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Old 07-30-22, 04:34 PM
  #10  
GhostRider62
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I am a little younger but I train with a purpose. A few comments.

If I cannot get my HR up, it means I totally misjudged my readiness for a workout. I turn around and go home. Seriously. That is a warning sign. I monitor TSB and CTL ramp rate, sleep quality, mood, and heart rate variability. I think rest is more important than the workout, rest is when your body is digesting the training impulse and making your stronger. it takes me a little longer to digest a hard workout as I get older. A coach that I follow and respect has written that you need 4 loading days per week. That means 4 good workouts. Personally, I shoot for 5 or 6 rides per week and try to never take 2 days off in a row. Typically, I ride 5 days and take a day off. Most rides are zone 2 at 115-120 BPM. At the most I do one interval session per week but it is a very hard and intense one. Long story short, I cannot imagine riding 14 days in a row to be beneficial to improvement at our ages. OTOH, 2-3 days per week would be too short. You have to find the balance of sessions per week, intensity, and duration that works for you.

WRT to your 30 minutes at Tempo vs slogging straight thru, it depends on your training objective. If your goal is to increase endurance and fat oxidation, you want to do the zone 2 work first and IF you do any higher intensity, save it for the end as you did. It is very likely your tempo work did a lot more benefit than concluding the session at a lower intensity in my opinion, unless the overall training stress takes you more than a day to recover. Why? Consistency is the key to performance improvement. Year round consistency. For me, I can maintain fitness on 4 rides per week but it takes 5-6 rides per week over many months to see a big improvement (say 5%) in power
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