Yeah, no matter what you do it’s tough to make up for riding less than an hour a day on average.
I learned this last year when I was primarily mountain biking. As you probably know the trails dictate the intensity and as I tried to increase volume, my intensity also increased. Sure I could of putted around on the trails in the woods but what fun is that, hahaha. Well you know how the endings goes, midway through the year I was absolutely smoked and needed to take a couple of weeks off. This year I have already more than doubled my mileage from last year and really only hurt myself early on when I was hammering the gym and TR sweet spot. Lesson learned again but was nowhere near as bad.
Love your description of riding in Holland! It sounds beautiful and I like the idea of doing a bikepacking trip there and get some z2 miles in. I think i might just avoid those Crayfish, and get into my aero position I’ve been practising on TR!
As with any plan, volume works until you can’t increase the workload any more. People need to remember this when others say that low intensity only works if you’re doing 20 hours a week. Go ahead and try 20 hours in a week right off the bat and see what happens. It’ll take you a long time to build up to that kind of volume, and do it in such a manner that you stay injury free. Even for most people in the 8-10 hour range… all it takes is modest increases over time to keep getting fitter (since when you get fitter, the same volume is then more work, and thus more stimulus)
I think that the notion that you need to slowly “build up to things” is grossly overblown. For example, earlier this year I went from riding 2-3 hours per week to riding up to 17 hours per week, in just about a month’s time. Only negative was a bad saddle sore (solved by changing saddles). Sure, if you dive in that deep you’re going to be tired a lot, but cycling is not like running, where you’d be far more likely to get injured.
The “winter of my discontent” has been more like 5 years, during which I got only a modicum of exercise of any form. It is true, though, that I used to train a fair bit when I was competing, and of course my bike is set up correctly.
I guess that depends on age, fitness level and injury history. In my case, I will grossly overblow knee-wise if I’m not very careful about the rate at which I add volume - be it on the bike or running.
Injury prevention is only a secondary goal, the main goal for the slow build is to just try to keep at the minimal effective dose for as long as possible for consistency. For most people though, there’s going to be a decent jump once the weather picks up.
As @rocourteau wrote, I think it depends on the individual. I’ve gone from 10h to 20h per week in the past (mainly volume) with no issues. Been cycling for >10y so that may come into it.
Maybe for you cause you sound like a seasoned rider. I think you can get away with bigger spikes when you’re 12 weeks into the season and your ligaments are conditioned. If I did that straight off the couch that would get ugly quickly for me personally.
Of course you can go from 10h to 20h. Thats the concept of training camps. But if you really do z2 rides (not just cruising around), you will be pretty cooked after several consecutive weeks of that volume.
Most important thing in our sport is still consistency. If you can double your volume from 10 to 20h and can keep up with that volume for several months without burning out, you either don’t really come from 10h or your intensity at 20h is too low for z2.
Btw: Diminishing returns from just increasing volume start at 25h/week as far as I know.
BUT it all depends what your goals are. For these short 1h Crits, that’s probably not the most effective way to train. In Europe Grand Fondos in the mountains are much more common. There you won’t get away with only 6-7h of intensity.
yep zone 2 is not easy when you get to 4 hours…I was doing loads…have cut right back now that we are TT ing in the UK again - lots of zone 2 plus racing every week is a recipe for burnout! 
I have a big dilemma. I have been riding for 7 years unstructured and simply built up my fitness by more hours and longer rides every year. Would do 3-4 hour rides each weekend and Every month I would do 5-6 hour rides with no problem.
This has seen my FTP slowly rise to 276. I have now switched to indoor structure with TR, although seen no gains from Sustained PB HV.
I’m thinking there are gains to be made but maybe from doing things that I am not used to I.e. more V02 and an off season of weights. Rather than just long rides.
I am nervous about this as inevitably my hours on the bike will drop to a lower Level than I am used to in order to accommodate a proper strength programme and also structured training, which is mOre demanding than outdoor unstructured riding. I hope to test my body with these new stresses it has never experienced and then get back to building up the volume via SST and longer outdoor rides.
Time will tell how well this works vs simply riding many hours in Z2 over the coming 6 months (which would be the norm).
I can see your dilemma there. But until you try something new ,you will never know your potential, or what you could have achieved.
If all the long miles are your comfort zone, you don’t need to abandon those.
But I think you will find the structured threshold and vo2max work will tire your legs a bit and you will need to adapt your training schedule to get sufficient recovery .
You do not mention what you are training for, or whether you race, or ride for fitness/pleasure.
My advice is to listen to the TR podcasts (if you don’t already), Lots of info on there.
- there are some that discuss weight training which would help .
Also if you look in the Training Plans , you will find one that best suits your needs.
For example you would probably prefer one like the Century plan, or the Full distance Triathlon , which is geared to riding at steady state, as opposed to something like the Crit Plan which is all about power bursts and change of pace, over a shorter race duration.
Good luck and hope you give it a try.
LSD pushes the line to the right. End thread.
Maybe try to do a bit of both - do a LV plan instead, but keep your long endurance rides. Basically get your intensity from the LV workouts.
For example, take the LV Tues/Sat workouts (these are the harder workouts I believe) and do them during the week, and keep your long rides on the weekend.
I enjoy the long rides in the z2 (Coggan) range outdoors, say in the 4-6 hour range. If I’m in z1 a lot it feels like a waste of time in terms of training. Indoors I have a really hard time going past 2 hours at a time, if I do I make it 2 rides by taking a break for 30 minutes or so knowing the risk of losing some benefits various coaches subscribe to. I do watch TV and movies which helps but after a winter period of indoors (4-6 months in WI, USA) I just want to be outside. I feel a difference in RPE this year (lower now) compared to not doing those last year although I haven’t raced this year to reflect on some type of power file analysis to check for it’s benefits. By saying lower RPE, I’m talking about when I hit hour 3 of those long rides and thereafter.
The only real comparison I have from 2019 to 2020 is the MS Ride I did both years, in-person and/or “virtual”. In 2019 I did 230 miles (13.5 hours) for the week and this year I did 290 miles (18.5 hours). I felt better after this year’s week versus last year’s and I attribute that to doing more of the LSD training rides. All those related event rides were in z2 except places were the road kicked up and I didn’t have the gearing to stay in z2, IF was .61-.66 for all of them. I’ve been doing this ride for 11 years so it’s not the only comparison I have by feeling, it’s just the two years where I used power to pace myself.
This is just what I’ve found works for me.
25h per week cycling, I just cant imagine. Thats like 600km+. Where would you go? 
I peaked at 13h only cycling Z2 and that wiped me out.
Good, unless the slope is 0. 
You could do VO2 block training.
Week 1: 5 various vo2max Workouts
Week 2-4: only 1 Vo2 Workout, 4x z2 (min 2h if possible).
repeat.
Don’t do strength in week 1. 
After 3 cycles you could lower vlamax with sweetspot training.