Is a rest week as important for traditional style base?

Having MUCH more free time and no racing plans a while, I switched to traditional base, with a higher volume. I made it to the first rest week, but instead tacked on another week of high volume Z2. I still don’t feel anywhere near as fatigued doing my usual training, and want to just keep increasing my volume. Thoughts?

Z2 work stresses your body in a healthy manner, it’s healthy exercise. It’s more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge. You most likely won’t burnout or overtrain doing a lot of Z2 (as long as you keep it in Z2!). That said, don’t jump from doing 6hrs/wk to 18hrs/wk, your body does need time to adapt to time in the saddle. Have fun and enjoy your long rides!

Addendum – my n=1, I did 4 months straight of ever-increasing volume Z2 rides without a “rest” week.

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If you are not used to high volume endurance training it’s easy to get carried away. With more time you can ride all day and get away with non ideal nutrition and recovery and everything works… until it doesn’t.

If you don’t know how you respond to a given type of training just do it as prescribed. On TR this is quite straightforward but if you are doing your workouts outdoors you have to be very disciplined. Staying in Z2 is not as easy and simple as it seems, I started using ‘%FTP’ instead of ‘Watts’ on my garmin to make it simpler. If you ar mixing indoor and outdoor rides try using weekly time in zones to make sure you are getting the desired amount of Z2 and not overdoing it into Z3 or slouching into Z1.

With a disciplined approach and understanding of your body it would be hard to go wrong.

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Riding 100% solo has helped with the discipline. No reason to go hard or compete on shop rides. I’m mostly just looking at time and HR and don’t let my HR get above a certain point.

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TBHV1 description page even says you can double its length to 8 weeks if you wish to.

I have slightly related question: planning to follow it as well after current block. But I’d like jump immediately to 3-4hr+ rides. How to ensure week-over-week consistent progression? Multiplying each workout duration by some factor, 1.5x for example?

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That’s exactly what I did. First week I did 4x2 hour rides, next week 4x2.5 hours, 4x 3hours, then I did the last with a few 1 hour rides added.

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