Group Rides/Practice Races with Low Volume TR Plan

Training
1

Hi Everyone,
With racing starting back up some of my local group rides/practice races are starting back up as well. However, I wanted to determine how to best add or incorporate local group rides and practice races into my training plan.

I have two options for group rides:
Wednesday Evening Practice Race
Saturday Group Ride (Race oriented)

I follow this schedule using TR’s low volume plan:

M: 1st TR Workout
T: 2nd TR Workout
W: Easy Spin using TR (Usually lazy mountain or similar TR workout)
T: 3rd TR Workout
F: Rest
S: 3hr Outdoor endurance ride
S: Rest

My goal this season is to build endurance and to finish with the pack in road races and crits. I also want to ensure I don’t overtrain with too much intensity by simply just adding group rides/races on top of the TR plan.

Would it effective to use Tuesday as a rest/recovery day and use the Wednesday practice race to substitute for the second TR workout in the LV plan? Or use the Saturday group ride in place of Thursday’s TR workout and use Thursday as a Rest/Recovery day? Any suggestions and inputs are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

2

Group rides such as you describe to reach your goal IMO are as important as the TR workouts. I’d do both and drop a TR day. Top riders use them for various reasons to sharpen up and if you are more extrinsically motivated they become that much more important. It is easy to go deep on group race rides so, I’d use a fatigue based plan to map the week (hardest/early->easier/later) such as:

M: off/rest
T: TR (most intense shortest interval work)
W: Group Ride
T: TR (longer intervals)
F: off/rest/zone 1 spin
S: Group ride
S: Z2/TSS ride or Z1 recovery

3

Thanks for the response. Im getting toward the end of the build phase and I would like to incorporate the practice races while I go through the Crit specialty plan. I’m not sure how to stay on track with the training plan but also include the practice race without incorporating proper recovery. This is the sample week I would usually follow but I’ve added the practice race and the drop group ride to the week.

Any suggestions on how to best move these around?

Screen Shot 2021-06-24 at 12.27.00 PM
Screen Shot 2021-06-24 at 12.27.00 PM2792×484 61 KB