Hey everyone,
I picked up a MTB recently, I’ve 2 years of structured training under my belt as of now and want to change things up a little bit. I have a lot of family commitments and am unsure, which plan to choose.
I’m not training for a specific goal or event, but want to include one MTB ride a week, which will be unstructured. There’s a lot of climbing involved at my local trails.
Would it make sense to choose a low volume plan for general fitness and ride my MTB on weekends? As there’s lots of climbing involved, should I go for a masters plan to account for the “interval MTB session” on weekends?
I recently found a really good sweet spot on how to do this (at least for me) while maintaining a high volume plan. I race XC and wanted to make sure I’m working on both my bike handling as well as continuing with my structured straining.
So I approach this two ways, one is MTB rides are my solo rides for the week that are not part of structured training. Even at high volume trainer road will prescribe solo (or group) rides that can be 2-3 hours. That’s a big-ish day on the MTB which is awesome.
If you want to work MTB into your structured training, look for repeatable sections of trail. For me this is a trail I can loop with a climb long enough to do whatever interval I’m doing that day. Some days that’s a shortish climb where I’m doing VO2 or hard starts and I use the downhill portion of the trail as my recovery. I find this not only fun and more engaging but harder than regular intervals because of you’re probably not just recovering on the rest portion of the interval. I also found that some of the roads near my trail head are perfect for intervals where I can do more interval on road and duck into the trail for a loop in between intervals and still do a suedo recover/Z2 ride where my focus is carrying momentum instead of pedaling before my next interval.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to work in MTB training I can’t say these are original thoughts I’ve stolen most of this from the TR pod and it’s various guest.
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Hey @Fishnhchamps 
I think a Low Volume plan sounds great! Especially as you have a lot of family commitments. Plus, you can always add volume if needed down the road.
From what you have on your Calendar, I would make your Sunday TR Workout a Solo/Group Ride and go enjoy the trails! Especially since you’re not training for a specific event, this is a great way to incorporate one MTB ride per week, keep things fun, and maintain fitness.
Here are instructions on how to make those changes: How to Add Group and Solo Rides to your Training Plan
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Thanks, does it look ok on my plan now?
Thanks for your input! I tried to set up my plan considering the input I got from this thread.
@Fishnhchamps, yes!
Let’s start with this and see how you progress.
The only edit I would make depending on how you feel on Sunday is to move back one day all your TR Indoor Workouts so you have a rest day in between all your bike workouts.
For example, you’d be completing your TR Indoor Workouts on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and leave your trail ride on Sunday.
But let’s see how the current scheduled pans out
How does changing a plan workout to a Solo or Group Ride and doing the outdoor ride instead of the workout affect the plan? Do the characteristics of the outdoor ride (big/little IF and TSS) have an effect on the plan?
Great question @Saddlesaur
Say, if you swap a “Hard Intervals” day to be a Group/Solo Ride, it will change to a “Hard Ride” and the workout card will have instructions on how you should tackled the ride to keep your training on track.
Depending on how big the effort was our fatigue management system will adjust the training plan accordingly with a “Green”, Yellow or Red day.
As I mentioned above, there is more info on Group/Solo Rides in this article and how to tackle them: How to Add Group and Solo Rides to your Training Plan
This is basically how I do it at the moment. I do TR Low Volume Mon, Wed, Fri and a 2-4 hour MTB ride on Sunday mornings. Basically, my Monday depends on the ride the day before, if its hard and gives me a red or yellow day I’ll do endurance. If the Sunday was more chill then I’ll do the prescribed hard ride. 
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