Im new to using TR and I’m trying to be consistent with my “FTFP” (follow the effing plan), but I have two items that simply don’t fit, but I also don’t want to get rid of them…
Tuesdays I take my 5yo and 10yo on a kid group ride (yes, they are hardcore and go all year round). That’s either a nothing ride when I ride with the 5yo (on a strider) or a light easy ride with the 10yo (6-8mph pace with plenty of stack breaks).
Thursdays are the group night ride. They hammer, but stop and sit around A LONG TIME. Like if the ride is an hour moving time, they’ll be not moving between 30 and 45 min. I can do more structure (outside) on these days once it’s no longer night rides and I can go alone, but in the winter I feel better night riding in the woods with friends.
Mondays and Fridays I’m on call at the hospital and don’t want to risk scheduling workouts, so those are my off days.
How do I mark these on the TR calendar so it makes sense and looks like I’m doing wield with FTFP?
Based on your description, you have Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays free for structured training. If you follow a low volume plan, you can select those days to schedule your workouts. Low volume needs three days, so that fits. The selection is done when scheduling the plan on your calendar.
You can use the other days as additional volume or as recovery days, depending on your fitness and requirements.
How do I mark these on the TR calendar so it makes sense and looks like I’m doing wield with FTFP?
Thanks!
[/quote]
Personally, I just leave those days blank and the fun fills itself in. IMO plans have to be fluid at this stage in life (I also have two kids around the same age). But if you are concerned about “following” a plan and sticking to it… you can always make an old school hand written calendar and use TR as a training log of sorts. Or if that doesn’t work for you, you can put annotations and notes in you calendar. Put a note: “ride with the kids” and then you can see the ride in the calendar after you do it.
We’d echo what @tigloo and @Jolyzara suggested. It sounds like you’ll have three days per week free for structure, so a good starting point would likely be a Low Volume plan.
If your Thursday group rides are HARD, we’d advise using that as one of your 3 hard sessions that week and replacing one of your interval days with a low-intensity ride or a day off. Pushing over 3 hard sessions per week can quickly lead to excess fatigue that could negatively impact the rest of your training.
Calendar Annotations can be useful as well so you can leave yourself notes depending on what you’ve got going on.
Feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions!
If you are “hammering” on Thursday, I would count that as an appropriate workout (threshold hammer, VO2 hammer?). Then pick one or two other days (up to your body, one for me) to do a planned workout.