Trying to figure out how to accommodate skiing into my plan. Just started new plan and it prescribes Monday Rest, Tuesday Hard Intervals, Wednesday Easy Ride, Thursday Hard Intervals, Friday Rest, Saturday Hard Intervals, Sunday Endurance Ride. I typically ride late at night after the family has gone to bed. Here is the challenge. I am an avid skier and ski every Tuesday and Saturday. This means I’ll have two hard interval days after a full ski day. Most likely my legs will be pretty spent. I am trying to decide whether to just accept this and know these days will hurt but I have two easier rides the next day or whether I should push the whole plan back one day so that my easy ride and endurance ride fall on ski days. Thoughts?
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Would it be possible to do your hard sessions one day earlier? Something like:
Mo: Hard intensity
Tu: ski (+endurance in the evening)
We: endurance
Thu: rest
Fri: hard intensity
Sat: ski (+endurance)
Sun: rest or easy endurance
This means two hard interval workouts instead of three which is probably enough, given that skiing will add additional stress to your week. If you want to add z2 volume, doing some double days with skiing would be my choice of weapon.
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I wouldn’t want to be trying to do hard intervals the day after a long ski day either. Either do them the day before, or wake up early and do intervals first before going skiing (although, that’ll make the skiing tough). But, you start to run into scheduling issues, so I’d also consider cutting back the number of interval / intensity sessions for the ski season.
Intervals Monday
Ski Tuesday
Easy Endurance / Recovery Ride / Rest Wednesday
Intervals Thursday
Easy Endurance / Recovery / Rest Friday
Ski Saturday (+ Endurance after if you’re feeling it)
Rest Sunday
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I’ve had this dilemma for the past few years, though I don’t have a regular skiing schedule - just live close enough to snow where skiing is always an option. I’ve ended up not following the plans too well at all. This year I’ve switched to a master’s plan with two instead of three hard workouts per week (though I would have done that regardless as I’m “older” and live at altitude and recovery takes a little longer). I’ve found I can handle a VO2 day after a ski day, but will be destroyed by a threshold or sometimes even a sweet spot workout after I ski due to muscle fatigue, so I try to schedule those before skiing when my legs are fresher. If I do a backcountry day or decide to go nordic skiing I’ll take an endurance day out of the schedule. Also I’ll sometimes make the endurance really easy or even recovery level - in my head the consistency is more important than hitting the WO targets on those.
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Found this recent convo helpful as I am starting to get more invested in TR. Thanks to the OP and those who replied. From early Dec thru end of March I find adding in ski touring, ski guiding, teaching-in-the-field avalanche classes difficult to log and gauge in terms of “intensity”. For these 4 months I am on snow 4-5 days/wk and really do not add on much more cycling than low volume-masters until later March/early April. What I do know is that storm cycles or multi-days of 6-8 hrs leading clients/students in the snow/weather beats me up and the risk-managing can take a mental/emotional toll too. I also add in 1-2x/week light-moderate strength training and 30 min body-work sessions like pilates, plus mobility/stretching. These too are hard to input into TR as far as “intensity” or “load”. I went to a low volume-masters indoor training plan this November and that has made “all the things” manageable, but now with green light/red light and all the AI input/output TR is factoring into plans I want to be more precise in logging the activities that load my body. I feel confident that I am fairly aware of when this 62y/o body need rest days, more sleep, a focus on nutrition and overall recovery. I do have a multi-decade bike racing pedigree on dirt n asphalt so really want to try and optimally calibrate with TR’s AI metrics and prompts to the calendar year round. For the past couple years I have not been precise at all in what I log on TR. Before committing to entering all the things in TR I am trying to see if it is possible to be precise. Is there any more advice on how best to precisely input all the things (beyond bike/run) everyone knows adds load to the body/mind? Thanks again
I think the simplest approach to multisport, speaking as a triathlete, is to aim for only two or three hard days a week, the rest should be easy.
If you’re skiing fits into the hard category then your cycling should be in the easy category, or even short recovery.
What’s hard, and what is easy? Again, the simplest is asking yourself, are you breathing easy through your nose, or is your mouth open a breathing heavily?
For both posters here it would seem easy riding is best
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