Something we should all be more mindful of. Learnt my lesson regarding this last season.
Would be interesting to test how pro/elite physiology responds to “ride a lot with some stuff” vs how time-crunched AG amateur physiology responds to “ride a lot with some stuff”.
Darn, they’ve cancelled my first A-race, XCM Nationals in late April. Hence, I’m facing the same question as many pros, how to deal with this training wise. Let’s look at some pros. Interestingly, it’s pretty unanimous. High volume with some SST/Tempo. Adding some spikes.
EB:
Sepp Kuss:
Jack Haig:
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Both/either. If a pro and a joe both rode equal “stuff” hours per week – be it 6 or 20 – what would the difference in response be in both subjects? I’m guessing a pro physiology will respond better across the board to a joe physiology. Seeing as how a time-crunched cyclist relies on intensity-based fitness, they very well may never get to find out how they respond to volume. Another reason why amateurs might be best to ignore pro training methods.
What’s that part in the middle of Jack Haig’s zwift session? Some ladder in endurance/tempo/SS zone? Interesting.
My ride a lot plan got a hit with flight to Mallorca cancelled. But forced work from home still should be productive for more training. Have to organize myself and make the most of it!
I don’t think the issue is necessarily physiology, it’s more what you’re doing with the other 148 hours of the week outside of those 20 hours on the bike. A pro is sleeping >8 hours/night, napping after lunch, following a diet prescribed by their team (and possibly prepared by a chef if they’re on training camp or paid well enough), doing strength and mobility work, maybe getting a massage, and generally taking it pretty easy. I could just about fit in 20 hours/week of cycling. I can’t restructure my whole life around training and recovery like a pro can though.
There have been a few times in my life when I was able to live somewhat like a pro (when I was a student, gardening leave between jobs, vacation I used for training camps before I had kids), and the ability to get back from training and then just snooze, stretch, watch TV, etc instead of having to go to work or do chores is absolutely huuuuuge. I’m pretty sure I don’t have the genetics (or commitment) to be a pro, but I’m also sure that I would respond very well to a “ride a lot with some stuff” plan if that was all I had to do.
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As someone who does have time (~18hrs a week), how does the high volume approach of lots of Z2, with 2-3 hard interval sessions compare to a lot of sweetspot?
I know the ‘selling feature’ of sweet spot has always been the fact that you can get more done in less time. If time isn’t the issue, do you think there is more to be gained from the traditional approach?
That works on 8-12 hours/week IMHO and my approach for base with tempo & sweet spot being the hard interval sessions. Plus a bit of anaerobic work to keep that system awake.
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De Gendt’s at it again:
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And others…
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Insanity
Is there a training benefit to those?
Example in replacement of a standard 5-6h long z1/z2/endurance?
I am thinking there may be a recovery drawback?
Wondering if there is something about those I tried
I will let you know if I am flying
I’m guessing yes, but mostly no. I’m guessing it’s likely much more of a mental release of frustration, anger, etc. I mean, all these pros were locked and loaded to do some serious racing and now all that high end fitness is just blowing in the wind. Better to do something with it than let it waste away.
Also demonstrates yet another distinction between pros and amateurs…most of us complain about dreading 2 hours on the trainer and there are pros banging out 11 hour sessions!
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COVID pro training:
This is why he’s 3x WC and we’re not. 
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Hi sryke
How do you download these power data from pro riders?
Kind Regards
The norwegians def spend a portion of their year going very easy. Gustav didnt really ride much over 200 watts for most of November through Jan. Considering his peak ftp was over 360 watts that’s really easy work. That was part of their Olympic year prep. Arild also has his guys on the higher volume end of pro triathletes.
What Norway has done in international triathlon considering the population is pretty awesome. Not sure if you listened to the interview with Faris on tts, but he’s trying to get the German team to model after the Norwegians.
That answer is higher up in the thread. He’s a data scientist and spent time writing his own code to do the scraping and visualization. Quite nice to see it shared here. Cheers -Mark
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Sagan keeping it real, ride on 
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