Question on how folks are fitting mountain bike rides into the structured plans
Since i am training for mtb, i need to ride off road consistently to keep skills up
My issue is that the local terrain does not lend itself to structure. the land is too variable for intervals nor an easy ride.
i am planning to do these rides on saturdays as a hard ride or sundays easier endurance ride but either one causes me to worry how the ai will react to it
thanks
Greg
for the trainer road folks. feel free to
use my calendar data although i just starting to work this in
Hey Greg!
There is definitely room in most people’s schedules for at least one unstructured ride. A lot of our athletes like to do weekly group rides, or just go out on a solo “soul” ride to keep things fun.
I usually recommend one long, easy ride each week, but if you want to make those MTB rides hard, then I’d put them in place of one of your hard days of the week.
In other words, don’t add them on top of an already full week. If you normally do three hard workouts a week, switch to two hard workouts and one hard MTB ride. If you normally do two hard workouts a week, keep one and add the hard MTB ride.
You can build these types of rides into your schedule by switching one of your workouts to a solo or group ride when building your plan. Then we’ll anticipate those rides on specific days of the week. 
Let me know if that helps!
In my case I simply did unstructured mtb and gravel rides instead of the scheduled workouts. Data uploaded to TR and the AI was happy with it. The plan and AI FTP updated. I did not associate the ride with a workout, or delete the workout I didn’t do. AI assumed I might still do the workout so updates were valid the day after. Now, TR asks if you intend to still do the scheduled workout after uploading an unstructured ride. If not, just check no and you’re good to go.
The WX this year was unusually nice so I wound up doing more unstructured rides than workouts. The plan kept chugging along.
I don’t use TR right now but more generally I:
MTB on easy days - making sure to keep it EASY and also focus on skills on those days
Do some “durability” training on the MTB. This is basically my excuse to do 3 or 4 days of hard, fun MTB in a row. IMO this is necessary for building up body strength for longer XC and marathon events, even if it doesn’t align with some more traditional training plans.
Try to do one structured interval workout a week and one that can be a little more unstructured - like 3x20 on the trail which turns out to be a little more variable depending on the terrain.
Do structured intervals either outside or inside on the trainer and then do a fun/fast MTB ride later in the day or right after.
There have been some matchbox cycling podcasts with good advice on this.
