I know TR plans often have the option of replacing the Sunday ride with a long endurance session, and I’ve been doing so for a while (4-5 hour rides on Sunday).
But now with the ongoing quarantine and nice weather coming out in NorCal (and my loss of willpower to grind threshold intervals now that my races are cancelled), I’m open to spending even more time on the bike over the weekends, and want to replace my Saturday workout with a long outdoor ride, primarily riding endurance zone.
Any thoughts from the community on ride planning / strategy to maintain the adaptations targeted for Saturday rides (whether in the context of SSB or Build or Specialty)? Basic thought is to maintain a relatively similar TSS to the plan ride being replaced, but curious what else comes to mind.
[Context: Been using the platform for just over 6 months now and I’ve have seen a healthy boost in power (250W to 308W FTP) from following HV SSB1, SSB2, SSB2 again, and General Build 1 (though I wasn’t very compliant over the holidays).]
I don’t see anything wrong with that. In fact I think that you will see even bigger gains by doing intervals during the week and back to back 4 hour rides on the weekend that are kept endurance pace.
Few things you’ll need to keep track of is how you’re feeling week to week with that extra bump in hours, and how does the rest of your week look. There are a few different ways to do this;
You follow the HV plan which would give you SS work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, recovery ride Friday and then your weekend long ride.
You go off script and do something like how MV is done where you include an over/under workout. Could do an over/under Tuesday, Wednesday an endurance ride or SS depending how you’re feeling, and then SS on Thursday. Followed by recovery ride Friday and long weekend rides.
I would go for option 2 because I think last year doing the HV SSB1&2 the biggest thing that hurt me going into the build was the lack of going above threshold. Good luck!
I think this is also a good idea. Bear in mind, for some us riding outside is integral to owning and training on a bike, there are benefits for the soul too.
For me, I still try to do the TR workouts + an outdoor ride, which is sometimes up to 4 hours. However, if I really want to feel a bit stronger on those weekend rides, I’ll skip the TR stuff. Get Sun, vit d, socialising is also important for me.
Bumping this up again… I’ve been on Trainerroad now for a month and love it, but I still ride long endurance outside on weekends. I’ve been doing base training sweet spot intervals on Tuesday and Thursday, then long rides on weekends. Monday, Friday are easy recovery rides, Wednesday was endurance. By doing endurance outside on weekends I basically miss two workouts Trainerroad is prescribing. Do you recommend putting one of those workouts to a Wednesday or is the bump in volume sufficient to make up for that and is ok with only Tuesday/Thursday intervals?
Kinda interested in this topic as well. I am a very high volume rider and just started TR. I’m using a LV plan with two weekday sessions a d just doing my normal riding on top of that. I’m wondering if I should skip the weekend workout for my regular outdoor stuff, or do that session on top of it. I’m typically a 20 hours (700-1000 TSS) per week person. I’ve got a 1.5 hour session prescribed tomorrow and will probably do it, but I’d rather go do big rides.
Just adjust training load if your getting over worked. The biggest issue with some people is they don’t know they are over worked. I do HV plans and go on weekend rides 4-5 hour in the saddle but it will cost me somewhere. I miss the next progression in the training and it makes the following jump harder. Or what happens to a lot of riders is they pull out the wattage missile and attempt to blow up the group ride and keep digging a deeper hole.
Also not all tss is the same. 220tss from a 4 hour z2 is not the same as 220tss from 2.5hr sweet spot
Depending on how you recover can do what the HV plan shows for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Keep those recovery days on Monday and Friday, then weekend long ride.
I also like to do easy m/w/f do the T/T workouts and try to fit saturday sundays workouts into the group ride. Stay at the front and tell the group you will pull for the next 15min or whatever your supposed to do. When you can fit the workout into the long group ride and be blown up and get a free 2 hour pull home is awesome.