From November to May, I’m not very time crunched. I work a swing shift (4-12:30) and usually get up fairly early still; 8am.
My week usually looks like this:
Monday: 2-3 hours in the gym doing leg, core, explosiveness
Tuesday: 2 hours muscle building low cadence intervals at SS
Wednesday: 2-3 hours in the gym. Same as Monday. 90 mins z2
Thursday: Yoga
Friday: 2-3 hours in the gym. Same as Monday. 2 hours z2
Saturday: 3 hours muscle buidling intervals, low cadence
Sunday 2-3 hours z2
Rides are all on the trainer. Once the weather gets a bit nicer, weekend rides will consist of a spirited group ride of 4-5 hours.
My wife leaves the house at 6:15am and returns 12h later. When it is a short day. Typical man, I have a more pragmatic approach with the kids 
Today was one of the days where flexibility was key. All my work appointments were scattered across the day.
4:45am get up, coffee, start working immediately
6-7am: long breakfast with kids, making them ready for school/kindergarten
7-10:45am: work
10:45-12:15am: 90min tempo/VO2max session (Gimenez)
12:15 - 13:30: cook lunch for kids (here they start early and don’t have school in the afternoon), have lunch with kids; lunch was special for me because my second sesstion today should be low: steak only for me
13:30-16:00h: work
16-18h: 2h “low glycogen training” with 90min at tempo
Breakfast/lunch/dinner is vital for my family. And I feel really privilleged to see my kids so much. Therefore, my attempts to do intermittent fasting and these things backfired for social reasons as well. Having lunch with your kids and not eating is no fun.
However, keeping flexible allows me to do this high volume. Not a single day is the same, work, family set the frame. I have to to fit in my training. Tomorrow I will do a 2.5h trail run and 90min easy spin in the basement in the afternoon.
18-19h: family dinner (wife is back and will bring them to bed afterwards)
19-21h: work
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mines starts with something like
5:15am: let the cat out and prepare coffee
and ends with
6:30-7:00pm get off trainer and make dinner
in between I’d love to have a no-noise cycling desk to rack up hours - a lot of vo2 adaptations are possible from a little breathing elevation and easy muscle contractions. With such a desk I figure its possible to get 4-5 hours/day. I’ve explored the cycling desk concept a bit, but haven’t been able to implement it unless I move my home office to the one-car garage.
Only had one race a month ago. Can’t compare it to previous years as the weather conditions were so brutal. So I don’t know if those positive indications from training translated to improved race performance.
Just overall feel. This is a pretty good indicator.
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Gotcha. I’ve basically stayed on what I had planned for this year since I was already pretty far in, but I think next year I will probably loosen my structure up a little and do something along the lines of what you did this year. Which to be honest isn’t a big departure from what I am doing now. Really having a little more day to day flexibility and judgement on what to ride versus hard rest weeks probably the only real change.
Curious how you went with Gimenez workouts? Did you do a progression or just sprinkle them in?
I don’ really qualify as pro/elite, I shouldn’t be a topic in this thread. Briefly, haven’t really done any Gimenez this season. With lockdown did plenty of grey zone/happy hard/tempo endurance rides. We could go out here. Gimenez did not really fit in there. Later, when “icing the cake” for my race I did too much intense stuff, G would not fit in again. And now, prepping for two races I’m into a threshold block. Once again, G does not fit in.
You are right, getting on a bit of diversion. @mcneese.chad can you move these last couple posts to the NON time crunched cyclist thread?
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I will be one of the non time crunched cyclists for a while now. I have been training for three weeks since I had a two weeks off the bike, including having a cold for a week. Right now I am just trying to get back into riding so I do a lot of junk at the moment. I have moved back to the high mountains so I am adjusting to the altitude and environment.
My plan is to do base training all of December, at least. I prefer 4-5 hours outdoors steady in zone 2. Where I live now it’s not so easy: the roads are few and it’s so hilly. So my question is how should I ride my long endurance rides? Tempo up the mountains? I have a smart trainer so I will try to do longer steady zone 2 rides if I can handle it mentally.
kids can help take away that free time
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Helpful 
If you ride your long endurance rides in tempo, then they are tempo rides, not endurance ;).
Have you considered different gearing? With gravel / MTB gearing you can ride Zone 2 pretty much up every mountain.
Haha yeah, you got a point. I can stay in zone 2 when I climb but what “worries” me is all the time spent coasting going down. Maybe the rides need to be even longer for me to get the time I want in the zone/s I want.
Well, the (coasting) time downhill shouldn’t be too long compared to your Z2 uphill ride. 
In all seriousness, I totally understand what you mean. But I don’t think some coasting has a huge effect on a Z2 ride - as long as you keep the pedals most of the time turning.
I must reply to the topic when I get time.