My plan currently has me training 3 times a week between 60 to 90 minutes. Sometimes I find myself wanting to add a ride in between training days. Will selecting a train now workout on those off days benefit me at all when using adaptive training or would I be better off selecting a longer workout on my usual training days?
I tend to do a long 60-100km slow ride to a cafe for breakfast and back on the weekends, and it’s more of a leisurely ride, and I don’t really spend too much time over FTP unless it’s tackling a climb. I know there is “currently” no way to TR to take into account rides other than when using the app, but are there any benefit to my longer, slow breakfast rides?
Yes, there’s a lot to be gained from longer, slower rides. But keep those rides slow, between 65% and 70% of FTP. Endurance, all day pace. You can basically add as many of these ride as you want, as long as you can recover from them. If you feel like it’s taking away from your three Trainerroad workouts, dial it back a bit.
When i did a low volume plan i did the same. On sunday i usually did a 2 to 3 hour endurance ride. Monday was a day of so i was ready to go again for the tuesday, harder, workout.
Both.
You can extend workouts by either choosing an alternative that is longer, extend the warmup or extend the cooldown. I frequently ride at z2 during my cooldown and will extend it from 10 minutes - 40 minutes depending on how much time I have. Adding zone 2 rides in between will also help add volume with less wear an tear. You can use train now on those days if you want, but I usually just add a workout to my calendar that I like, usually a repeating one so it’s not that much maintenance.
If you can add a 4th or 5th day to your calendar, I think that helps with consistency, but before I’d go to 6, I’d try to extend the rides you have to make them longer. 2 days completely off each week is something I think helps me recover better than just 1, but I’d still like to get the same volume in.
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Add a workout to your calendar for those weekend rides. You can filter the workouts for Endurance, and 2-3 hours. Pick one that looks right in terms of TSS and intensity, select the Outside variant, and TR should associate it with that after the event.