Hey folks, I’ve hit a bit of a plateau at 270-280ish ftp (3.77 w/kg) for about a year, and I think I need to incorporate more volume. I’ve been training with trainerroad for about 2-3 years now pretty consistently.
I’m 35 with 2 kids, so my weekends are only good for a 90 minute ride at most (usually done with my 3 year old riding Shotgun™️). That being said I work from home with a very flexible job, so during the week I have a ton of open time for long rides.
The schedule I’ve been following has been working well for me (Monday hard intervals, Tuesday Wednesday endurance rides, Thurs off, Fri hard intervals, sat endurance ride, sun off). I’ve also added strength workouts to this, usually twice a week around 20 minutes each.
My weekly volume is around 7-8 hours, and Im curious if increasing my volume across the board is the way to go, or picking one day (I was thinking wednesday) for an increasingly longer z2 ride. It seems my body has no problem handling 90-120 minute rides, and while pushing past the 2 hr mark doesn’t break me, it’s where I start to feel like Im “breaking new ground” in terms of z2 stimulus.
Im coming off a moderately busy crit/road season and looking at starting back with base, after a few weeks of reduced time on the bike. I consider myself an all arounder and want to increase ftp. 4 w/kg would make me happy (about +25 watts to current ftp).
Additional volume will help, more so if it used effectively.
Based on what you are doing now, I would consider making a Wednesday a longer and slightly higher intensity ride.
In TR terms, a tempo ride. A 2hr one.
YMMV, but doing Gammon regularly led to a nice breakthrough in numbers and in performance on the road for me. Baxter+2, Perkins and Gammon are all very frequent fixtures in my calendar nowadays.
There is a lot to be said for much longer Z2 / endurance rides. 3, 4, 5 hour rides.
Two years ago I had my best season, and I think riding with my kids in tow (Z2) for 2–3 hours was key. My wife got some her time, I got some time on the bike with my kids, and my kids were relaxed, often sleeping.
Yeah! Dude, the rides I’ve done with my daughter have served in many different ways, many of which you just mentioned. The fact that I’m giving my wife somewhat of a break (and even more so once my youngest one joins the rides), an awesome way for me to connect with my daughter and share my love of cycling, and the z2 miles to boot.
Plus, I found it easier to stick to zone 2. With a trailer in tow, you are effectively strapping an aero brake to your bike. So you can produce decent power on flat terrain at moderate speeds.
I really love it. Can’t wait until our third one is allowed to ride in the back.
Yes. If you’re at 7-8 hours and recovering well from that (maybe you don’t even need full rest weeks?) then bumping to 10 hours would provide some solid stimulus. Longer “long” days, extending a typical ride by 30 mins with extra zone 1/2, adding in an extra ride per week, can all work.
Since you work from home, you could easily do double or triple days to increase volume.
I experimented with higher volume. I ramped up from 6-7 hours to 12-13 hours per week. It helped quite a bit for about 6 weeks - I was making Strava PRs every week - and then I hit that new plateau.
In the end, for me, the time commitment isn’t worth it to be 5-10% faster so I’m back to my regular volume.
If I am reading this right your weekdays have the most flexibility. If this is the case I would cram in as much cycling & intensity as I could during the week (as that seems to be more flexible) and then recover/family time on the weekends.
Train hard, recover hard. Ultimately in the dad club we live by the moto, “do what you can when you can.” It rarely, if ever, is going to fit nicely into a template.
Wow, adding 5-10% power is huge, and 5-10% speed is even more impressive with just an extra 5-6 hours a week, especially only after 6 weeks.
One thing I’ve noticed with more volume (after adaptation to it) that many don’t talk about is day to day fatigue resistance. Its not just that I fatigue slower on a big ride, I don’t build up the chronic fatigue as quickly during the week and I can do more consecutive days of training before I need a day off. I also see less performance variation day to day. For me it’s huge, but I suppose for others that don’t want to train that much anyway, what good is being able to ride more if you don’t want to?
I think a bit more volume sounds like it could be of benefit if you feel like you’re recovering well right now and you think you can handle it!
Getting in a long Z2 ride would be a good addition to your plan if you can swing it – as you mentioned, those kinds of rides can really get you pushing into that “breaking new ground” territory you described.
I also think you’d see benefits from adding a bit of time (15-30 minutes) to a few workouts spread out across the week, though, if that works better for your schedule.
This article has some good tips on adding volume to your plan if you’re interested:
Make sure to stay in touch with how you’re feeling as you add volume, and be sure not to add too much too quickly. Add in the extra volume gradually, and stay on top of eating well and sleeping plenty!
Hope this helps – feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions!
Thanks for all the responses. On a side note, yesterday I entered the final road race of my region (MABRA), and took home my first win!! It was a 1.1 mile circuit race, I raced in the cat 4/5 as a 4, and the race was 30 mins long. We did about 11 laps total. At about 400 meters to go, the course crests the top of a hill and the last 400 meters are a curved downhill that goes into a short uphill finish. I made a somewhat half hearted decision to go for it, at the top of the hill, and a moment later a crash happened behind me, which gave me the confidence to commit to my effort. In the last 400 meters I held around 800 watts for a pretty close win among the top 5.
