zenzo

At the moment I plan two weeks in advance as this year I started really late with my training. In general I always do some kind of polarized training, day 1 has high efforts (either max effort sprints or 2-4' intervals) on the menu, day 2 is lower effort with 20' intervals and day 3 usually a long ride with just a few short jumps to higher efforts. I then basically repeat this and to have a 7-day plan I have two days of with 3 or 2 days of training in between.

No I'm slowly transitioning to winter, or at least autumn, training by including strength work on days after recovery days, the following day has high intensity intervals and then again longer, lower intensity. Well, hopefully you get the idea. With time I will start cutting on intervals as I start to build base and introduce more cross training (it is simply to wet to train outside here where I am).

How does this training plan look to you, any comments?

For those willing to share their training plans, how do they look like? How often do you do strength work and high-intensity work? What do you focus most on in your training?

grolby

That doesn't sound polarized, that sounds all hard, all the time.

zenzo

yeah it may sound like that, especially the first example, but actually it is quite a big difference in intensities between the days. Now with the strength work it gets to only two hard days a week

furiousferret

Its pretty simple;
Mon- easy
Tues- hard
Wed-easy
Thurs-hard
Fri-easy
Sat-depends
Sun-hard

I've tried doing T,W,T all hard but it seem counterproductive.

I make a schedule that week via feel, no scheduled rest weeks but I don't go longer than four without one (typically 3).

grolby

There is a difference in intensity between sprint/AWC workouts and 20' intervals, but they are still hard days. And a long ride with sprints is adding fatigue on top of that. By the math, if you have two of these 3-day cycles in a week, that's one legit rest day per week, not two. Maybe that's fine and you can continually improve on such a low-rest cycle. I'm just saying that that is a very high workload, and doesn't sound like polarization to me. BUT this might be because this is a jargon term with a specific definition that I don't know.

gsteinb

Jinkies. Define 'easy.' I honestly don't think what you wrote there is reflective of your ride yourself into the ground mentality. 21 hours is a heap of volume, and even easy can be hard when you go long enough.

zenzo

maybe did not make it clear enough: 3 day training - day off - 2 day training - day off
so it is 2 completely off days each week. However, that specific part of my plan we are discussing is harder indeed, but from the very beginning I mentioned that I do kind of a polarized training. Maybe I should not call it polarized

furiousferret

Easy = under 60 tss (40 if its not a commute day)

TheKillerPenguin

60tss is not easy. It's certainly not hard, but it's not easy.

furiousferret

Well, that's the trimp for the work commute so its what I have to go off. I do think my TRIMP is off though since my commutes via power are 40 (15/25) and my trimp is 55 (25/30).

hack

"Typical"

Mon- off
Tue- TT work or tempo ride (~75-100TSS)
Wed - Local hammer ride (~125TSS)
Thur - Threshold intervals (~125 TSS)
Fri - off
Sat - Race or Hammer Ride (~150-225 TSS)
Sun - Race or endurance-ish ride (~150-225 TSS)

That can get bounced around depending on life schedule or race schedule.

grolby

It doesn't make sense to say TRIMP is "off," it isn't equivalent to TSS and isn't meant to be. TRIMP and TSS are correlated but not identical. If you ride regularly with an HRM and power meter, Cycling Analytics will calculate the correlation and estimate a TSS ("load") for HRM-only rides. For me personally, TRIMP is ~150% of TSS, but your mileage will almost certainly vary.

jdms mvp

misterwaterfall

garbage miles

aaronmcd

When I had a working power meter, a half hour commute was 5.5 TSS on easy days.

hack

eh ... it gets the job done in the time i have and it's not as repetitive as the "typical" would lead one to believe. i get in variety, but hit that wednesday ride pretty consistently.

mike868y

not a believer in recovery rides?

TheKillerPenguin

Those are too hard to be recovery rides and too easy to do much for your fitness.

misterwaterfall

that.

mike868y

ah makes sense. i have no powermeter so have very little perspective as to what certain TSS numbers mean. my recovery rides are easy...like 12mph getting passed by people on hubway bikes with flip flops easy.

mattm

I plan at a high level, mostly in the winter months, and just go by feel for the most part on a micro (weekly) level.

So going in to last winter the plan was Base with 20 hours weeks with mostly z2 and some hard group rides, then Build is less hours but more intense.

But by the time I start racing, my training structure generally goes out the window and I go by feel and just race a bunch, try to keep the CTL from going down too much, and rest when I'm tired.

Hard to stay structured the whole year!

Ygduf

I'm on a 10-year build.

misterwaterfall

I usually just try not to get too fat. If I start to get fat I ride more, if I get too skinny I eat more, which makes me fat and thus ride more...

zenzo

This sounds hard all the time... I started using trainingpeaks some 2months ago and still grasping TSS. I use only HR (power is a bit too expensive for me at the moment) and still have to test my threshold HR so I may be a bit off. Having the same TSS over a longer period, two persons should have the same/similar CTL as well?

hack

Not really and I don't follow it 100% 100% of the time. If I'm feeling tired I take a day off or just do a recovery (e.g., <25 TSS) ride. If a big race is coming up, I'll taper off or whatever. I guess typical may not be the best descriptor ...