I’m having a hard time recovering quickly after a 3 hr (230+ tss) group ride on Sundays. The ride consist of all power ranges.
The hard VO2 tuesday workout seems to come awful quick. Thoughts on substituting it for more of a endurance ride allowing a thursday to be a great work day?
Schedule would look like this:
Sunday - group ride (gym work if able)
Monday - off
Tuesday - endurance work
Wednesday - off
Thursday - Sprint work
Friday - off
Saturday - short VO2 work
Seems good. Not sure about the sprint work, but its probably there for a reason. Tuesday could be a tempo/sweetspot ride if you can handle it. If not, then endurance is great. 230+ tss in 3 hrs is really hard, so that’s going to need at least 2 days of easy riding.
I’m far from an expert, but my personal preference would be to push the key workouts to Wednesdays and Fridays if your schedule allows- that way you get a solid 2 days recovery between the Sunday ride and your next hard effort, and the total workload is more evenly distributed throughout the week with at least a day in between quality sessions. As it stands, doing your two hardest workouts on subsequent days means you’re starting the group ride already fatigued and having to dig deeper to finish what is already a pretty demanding ride. Add the gym work in and you’re squeezing the majority of your TSS into 2 days and then spending the majority of the week trying to recover from it, which isn’t super efficient.
Again take this with a grain of salt, but I’d probably tackle it like this;
Sunday- group ride
Monday & Tuesday off
Wednesday- v02
Thursday- endurance
Friday- sprint work+ gym
Saturday- off
As a side note, if your Sunday ride takes until Thursday to recover from i’m not sure how compatible that would be with a structured plan- but that also depends on your priorities and what you’re looking to get out of both.
Yeah, I like your schedule there!
Sunday rides do seem to need recovery time. Forcing a hard workout on day 2 was defeating. Your plan leaves me fresh/ready for good hard workout on day 3. Wednesdays are normal an off day cause of long work day. But doesnt mean its impossible. Just have to find the energy at night.
As far as I know, you should do sprint work fresh, so doing it at the end of a three-day block might not be the best place for it? But then I don’t know what type of sprint work - if it’s actual sprints, maybe doing it early on in an endurance ride would work. If it’s basically anaerobic capacity work (think 30/30s etc), then it needs its own day, but could also probably be done as the third workout (though that will suck).
Good point- I’ve never trained sprints specifically so I’m way out of my depth there. Also probably depends on what the endurance ride looks like- I find that shorter z2 rides don’t impact my recovery that much, but I can see that being a bigger factor on a LV plan.
I think there’s also a case for dropping/swapping out one of the workouts if it becomes necessary, but that’s a tough call without knowing the OP’s goals.
Im working towards crit racing in June/July and grand fondo fitness.
One thing, I have thought is the impact/stress of the longer sunday rides my be less as my fitness increases and body continues to adjust to longer rides. Todays ride had tss of 272 for 3.5hrs but feels less stress on the body. It was also perfect weather though.