I seem to be interested in riding about 5 days a week over the last few months and i am coming up on time to select my next training plan. The catch is I usually do one or two outdoor rides each week with friends and they tend to not be recovery rides.
Up until now i’ve been doing the low volume plans (3 days a week) and just stuffing the outdoor rides in along side.
I am wondering If I would be better off selecting a mid volume plan and removing TR rides with the idea that a mid volume plan might make different choices because of the increased number of days in the plan.
It seems like my outdoor rides average around 130 TSS and my average non-rest week TSS is around 428.
The simple look is that Low is 3-days of work and Mid is 5-days of work.
The deeper reality is that Mid not only adds 2 days of workouts (Low intensity on Wed, Mid intensity on Sun), but it also calls different rides on various days when compared to Low. The Mid typically gets higher intensity or longer workouts when there are differences.
So, it’s not super clear, IMHO.
I’d pull up both plans, skim them a bit and decide if one offer a closer match to the rides you plan in TR with respect to the outside rides you want to do as well.
Honestly, you can’t go wrong with either approach. So don’t sweat the choice too much as the differences aren’t that big in the larger picture.