A TR-ride or that experience? Hell no, you made the right decision for sure!
In my early 30s here with 2 kids, 3 and 1 year old.
Right now with the amount of sleep I am getting, LV plans are all that I can recover from. I usually do the Tuesday and Thursday workout at around 9pm, simply because that is the time my older kid is in bed. Finish up by 10:30, have a shower, get to bed by 11:30 and wake up by 06:00 the next day.
Apart from time on the trainer, I also try to fit in 2 gym sessions in the week also, focusing mainly on upper body workouts for vanity and a little lower body workout for the posterior chain muscles. No squats for me as those really fry my legs and my trainer sessions would suffer greatly.
I ride outdoors with my group on the weekends, so no structured training on the weekends and those rides are usually in the vicinity of 200 tss.
love your honesty - that is exactly the same thing I do ;-))
thanks again for all your posts - good to read it once in a while that I am not alone with the struggle 
Yeah very similar to me too, except that with the vanity workouts come added strength for MTB, and I do all my training early morning.
Remove a day but make one other 2-3x longer. Given your stated objectives you will gain a lot from the time gain and at the same time buy back family time.
Kids are tough, but remember they will only be young once. Training is important but so are they, dont miss out on them growing up to train
I do my rides/workouts almost solely whilst they sleep. I dont follow the TR plans, but use them as a guide. I work from home full time, so group rides are more important to me, I need the social interaction in my week. I try to focus on fitting in some intervals on the rides where I can. I ride from 4am to 6/6:30am 2-3 times during the week (with a coffee shop stop/chat at the end), then try to fit in a trainer session or 2 each week in the evenings after the kids are in bed. Occasionally I can fit in a 30-45min trainer or CX skills session in at lunchtimes whilst they are at school too. I tend to do VO2 max sessions for these shorter ones
Sunday mornings are the only times i really ride whilst they are awake, again I leave at 4am, but for a longer ride, back anytime from 7:30 to 10am depending. Always discuss with my wife of course to ensure we are all happy!
I can squeeze up to 650 TSS in on a bigger week doing this, but tend to trend around 500 for most “on” weeks. Weeks where I race are less because I skip a longer ride to race a crit or CX instead. Also if anyone is sick or schedules are interrupted then TSS suffers, thats just kids!
you are absolutely right !!! 
This has been a great thread for me to read, thanks everyone for posting.
For the past couple of years I’ve been getting up at 5am to ride until 6:30am when my daughters get up. Now I don’t feel “alone” with this solution any more. I take great comfort from that!
One issue I’ve been having is that I find playing with the kids/picking them up/getting them dressed etc feels like it makes it much harder to recover properly, and doesn’t do great things for my back.
Also, when I do make it to the floor to try and stretch a bit, one daughter invariably thinks it’s a great chance to jump up and down on me (which is, yes, really fun, but again doesn’t do wonders for my back).
How do you guys manage this aspect of it? The recovery challenge and extra physicality that comes from having small kids around?
same here - it also helped me a lot reading those posts !
as for post ride recovery I have the same problem. My boy always wants to join my stretching or foam rolling which is very adorable but does not help
Anyway I think to two things I ditched most of the times since I am a father are stretching and bike cleaning
I have a toddler and both my wife and I work. I do my 2-3 indoor rides early in the morning before anyone gets up. That way I can help with breakfast or getting the kid up and out the door. On weekends, I get saturday morning for a long group ride and she gets the afternoon. She usually uses less time than I, but I tell her to take as much as she wants. We swap on Sunday’s. I usually do a short mountain bike ride or indoor ride. all in all, it’s about 8-9 hours on the bike, but only the group ride is really notable from her perspective. The kid is always in a good mood on Saturday mornings so it’s no trouble.
In that case go do what makes you happy. You know the saying “Happy wife happy life”. Same must go for daddies. Just skip that structured weekend workout and do the ride outside that makes you happy.
You can do the structure when the weather is bad
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Sorry I didn’t read the entirety of this thread – but most of it seems to revolve around time management.
Let me throw in 2c for quality over quantity.
If you can only fit in 2 structured workouts per week, make sure one of them is a Vo2 work. Ideally both of them. Then you are free to do what you want on the weekend. Ride outside. Sweet spot inside. Endurance while catching up on Netflix. Take a 20-30 min jog. Whatever.
Don’t skimp on the intensity. Good luck!
Exactly what I do and Im very happy! 
I’ve been through this - my kids are now 6 and 8, and they have a positive view on cycling (to the point where the younger one has requested his own Kickr for his Frog Bike!). We have avoided divorce, I am still employed and I am fairly fit, so I must have gotten a few things right… Here are some pieces of advice that have served me well, and that I believe most couples with small ones would benefit from following:
- Manage expectations, plan ahead and agree on time and duration of training sessions. Make time for one another’s desire to train (or whatever else that gives meaning to life).
- Shortened training sessions are better than no training sessions.
- Have the indoor trainer ready to go within a five minute warning.
- Invest in a Thule Chariot Sport; they are excellent both for riding and running. Disc brakes on the Chariot are preferable if you run a lot in hilly terrain. I found hill repeats to be good training with 30-40 kg extra weight!
- Combine training with commuting if possible.
+1
Played with my toddler all day yesterday…I deserve TSS for that!
How do you guys schedule your workouts if you do 2 a week on low volume? Instead of skipping, do you just move your workouts in the calendar so you complete them all even though it would take longer than the intended 6/8 week block?
I do the two scheduled in the week, ride MTB on Sunday mornings instead of the third scheduled weekend ride. But then I also try and get to the gym twice a week (although this doesnt happen all the time!) A perfect week looks like this:
M: Rest
T: TR
W: Gym
T:TR
F: Gym
S: Rest
S: MTB