Maximum # of "hard" workouts a week?

[ridelife116]

I’ve been working off of the mid-volume road training plans for most of the year, and I’m now in the specialization phase (criterium focus). I’ve been doing really well sticking to the plan as prescribed, with a weekly schedule as follows:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: Hard intervals
Wednesday: Easy Spin
Thursday: Hard Intervals
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Longer hard intervals
Sunday: Longer medium-hard intervals

Now that Spring race season is in full swing, our weekly local crits have begun on Tuesday evenings. Originally I just slid my Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday to Wednesday/Thursday/Friday, but this basically leaves me with only one rest day a week and 5 hard interval/race days. I’m still only averaging under 10 hours a week total on the bike, but I’m wondering if I’m overdoing the hard days. Is 5 per week too many for someone on that type of volume/schedule? Should I change one of the hard workouts to an easy spin if I’m going to be riding 6 days a week? Any input would be much appreciated.

[MI-XC]

@ridelife116

but I’m wondering if I’m overdoing the hard days. Is 5 per week too many for someone on that type of volume/schedule? Should I change one of the hard workouts to an easy spin if I’m going to be riding 6 days a week? Any input would be much appreciated.

Keep the normal TR schedule and simply insert the Tuesday night Crit for Tuesday’s TR Hard Interval. That is almost a perfect substitution and no other plan modifications are needed. If you feel like you didn’t work hard enough during the Crit, you can always do some intervals after the race.

[Bioteknik]

Up to you entirely, but I have found that my quality workouts lose quality if I do more than 3-4/week and that depends on how hard those individual ones are.