I don’t have any science to back this up, but from personal experience doing efforts on the way in makes me tired for the rest of the day and the way home a slog.
The other way around I feel energized during the day and in the right frame of mind on the way home.
Doing FTP or even VO2 work whilst in a slightly fatigued state is gonna cause all sorts of good stuff to happen. It’s the same as doing efforts when 2,000kJ into a ride.
This commute for example featured a 13-14 minute effort @ around best 20 minute power having already ridden 3 hours of endurance (2 hours AM, 1 hour PM) prior to the effort.
Brilliant effort, sort of pro style training that. What about comparing it to personal bests or other times when you’re fresher, do you hit higher numbers or even do the same effort at a higher heart rate?
Just wondering if maybe say you didn’t ride in so much, that could have been a 365 or 370 for the same perceived exertion?
haha! paging. i don’t know if I can bring the science, but rather just experience.
What does POL stand for here?
either way, an easy commute, work, and then intervals should be totally fine (depending on the work day’s physical (and mental!) load). usually the best gauge is: are you hungry to crush? Like excited to get after it? If so, legs and body should be fine.
I have experienced the same if hitting z6 type efforts: full throttle at 6am, by 9am I’m just crushed. I think the experience for FTP is different, vo2 depending on how often this athlete does them.
Best answer: experiment both ways! (sorry that’s a cop out, but everyone will respond differently)
While I don’t suppose I have ever really tried it the other way around, I probably fail half the workouts I try to do in the morning. While I haven’t tried to do it too many times, it was enough for me to just quit even trying. But I can hit targets just fine in the evening.
These days my workouts are done AFTER I commute home. I skipped last night (supposed to test) because my work day was a little difficult (working on an air conditioner on a warehouse roof in the heat).
I think there is going to be a wide variation in how people handle this situation. Poster above you had a 20 minute commute, which is going to be massively different than my former 2 hour commute (each way), or even my 1 hour commute now.
As for two a day…I need to go climb up onto a roof and do more work (how much TSS is that?).
If intensity is threshold or above, I dont see how you could have two high-quality sessions within the same day (or why you wouldnt just increase volume in one of them). I would do recovery riding or endurance for one of the two.
I did a bit of bike commuting with ~1hr ride one way. Sometimes I would do intervals one way or sometimes I rode tempo in and intervals home. I wouldnt really call tempo ‘intensity’ tho.
But just like with everything, if quality goes up, quantity has to come down, vice versa (whether we want to believe this truth or not).
pretty high quality ~6.5 minute vo2max effort at 109%
Wake up the next day and another threshold effort for 24 minutes, then an hour of tempo at 85% on group ride.
Not saying its the best way to train, and I did have a lot of unplanned recovery days, but ultimately after months and months and months of doing that it produced results
Completely agree. I went from a 15 mile > 20 mile > 28 mile commute over a 2 year period. From my experience, going beyond 1 hour makes a huge difference.
Hi, dug this thread out as I found the FastTalk podcast really useful but wondered if anyone with some experience/expertise would be able to comment…
Listened with interest to the bit at the end of the podcast where basically it looks like you can get some of the physiological benefits of a long ride by doing a harder ride and a few hours later an easier ride (but not psychological obviously). I have got into an audax in August (1500km, 125hrs - LEL) and obviously I need to build the hours in the saddle for this. While I am working from home, a 45 minute lunch ride and a 60-90 minute evening ride is pretty manageable. I also note their suggestion not to do this on every training day, just maybe once a week or every so often.
So what I am looking at is doing two-a-days in this kind of structure in these cases:
On weeks like this one where I won’t be able to do a long weekend ride for personal reasons (last weekend was fine - did 90 min TR Sat and 4hr Z2 road Sun, and will be steadily increasing the length of that Z2 ride)
Potentially to add volume in a regular week, e.g., in the last week of a training block - bit wary of gassing myself now in February when the event’s not till August, trying to build steadily.
In terms of WO structure, what I have done today is:
Reduce my scheduled 1hr VO2 TR WO to 45 mins in Alternates (Gendarme -1 in this case - 2x15 30/30s, finished about 1.40pm). Chose to do this with my VO2 day rather than my SS day since I figure SS works better with a longer workout but VO2 workouts can still be pretty effective in 45 mins.
Add a 1hr Z2 (Colosseum -2, which I may spin out to 75 mins if I can, should be able to get on 5.30-6.30pm).
Is that 2nd one long enough? I noticed they switched between 60-90 mins and 2hrs in their discussion at different points. Is my logic around shortening the VO2 workout reasonable?
Has anyone who’s attempted similar got anything they’d add? Or any references/ways to potentially tweak? Did you notice it actually helped? Obviously, I am expecting benefits from the added volume regardless, whether they’re quantifiable or not.
