I’m currently doing my first TR plan in a few years, due to a mix of lack of motivation, injury, “life”, and health issues.
Right now I’m more motivated than I’ve even been, loving every workout and can’t wait for the next one. Struggling with rest days, etc.
But… a new bike arrives this week. And we all love new bike day. I will want to go out and do a 1.5hr trail centre loop, with only a HR strap (no power meter). I’m not very good at taking it easy and will probably avg 15bpm below my max.
This is what I’m doing at the moment (custom plan):
“Endurance” is a bump up compared to the others as yesterday I replaced a 2hr endurance workout for the first time, with a similar Stretch one.
I do feel I can handle more volume at the moment, so should I just do the ride in addition to these workouts? Or ditch one (which one?)
My main concern (query, rather), is what effect will doing this have on the adaptive training, and AI FTP etc? At the moment I’m loving how when I complete a workout it makes adjustments to what’s coming up next etc etc.
If truly trying to hit the plan 100%, adding rides makes it tough unless you are able to recover from the stress. I see the Gravity Plan. If your goal is racing downhill then riding the MTB probably should be included for skills. Most MTB courses are not conducive to structured workouts unless they are really flat. Very on off power. Really hard to do any sustained and there is lots of coasting. They do create stress and TR will estimate it using HR. Keep in mind that it will just quantify stress but not type. They keep telling us that things like group rides feel hard and create tons of stress but dont really progress things like Threshold and the things that actually make you faster. The on off power of group and MTB rides just dont cut it. 1.5 hr of near max HR is stressful and you need to account for it. Bottom line is keep the hardest planned workouts in. Drop the lower intensity structured first. Just make sure you can recover from the unstructured MTB ride so you can do the planned high intensity. They also say you can move around your workouts on a given week if it helps. ie you want to do an outdoor MTB session the day before the Threshold workout. Just move the Threshold workout down a couple of days in the calendar. If you find yourself doing a bunch of unstructured rides, switch to low volume plan and hit the plan 100%. I am lucky to have 2 really flat MTB trails and I run them for endurance rides with just HR because I know what HR generates what power if I am pedaling consistently.
By themselves, I agree. But you just can’t do sustained power (threshold and VO2) you also need to train for the “on-off power” you will see in MTB. That kind of riding is way more draining and you must prepare for it or your legs will be toast.
You have two reasonable options:
1 - do your outdoor ride on an off day, but at a lower intensity than you want. Keep it endurance paced, so you can recover and stay on plan.
2 - skip one of the scheduled workouts for the outdoor ride. Assuming the outdoor ride is going to be Saturday, I’d be tempted to move Weld to Friday and skip Kennedy completely.
The 3rd option is to swap the plan for Low Volume, that should free up enough time to do regular outdoor rides with some intensity. But, that’ll only work if you can get outside to do those rides every week (this is what I do - I switch between LV and MV depending on weather/daylight/etc so I can do long weekend rides when able).
I would try to input the ride manually and guesstimate the training load. Whether or not you can handle it with your current training load, I do not know. Take a day off if you need to?
I ended up buying a power meter for the MTB, but I’ve found that effective training load based on power alone on the MTB doesn’t match with an equal road ride. Much more upper body work, and even when you aren’t pedaling, you may be absorbing a ton of impacts or working your legs in some way that isn’t captured by power readings. Using heart rate can also be tricky if you are doing a lot of sketchy stuff, being “artificially” inflated by adrenaline dumps. I tend to take my power, heart rate, and general RPE and adjust the TSS on my own post ride. I suppose if you only do MTB then it will sort itself out, but if you do a mix of indoor, road, and MTB, then it gets a little more complicated.
In rare cases you can combine structure with MTB if local terrain allows you to do fire road intervals up, single track descent.
My local terrain isn’t like that so the only way I’ve been able to properly combine a structured workout + MTB is in some routes where I have some flatter dirt / gravel roads that get me to the base of a trail system. In those cases I do a workout alternate to give me a 30 or 45 minute version of the workout and do the structure part to the base of the trails, ride trails as normal, then may or may not resume intervals on the way home.
Generally speaking though for me I think it’s better to do a LV plan and make sure I hit the key workouts which leaves me plenty of space to do MTB rides. You could do the same thing by staying on MV and replacing a ride or two of course. Overall though I’m kind of iffy on the non-masters MV or HV plans though, I don’t think I respond well to more than 3 high intensity structured w/o’s a week, not to mention that my MTB rides can also have a good amount of intensity.
I think it’s very important to incorporate “trail riding” into a training plan for XC or downhill racers. Training services can’t account for this (since everyone’s definition of “trail riding” varies), so my suggestion is to switch out one of your sweet spot days for a “trail day”.
I’m an XC focused racer, and I wished I had done this last season instead of sticking to the structured plan so militantly. My trail speed suffered a bit.
We typically tend to advise something along the lines of what @AlistairSH said.
It sounds like you are probably gonna push it a bit (new bike, we all would ), so skipping one of your planned structured workouts for the week and replacing it with a harder outside ride would be a good bet.
In other cases, if you’re able to do an easier loop at endurance pace, you should be fine to keep your structured workouts in place (provided you truly go EASY!!).
Plenty of good advice in this thread! Feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions.
Agreed about not doing just threshold and Vo2 but Im sure the Gravity Plan will have anaerobic workouts that develop that on off power with progressive workouts which also develops that repeatability to do that on off power. While free riding mtb trails will help that to some degree, structured workouts will progress that faster. Agreed that isnt as much fun…
Thanks for all the replies. My main concern (knowing very little about them) is the adaptive training and AIFTP and how they react to me skipping a planned workout, and what I can do to make sure it keeps on track.
(Bearing in mind that I don’t have a power meter on the bike)
(On that note, what’s a good/affordable/reliable crank/spider power meter for MTB riding?)
), so skipping one of your planned structured workouts for the week and replacing it with a harder outside ride would be a good bet.