I love your app and have been a subscriber for several years. I’m 54 years old and train an average of 8 hours a week over 5 sessions. My current plan, which I’ve been following for a few months now, includes—like many do these days—two hard sessions per week: one VO2 max and one Threshold. The remaining workouts are endurance-focused.
The interval-based hard sessions are scheduled for Tuesday and Saturday, while Sunday is usually an outdoor endurance ride.
My question is: since my Sunday ride is typically a group ride with power spikes, PR attempts on climbs, and generally moderate to high intensity, wouldn’t it make more sense to shift the structured plan’s hard sessions to Wednesday and Sunday? That way, I’d effectively be replacing one of the interval sessions with the harder group ride.
I’d go Tuesday and Friday for intervals and Sunday for the group or endurance ride. If it is too much and you aren’t recovering well, then consider substituting a workout.
I’m trying to figure out the same thing for myself. It seems to depend on how well you recover and how well you’re executing the 2 hard interval days.
2 hard interval days plus a hard Sunday ride is effectively 3 interval days a week. I’m planning to swap one of my hard interval days with a hard Sun ride.
If the hard group ride is your main thing, I would periodize the training year. For example:
Do base-build-peak in the spring. When you start doing group rides, after winter you go into maintenance mode - maybe one hard workout on that Tuesday and then your group ride. That is still giving you two hard rides per week and enough recovery time to be a hard hitter on Sunday.
What if you put that group ride in the TR calendar as a weekly race and see how it plans around that?
Thanks,
I am wondering if Monday only is ok for recovery before the Tuesday hard session or giving in the middle a endurance ride and move the hard to Wednesday infact…
I’d go by how the legs feel! If the Sunday ride is very hard and you are still smashed on Tuesday, then Wednesday or Thursday is no doubt going to be better.
I had my highest relative fitness by far at age 60. I was doing 3 very challenging group rides a week with a total of around 200miles/week between the rides and riding to/from the start of them. I did pretty well in the crits and road races I entered, though those were not really my focus. I did not do any training or workouts. I’ve since followed plans and even had a coach but never got near what I was back then.
Yeah. IDK the specific science, but this riding season I’m just riding and significantly upping my volume. I’m feeling more powerful and getting faster as result.
Thank you for the compliments!! We love that you love the app!!
I took a look at your Calendar, and with the current setup you have you’ve remained pretty consistent! Plus, our fatigue management system falls in line with where you are resting (Mondays).
How are you feeling with the current schedule you have?
If you are feeling pretty good, then I would keep the two interval sessions + endurance + group ride, but to give your schedule more consistency between hard sessions vs. recovery/endurance, you could do the following, depending on your available time each day:
Swap Tuesday and Wednesday workouts to get additional rest from the weekend before you hit your next interval session.
Move the Saturday interval workout to Friday to get a rest day before your group ride on Sunday.
Or! combine 1 and 2 to get a flow that combines a rest>>recovery>>rest>>recovery type of schedule so you’re able to hit all workouts with high quality.
If you are feeling pretty tired with your current setup, then shifting one interval session to Sunday and making it your Group Ride can work too as this sounds like a hard group ride. Your schedule would be composed of 1 Interval day, 1 hard Group Ride, and the rest endurance.
