I’m struggling to find the best way to incorporate a Wednesday group ride with structured training. Does anyone have any good ideas? Maybe shifting the usual training week so that Wednesday becomes the equivalent of a Saturday?
Attached a screenshot of the post ride analysis, it’s typically 180TSS including several small climbs, regrouping at the top, and hard flat efforts. I definitely don’t feel like I could do a tough ride the next day and definitely couldn’t do the usual tue/wed/thu structured plan.
Overly simple, adjust the default Rest / Hard / Easy / Hard / Rest / Med / Easy schedule to whatever is appropriate for your schedule. Find the most appropriate planned workout of the week that “matches” your typical group ride. Swap them and then form your remaining schedule around that, if that is your anchor workout of the week.
Thanks. Interesting you rate the typical Saturdays only as “Medium”!?
I was initially thinking group ride would replace the standard Saturday (in my head the hardest day of the plan) but you’ve got me thinking now.
Also a fair point, it’s not really a drop ride and maybe I’m overestimating. Keeping it but focusing on vo2 intervals on the ride and include in plan as suggested above is the best option for me.
Saturday is normally a long tempo or SS workout to build or maintain aerobic base. Other than the TSS it doesn’t bear much resemblance to your Wednesday ride! And wouldn’t drop the Saturday ride as maintaining that base is important.
Up until lockdown put an end to big group rides in March I always did a midweek ride similar to what you describe. Lots of Z1 coasting in the pack, and then hitting every other zone on the hammering sections. Really doesn’t match up nicely to any of the TR workouts which mainly target one power zone, but it was (and hopefully will be again) the ride I looked forward to most each week and great race practice so I always found a way to fit it in. My approach was simply to drop whichever hard workout from the plan I felt I needed least, and then schedule an easy day after it. I think in my case the ride probably was closest to a VO2 max workout, since even if the power distribution was all over the place there would be sustained sections where my HR and breathing were high enough that I was in a state of maximal oxygen uptake with no recovery.
Important thing was not to succumb to the temptation to have an easy day beforehand as well in order to be fresh for it! Easy to do as there was a pretty hotly contested ~20 minute section culminating in a sprint where there was quite a bit of kudos for “winning”. So the gloves were fully off in that section, people were launching attacks, breaks were getting up the road, teams with a few riders present were organising leadout trains, etc. All good fun and pretty easy to start thinking of it as a race. But if you start having a racelike unstructured workout every week, with an easy day to taper for it and another easy day to recover from it, then you really are starting to compromise your training!
Great tips thanks, that’s exactly where I am, especially with the not wanting to ride the day before the group ride. I can definitely change up how I approach it to make it VO2 intervals and maybe drop down a group so that I’m not pushing in between the climbs.
Will keep the regular weekly structure and see how it goes.
