After spending the spring and summer adrift in the american nightmare, I’ve re-upped my sub and got targets for next racing season. The 2 hour weekend rides prescribed are good, but long rides in the fall are the best.
What are your thoughts about upping weekend workouts to 3-5 hours? I can try it and adjust on feel/HRV, but I’m wondering about experiences doing this. Easy enough to absorb the stress or do you make extra room for recovery during the week?
This is highly personal. Some will find this easy, others hard. No one here can guarantee how well you will deal with it.
Best bet is to try for yourself and see how you feel.
It depends what else you do! Is 5h long for you or not? How many hours do you ride in total? Are you doing a TR plan (which one?), and how are you dealing with the recovery just from the plan?
If you want to start a plan, but want to have space for a long ride on the weekend, it’s probably better to go with a lower volume plan.
I’ve swapped Sweet Spot weekend’s for longer rides from Traditional Base in the past. My logic was I generally went out on my club spin, when weather allowed. I even managed to get a question on it read out on the podcast - their answer was that this was fine from a training perspective, but to do the prescribed workout and spend time with the family/ do S&C/ something else.
If you have the time and you aren’t sacrificing something important then I would go for it. If you are worried about recovering from it the start on the shorter end and keep it strict in Z2. 3-3.5 hours to start and don’t jam up hills and coast down the other side.