Originally Posted by
MDcatV
having been guilty of it numerous times throughout my racing career, i believe that doing tempo during the race season is bad training strategy, and a recipe for training moderately, aka making your hard rides not hard enough and your ez rides too hard ... unless it's H.O.P. style (hard tempo with sprints/accelerations every 3 to 5 minutes, which in actuality is a neuromuscular power workout that forces you into an AP/NP in L4).
disclaimers/ymmv
Yeah. It depends. If it's unstructured, and you are on a structured program, then not so smart. I would get yelled at if I did that. As part of a program though, why not? Not everyone starts the racing season with just the right amount of base fitness. Sometimes life gets in the way. So we have to do base, build, and race at the same time. Not optimal, but reality often isn't.