After reading through the recent topic that Long slow distance miles are junk miles, it got me thinking about my current training regime.
I’m in the middle of mid volume general build now after completing base and doing various trainerroad/sufferfest training since February.
I’m lucky enough to live in western Australia where we haven’t had any impact from covid (yet?!). My A race is a teams road race in early november. Ftp is up from 230 to 290 so far.
I have the plan set up so I do 4 rides during the week before work and then a longer Sweet spot on the weekend which I typically don’t do but do a group ride or solo ride.
I don’t have a power meter so I can’t do outside workouts but my plan was throughout September and October ramp up these weekend rides to the 5 or 6 hour timeframe and then do consecutive weekend days of these longer rides while also completing the mid volume program during the week.
From what I can find it seems that sweet spot is designed to achieve the same target as a longer slow ride but in less time. I’ve seen a few people say that the fitness gained through sweet spot is lost faster with time off the Bike but this could be just perception based on a few experiences
I’m hoping that the LSD rides will help generally build endurance but my bodies ability to be on the bike for long periods and contribute to an overall improvement in fitness and ftp.
Has any one experience or advice for including LSD rides with intervals or a TR plan?
More volume, if you can handle it, is rarely a bad thing.
If you are doing 4 structured SS rides during the week, adding in longer endurance rides on the weekend makes a lot of sense. But make sure that length is challenging. A 2 hour ride won’t cut it.
Not sure what thread that was but it’s just simply not true. Though it is easy for those long rides to devolve into junk miles. Just make sure that you keep it in Z2 and don’t jam it up hills and the coast down the other side. Keep pedaling the entire time.
To add, SST is not a replacement for LSD (S=steady). Some say S=slow because it’s basically Z2 which is always going to yield a slower speed than while sprinting. But, the main point is constant steady pressure on the pedals. Speed is irrelevant. LSD is not a replacement for SST. SST founder Frank Overton basically says it’s an economical way (paraphrasing) to get a lot of TSS in a “short” amount of time but, not taxing like threshold work, so the athlete can do it day after day.
Unless I’m mistaken LSD is incorporated in 2 primary ways: 1 during early season base where riders focus more on time/miles. and 2 during a specialty phase where it’s incorporated as a part of a fatigue dependent plan (higher intensity intervals early week and as you fatigue the intervals get less intense/longer and then big LSD the last couple days).
Thanks, by LSD i mean the zone 2 type rides you are talking about.
If SST is an economical way of getting a lot of TSS in a short time and I’m not time restricted on these weekend rides, are the adaptations gained from sweet spot intervals the same as LSD rides?
I currently have SST rides prescribed once a week as part of the general build plan. The other sessions are threshold, v02, endurance and anaerobic which I complete on the trainer and recently have been substituting the sweet spot ride for a group ride or just general riding. I would prefer to make this weekend ride more beneficial to my training though while preserving my sanity by being outside.
Followed plan as is, although switched Sunday SST for longer Z2 ride recommended in weekly tips. During final week, aerobic decoupling started at ~1:30, FTP increase 5%.
2nd time modified plan: kept hardest Thu/Sat SST (and moved Thu workout to Tue), substituted other with longer Z2 rides with comparable TSS. In final week, decoupling started at ~3:30, FTP increase 6%.
Sure, it is hardly conclusive result, even for me personally because 2nd time was further into the season. But still, I prefer 2 hard + 4 “easier” and longer days format.
Thanks, I also have to remember that while I have a race target and that is the point of training, I still want to enjoy riding my bike and if I need to swap out a ride for a longer unstructured ride with friends then I’m probably going to do it anyway so knowing which workout to swap helps
