I’m starting General Build LV next week, with the intention of doing those workouts and adding a steady Sunday ride as I have much more time at weekends.
On my weeknights, every 15 minutes counts, so I wondered what was the rationale behind the 75-minute workouts on Thursdays?
I note that (for example) Carparthian Peak (75 minutes at 0.85 IF) reduces quite neatly to Carpathian Peak -1 (60 minutes at 0.88 IF). Would that be an appropriate substitution or am I pushing the intensity up too high for the plan?
You can certainly sub a shorter workout in if you have the time, especially if you’ve looked at it, and it seems to still hit the goals of the original workout.
On a low volume plan, you don’t have to worry much about doing too much intensity, because you’re getting so much more rest than someone who’s riding more. The difference between .85 and .88 is pretty low, especially as the higher IF is also shorter.
As for the why, I would hazard because over-unders are hard, and a lot of people benefit from a bit of extra rest between sets. It’s definitely one of those variations where I think the -1 version looks harder to complete.
Yes, the main difference between standard and -1 seems to be the amount of rest interval.
0.88 IF is still very much do-able for an hour, I was just wondering if Chad’s intention was deliberately to keep the intensity lower than that for Thursdays.
On Low Volume General Build, all of the “Thursdays” will have a 75min workout. Using a -1 workout variant is fine and will accomplish nearly all of the same goals of the original workout.
However, an important point to note is that by doing a 60min version, you’ll accumulate less training stress than intended. Using Carpathian Peak as an example, the 75min version is 90TSS, while the 60min (-1) version is only 78TSS. They both contain the same work intervals, but the extra rest between intervals also serves to accumulate training load in a similar way to Base workouts.
If you look at the first week of your plan, it’s already only 216TSS, so you’ll actually be getting more rest and doing less work than you would by following the plan and doing the 75min weekly workout. If you end up modifying your plan so every Thursday is only 60min, I’d recommend adding some extra riding outdoors/commuting, or adding a 30min ride like Volunteer to each week if you have the time.
Thanks @larry - I’m doing what I call a “weekend warrior” modified plan as I have plenty of time on Saturday and Sunday and very little in the week.
My plan is to do the 2 short Tuesday/Thursday workouts (and a few gentle bike commutes too), the longer workout on Saturday, but then an extra tempo workout or 3-4 hour club ride on Sunday. Plenty of extra TSS!