Set up LV on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday. Then swap out your outdoor ride on Saturday for the Saturday TR workout and then do your Sunday ride. And try to keep Sunday to a zone 2 endurance type ride. Doing low volume during the week and group rides in the weekend is A LOT. Maybe under 30/35. But 40 and over is a bit much IMO
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I didnāt want to lose the extra day, given itās only an hour and Iām only training 7-8 hrs/wk.
Losing the extra day of training (vs. a 5/2 schedule) would give me more rest, of course.
Maybe thatās what I need, but a 5/2 schedule has been working okay up until recently when I seem to have hit a bit of a plateau and am seeing fewer if any improvements since December after starting TR in Sept.
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This is probably the biggest change I have made that has meant I can carry on training without burning out.
To my mind, there is a massive difference between AT tinkering around with 3 intense days and actually dropping that 3rd day altogether.
I used to get annoyed wherever TR would say AT is the answer to masters programs because, for me at least, itās the ratio of rest to intensity that counts in a masters plan. Last I checked, AT didnāt really deal with that at all
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There were lots of requests before AT to deal with masters/ageing athletes.
The logical place to do it is in Plan Builder by adding a step that asks you for work/rest ratio perhaps even with simple defaults based on your age. Once that foundation is in place then AT can do its thing.
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Blah, stay on topic, forum boss! Itās all relative. Just because people get older than 40 doesnāt mean that in my late thirties I donāt feel the effects of ageing! Maybe I just treated my body worse than you for the first 30 years. 
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While I grew up athletic I was obese in my early 30s and started riding at 33 (Iām 42 now) and Iām without a doubt in the best shape of my life, even when I was playing soccer as a teen I think
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LOL, just having a lil fun
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Alright, alright, me too, probably. But I do think I need more recovery than I did in the twenties. Hard to know!
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I ride 12-14hrs a week you just need to ride more endurance
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Interesting. I seem to be lucky. I marked a sweetspot workout āvery hardā during the last block and I instantly got downward adaptations.
Everything was fine from there on.
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For sure, age is definitely relative. And many other aspects of our individual lives will lead to different training and recovery needs. The magic lies in reviewing it along the way and trying to improve based on what you learn. In that light, you are pointed in the right direction from what I see.
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In case that got lost: I usually do. The reason my LV is so hard is because I did high volume the last few years (with the exception of the summer, where I did outside LV with lots of added endurance). But with constant transatlantic travel in the last few months, I figured Iād try LV for a few months to feel like Iām not constantly stressing about keeping things consistent and moving workouts.
EDIT: So my original point was just that I find LV much much harder than HV, which is against the normal advice.
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LV should rightly be more intense as you should theoretically be fresher to do them as you are ditching all the āmehā workouts which create addition fatigue without the optimal training benefit. Quality over quantity!!! and Iām not talking about polarized training here.
Iām assuming you want to get faster/stronger as a cyclist? then i think this approach is a good one and better than the MV and HV plans imo. Push yourself!!!
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I look at the low volume debate from a triathlon perspective. The low volume half distance plans typically have 3 hard bikes per week PLUS hard runs and swims. They have destroyed me before! Itās a delicate balance of intensity and recovery. I do not have the capacity to do 5-6 hard workouts per week when doing 9+ total workouts in a week.
3 hard bikes plus lots of rest is a different story. Almost everyone should be able to recover from that.
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Iām currently doing LV base, it has me doing an hour long sweet spot rides on Tuesday and Thursday and a 90 minute threshold ride on Saturdays. The 90 minute threshold is knocking the tar out of me. I donāt feel recovered by Tuesday when I do the first sweet spot ride, and ever less recovered for the Thursday ride. And again Iām not recovered on Saturday when I do the threshold ride again. So far I havenāt failed out any of rides, but I always feel like I could easily fail out the next one. I feel like all the rides should be a bit easier, or thereās some magic Iām missing to recover more quickly. BTW, Iām 56. I guess I should be dead ;-}.
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and itās claimed SS doesnāt draw much fatigue and is repeatable. Iād swap one of the SS workouts for an endurance ride, or swap both SS for another style of threshold or even suprathreshold.
Nothing to be lost in changing things around a bit. i assume you are taking your recovery weeks?
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Donāt be a slave to the plan/workout. If itās better for your week, or even just for getting through the workout, skip the sprints. Thereās no great shame.
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I suspect that if I just swapped out the 90-minute threshold ride every other week for something a little less taxing, Iād fine. The problem is that puts me in a deficit that I can never dig out of. Swapping it out for something a bit less taxing would break the cycle.
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Sounds terrible to go through every week and not like a long-term repeatable weekly structure. Time to plan for more recovery?
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When I read this first I thought you need to plan with more recovery
Thatās pretty good though! Sounds like youāre getting faster.
Itās your plan and your decision. It sounds like itās working for you so far. If you donāt like the beat up feeling you can go many ways:
- go off-plan and use trainnow, picking workouts that appeal to you. Maybe 2 climbing and 1-2 endurance or so.
- plan with a 10 day circle instead of 7 days, spreading out your workouts
- lower your FTP by say 5%
All these will leave you fitter than not following a plan long-term. Itās a way to make it work, for you.
Donāt forget to consider the non-training side of the coin. Sleep. Nutrition. Strength training.
In my opinion this is very individual and expecting a training platform to provide all this out of the box for the annual price of what a real coach takes for a month is maybe asking a bit much
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