletes is a bit overblown and too conservative. My personal experience is that too much intensity can leave more of a mark (compared to my younger self), but the limits on overall training volume can be quite high as long as recovery is respected and the volume is built gradually. I try to load 80%+ of my TSS into 3 training days per week (which also includes all my intensity), that gives me plenty of really easy/rest days each week. For me, that works better than spreading things out more evenly over 4-6 days of training. Again, I know most people have life conflicts that don’t allow 3 big days per week, but it’s an approach that works well for me and it’s probably an approach most could handle physiologically if they had the time and desire to sit on the bike that much.
I’m not doing quite the TSS volume you are, but same approach for me.
I did ~11 out of about 16.5 hours last week on Saturday and Sunday. And then a two hour sweet spot workout on Wednesday - that added up to 84% of my TSS on those 3 days. One rest day and the other 3 days easier and short (60-90 min).
(48 y/o and full time desk job here)
Many people do far too much intensity and ride their easy rides too hard. 10-15+ hours of structure is doable if you have the time for it.
Given your age, am I correct in assuming you also don’t have young kids either? Then you’d lack the two most serious causes of life stress that most of us have. You think it is fair to compare your ability to recover from long rides compared to e. g. a father or a mother with 2 or 3 young kids?
This is very myopic. Some people have kids, a spouse they’d like to stay married to, family obligations. You may have young kids to wet their bed at 3:30 am and you need to change the sheets.
At times they have a sick loved one they need to take care of — like I am doing now. During my wife’s treatment body told me to slow down by getting an overuse injury (my weak right knee). Another sign is that I’d get sick very easily.
Plus, some people like their high-powered jobs 
I have never done ultra events, but before I had kids, I have regularly done 12±hour tours in the saddle, mostly on my mountain bike. Think 90 km and 3,500 m of climbing in the alps, offroad. Back then I didn’t train at all, I just rode my bike a lot. (Boy, was I clueless, what would I give to introduce my younger self to structured training!)
Even with minimal training I know I could spend that long in the saddle, because I know what I need to look out for, how much to eat and drink, what layers to pack, etc.
Many as in most? (Just checking.)
If I were to design a training plan for 8, 12 or 15 hours, the amount of hard intervals would more or less stay the same.
It depends.
If one is struggling to recover but has the time available then they are over doing it somewhere. That could be too many hard sessions, or too hard easy sessions.
My point was that you can do 10-15 or more hours of structure, even with a stressful job/life etc as long as you have the time availability.
You might have to reduce the number of hard sessions or adjust other factors in training but it can definitely be done.
I still think this ignores that practically overdoing it need not manifest itself through fatigue. Like I wrote, when I overextend myself, I’m prone to sickness and I stay sick for longer. It isn’t as neat as “It fits into my schedule.”
I think most people are able to train 10–15 hours per week the same way they could theoretically have a six pack.
Yeah, my kids are well out of college and I didn’t train/ride near as much when they were younger. It’s all about priorities and tradeoffs, it’s almost always better to prioritize being a parent/spouse/etc. vs. trying to be an elite athlete. I was just pointing out that it’s seldom a physiological training limit that amateurs are hitting, it’s that they choose (smartly) to prioritize other things. Even in my retirement with time for heavy training during the season, I choose to shut things down by early August and chill most of the rest of the year and do a bunch of non-cycling activities and travel. I could definitely burn myself out mentally and physically if I tried to train/race seriously year around.
I’d say you are hitting your physical limit when you can’t recover due to other life stresses. I agree that more energy could be spent on training if you remove those. But at least speaking for myself, I have been hitting the boundaries of my physiology given the other things I needed to deal with.
Cutting back on training a little made me less prone to be sick and allowed me to be more consistent. Last season was my second-best, despite a new job and having spent less time on the bike than during my all-time best season. One key factor was less unwanted training interruptions due to illness. This is in my mind whenever people suggest “to train more.”
Yeah, touring does not even touch on what you put yourself through in ultras. Completely different beasts. Just as you wouldn’t compare riding round a town centre with a crit.
You are playing the game of adding more constraints that were not in your original post. Sure add enough constraints and at some point you won’t even manage 5 hours of training. But not all married working people have those constraints, and can manage the 15 hours of training.
We are not fundamentally disagreeing, but you have a regular job is not a sufficient constraint on its own.
I mean if you are getting sick and staying sick due to training stress I would argue that is more of a product of intensity and less of the total volume of training.
As I said in the rest of that comment you might need to adjust the intensity of the rising but it can still be structured.