I am working my way through the mid-volume Version of the Sweet Spot Base 1 plan. This includes 5 days of workouts, with two rest days. For a number of reasons, I have a fair amount of time on my hands these days. I’m training for my first century ride, and I’ve been wondering whether it would be possible (or advisable) to add a light workout on one of my rest days. Or is that not advisable because it would be interfering with my rest, recovery and adaptation?
At this point, I’m not looking to make my scheduled workouts longer or harder, so this question is specific to adding an extra workout on my rest days. In case it is helpful or relevant, I was thinking of either riding rollers or doing a long low-intensity ride.
If you want to add in a proper recovery ride, meaning easy ride to the grocery store pace, then that won’t impact your training in a significant way. This differs from athlete to athlete, but it could also help aid in your recovery as long as the pace is kept low enough.
If you want to do this on the trainer, my favorite way is to make a recovery ride in the Workout Creator at 45% FTP for the entire duration. You can learn how to make a custom workout here:
I’ll add that if I’m not feeling overly fatigued, I quite like repeating the easy workout from the Wednesday ride, or picking something similar. If you compare the mid and high volume plans, the extra day is mostly just a short-to-mid length endurance ride on Friday.
Pay attention to how you’re feeling here. If you’re tired, either a recovery ride as mentioned above, or a day off. If you’re feeling fresh, nothing wrong with adding an endurance ride averaging somewhere around 65% or so.
I would just switch to the high-volume plan for the time being and back it down when getting busy again.
I am doing SSB mid-volume II. In my case, the reason for having picked up mid-volume over high-volume is time. I guess it depends on experience and the kind of training load you’re used to.
Forgive the question…can you just change between different volume plans on the fly? Or will it treat me as though I were starting the high volume plan from scratch (i.e., I would have to start the base phase over again)? I don’t want to start over again from the beginning…
I suggest checking out Taku, Dans, or the Pettit workouts. Depending on how you feel, Taku -1 or Pettit -1 might be better options than their regular versions. I find these workouts to be great for doubling up on the same day (i.e., workout in the morning, chill 30min in the evening) or riding easy instead of a complete rest day.
Yeah I’d suggest adding an endurance ride to one of the off days. This is what I’ve been doing on MV plans since I don’t have time to do the 2 hr rides during the week which are in the HV plans.
When doing low-intensity recovery workouts like this, do you drop your cadence? I’ve been doing my workouts with an average cadence of around 95 rpm. During the cool-downs, I find it hard to maintain that cadence because it feels like I’m pushing against…nothing. My pedal stroke winds up getting slightly erratic/choppy as a result. Should I just drop my cadence to something like 75 rpm, or is that a bad habit to form and I should push myself to stick with a cadence above 90 rpm?
If your pedal stroke is getting erratic and choppy at 95rpm when riding low-intensity recovery, either the watts are really really low or you are a masher?? Regardless, ride easy! If that happens to be 80rpm so be it. Easy recovery workouts also have drills and/or no power spin-up type sprints which will help w/smoothing out your spin.
