Originally Posted by
lupy
Caught me being lazy, sorry!
Worlds stupidest question here. Full 3 weeks with 4th as recovery or full 4 weeks with 5th as recovery?
I was thinking about starting with 2 hours Monday and Friday, 3 hours on Wednesday, and 1 on Saturday (probably warmup/cx race). Where should I go from there? Should I start adding a trainer day on Tuesday/Thursday or add more time to m/w/f? If I do start to add tues/thurs should that still be z2 even though they are shorter rides? I can go up to as long as 5 hours on m/w/f. Also should I just start w/ tues/thurs rides too? I was trying to start slower and not go crazy, but that would be similar to my tri training, but just the one sport. Thanks for all of your help so far guys. I truly appreciate it.
Not stupid. Typically younger (<50) riders will build for 3 weeks and on the 4th week reduce the volume but keep the intensity of the rides the same, maybe 70% of the volume of your 3rd week.. Older riders sometimes take every 3rd week easy.
I think your approach is reasonable and I would just add 30 min to the long ride on wed every week. You could try adding in some SST intervals on the trainer on Tue or Thur. I contradicted my previous advice not to do any intervals but I find the trainer too boring otherwise so I usually end up doing a couple of 20min intervals. I'd give it a couple of weeks with your original plan and see how it goes. If you've got the energy you can add more hours.