I’ll be honest, I am no champion at sticking to a fixed plan when it comes to cycling.
64, 77kgs (down from 116kgs 4 years ago) ftp 255, ride 300/400km week al year with regular 100km ride in beautiful Normandy France plus outings to grand FONDO events.
My goal is to ride fast(er) for 100km and to also be able to sustain long climbs with good power for the times I get to the mountains.
As I said no man for fixed rigid plans…
I wanted to get opinions on my way forward.
My idea was to ride outdoors as I do with no structured element, that’s 3/4 times a week split longer easier and others faster, but to add 2 hiit sessions per week of say 45 to 60 min.
If you do those two “hiit” sessions per week consistently and persistently then there is no reason why that won’t work.
I’d consider doing one with longer intervals (sweet spot / threshold) and one with shorter ones, building them up over time
Some suggestions to consider might include the Venado series (-2 to +4) and the Dorr series (+1 to +5)
Others will be along with more knowledge to suggest other things, so I think you will get enough options to help you decide what to try.
Starting and then persistently and consistently doing the session is massively important on these things. So if you aren’t doing your first “hiit” session today, do it tomorrow.
I’m a big believer in 2 hard workouts a week. The only thing I’d question given your goals are whether your unstructured training is giving you the work you need to do longer sustained power for the climbs and the overall ride length. If it is, I say go for it and see how it goes. If not, you might want to replace one of those HIIT workouts with something focused on extending your time at SweetSpot/Threshold.
Nice work on your progress thus far! It looks like you’re certainly doing something right, so keep it up!
I definitely agree that having a couple of hard workouts in your week would help to elicit some more fitness gains. If you’re looking to add 2 high-intensity interval (structured) training days to your schedule, you could definitely get there with one of our masters training plans. Our masters plans cap intensity to two days a week which is exactly what you’re looking for.
Here’s an example of what a week of training with one of our mid-volume masters plan looks like.
As you can see, you’ve got some hard, traditional VO2 Max intervals on Tuesdays, some easier riding on Wednesdays and Fridays, another hard workout on Saturdays, and one long easy ride on Sundays.
You can customize the duration of each of those days, so if you wanted those hard workouts to both be capped at 45 or 60 minutes, or you wanted that longer ride on Sundays to be 3 hours long, you could certainly do that!
Let me know if this helps and if you have other questions.
Oh, yeah, and these workouts can all be done outside too!
I’d just do one interval day that gets you a really solid workout in followed by a short and easy recovery day. Then do all your riding around outside. IMO, many get recover wrong and cannot absorb their intensity days, less is usually more for a recreational rider (like just about everyone on this forum)
The only issue will be going hard when you are riding out side and carrying around a lot of fatigue. Your plan will work if you have the discipline to only ride endurance pace when outside.
Also figure on 3 weeks on 1 week off (easy riding / half volume).
