What's better? An extra 30 minutes on the trainer or an extra 30 minutes sleep?
 

Twice a week I ride intervals on the trainer. I can get the interval session done in about 60 minutes including warm up & cool down, in which case I need to get up around 5:15am. Or I can extend the non-interval portion of the trainer ride, for a total ride time of 90 min and then I need to get up around 4:45 am. With the 60 min interval session, I can get 8hrs sleep, with the 90 min, it will be about 7.5hrs sleep. I'm pretty ok with either amt of sleep.

On weekends I am riding about 120-130 miles on the road training for a century ride in a few weeks.

I was doing 90 min sessions but now Im wondering how much I'm really getting out of that extra 30 min. I enjoy it & totally rock out to my tunes. But now I'm starting to think the sleep might be more beneficial. Not because I'm tired, just because it's good for training too.

Thoughts?

H

Within limits, your body can make up for the missed sleep with some extra sleep the next day...
... Do you remember as a teenager sleeping in till about 10:00 or 11:00 on weekends? That's partly what your body was doing: making up for lost sleep. But, as adults we tend to put ourselves on a schedule and, once lost, we don't give our bodies a chance to catch up...

Great question. In other words, on a session featuring HIIT, how important is the easy spinning part of it?

I see the need for adequate warm-up, anywhere from 10-20 minutes. I see the need for a reasonable cool-down and rest periods.

I wonder if any additional time is well-spent.

Why couldn't you just go to sleep 30 min earlier? tom

Teenager??

I still do that and I haven't been a teenager in a very long time. The only difference is that now, I will quite often go to bed earlier than I did as a teenager, for an even longer sleep. I'm just that tired.


If it were me, I'd always pick the extra sleep.

I'd also say it depends on your intervals.
If you're doing really high intensity stuff, more than 30ish minutes is overkill.
A few all out sprints will pretty much run most people into the ground. So if time is a concern, push harder and keep the sessions short?

Mostly because I'd have to go to bed at 8:30pm, which doesn't really give me that much of an evening once I get home from work, practice my ukulele, eat dinner & clean up. When will I watch Downton Abbey?! ;)

I already go to bed at 9pm, which is a little lame for an adult, but I can live with it. Anything earlier than 9 is a little too disruptive to a normal life for me.

H

My concerns are the same as the OP, except I need the time for NCIS reruns.

Here's a specific example. I have a work-out Saturday that is called SEPI 3X2, 3 minute rests between intervals and 8 minutes (I think) between sets. SEPIs are all-out spins until you see Your Maker type of intervals, 2 minutes each. The session is supposed to last for 90 minutes.

However, if you just allow 12 minutes for worm-up and 10 minutes for calm-down, the work-out only takes an hour.

So, would I be short-changing myself by not dragging the session out to 90 minutes? The other 30 minutes would be at EM level, or way below LT.

I do feel totally fine, not fatigued at all (in general, of course I'm spent after the interval sessions themselves). Dudelsack above completely articulated my question. Here's my two options:

1. One hour on trainer: 15 min warm up, 30-35 min intense (for me) intervals, 10-15 min cool down. Time asleep 8hr.

2. Ninety minutes on trainer: 15 min warm up, 30-35 mi intense intervals, 30 min spinning, 10-15 min cool down. Time asleep 7.5 hours.

I previously assumed option two would be better (the "more is better" philosophy) but now that I'm in the midst of this training program, I'm starting to ascribe to the "less is more" philosophy. The temptation is still to get the extra 30 min on the trainer, I'm already dressed, on the bike & in need of a shower, plus I get an extra hour per week saddle time. But now I'm wondering if it's counter-productive, spinning over sleeping.

Over the weekend I was laying on the sofa, apparently doing nothing. Mr. H asked what I was up to. I told him, "Just building muscle". The sleeping & laying around is important to the training program too, as I understand it.

H

I worked with a coach several years ago when I was trying to improve my marathon time. He stressed quality over quantity when it came to workouts, and it made quite a difference for me (improved my marathon time by 30 minutes in 1 year).

If you're not really getting any benefit from the extra 30 minutes of spinning, other than just increasing your time in the saddle, I'd drop it and get the extra sleep instead.

gut instinct tells me if you want to add anything, add another day, not the 30 minutes. you still add 60 minutes to your week but I believe the metabolism benefit by adding a 3rd day would be more beneficial than extending the 2 rides. I don't know enough to explain why, just a gut feeling

anyone else sleep that much? I would love getting 8 hrs of regular sleep!

Thanks!

H

Perhaps I was exaggerating. I go to bed with the theoretical potential of eight hours of sleep every night. In reality, I am up a couple of times a night micromanaging the sleeping arrangements of our two dogs. The little dog delights in taking anything she wants that belongs to the bigger dog, while the bigger dog stands helplessly by, incapable of any assertive action. The little dog knows the bigger dog just wants to sleep in his dog bed alone and if she crawls into bed with him, he will get up and be displaced. Since they have equivalent dog beds, the bigger dog could just go sleep in the little dog's bed and all would be well. But the bigger dog knows his rights (although he cannot assert them)- the little dog has stolen his bed and thats wrong and theres nothing he can do but cry. Which wakes me (but not Mr. H) up once or twice a night at this point- this particular dynamic started a month or so ago and has been escalating. Tonight they are both getting locked up in seperate pens. Don't mess with my training schedule. ;)

H

Think about the purpose of each workout and/or block of workouts.

If performed properly, High Intensity Intervals should leave you spent. Even the longish ones you're probably doing as part of the new century TCCP. By doing 'more' you're just adding to the fatigue your muscles have experienced and hindering their ability to recover for the next workout.

Time better spent would be if you used that 'extra hour' per week to read your copy of The Cyclist's Training Bible:-)

That would help you understand where the time investment break points are for yourself and help you transition your training from the 6-9 hours a week that TCCP is based on to the 10+ hours per week where a more traditional Friel'esque plan pays dividends.

Then, you'll be able to actually 'plan' for optimizing the use of 90 minutes, twice per week, instead of making ad hoc adjustments.

The exception to this might be if you were using those 30 extra minutes for very light load, high foot speed, cadence work. But, I would probably put such drills at the beginning of the workout, as part of an extended warmup, preceeding any HII.

Ok, the obvious answer is to get 2 kennels to separate the dogs. Use the new-found time for more sleep or spinning.

Our dog loves his kennel at night.

Lol, I guess you missed the part stating that is exactly what we are going to do. We are using x-pens instead of kennels, but the same exact idea.

H

Well.
http://i808.photobucket.com/albums/z...ompousBomb.jpg

OP and I are doing the TCTP. If the schedule says wack yourself with a skillet at the end of a ride, then I'm carrying one downstairs with me.

As for me, because of my schedule I intend to keep the workouts on the short side.

Actually, BigFred and I have had an exchange previously where he has recommended the Friel book over the TCTP. He knows that I have both both haven't read the Friel book yet. I have stated reading Friel is my next priority, so he's just pushing me to start what I already told him I was going to do. I don't think he's criticizing either of us or the TCTP.

BTW, I am only semi following the TCTP. I am very time crunched during the week, but not at all on the weekends. So I do TCTP intervals and take 3 days off cycling (yoga, swim and rest) like in TCTP, but on the weekends I do very long rides, unlike TCTP. I'm already riding 10-12 hrs per week, 150ish miles. BigFred and CarbonFiberBoy have been very helpful in assisting me in thinking through the changes I've needed to make to my particular program and I'm very grateful to them both!

H

You are killing it. You keep up like this, you'll be able to ride a double this summer. Should you be so crazy . . . You're on a very similar schedule to what I used for double/brevet prep a few years ago, when I could still do midweek intervals between killer weekend rides.

LMAO..Can't remember last time i slept that long.

I hope my response wasn't misinterpreted. I'm not being critical of Heathpack or Dudelsack, or anyone else who adopts a HII rich training plan. I am however, somewhat critical of HIIT plans in general. I have the right to be, I've used them and am personally familiar with some of the pitfalls.

I have no idea what Dudelsack is up to or where he's at.

Heathpack, it's sounds like you're doing great. You have sufficient time available to more effectively train than by following TCTP. Some of your questions are only going to be accurately answered by considering things like your personal stress and fatigue levels. TCC doesn't provide you with the tools to do this. And, those of us on the other side of the interwebz aren't any better equipped. However, YOU will be much better able to answer your own questions as you gain the requisite knowledge and experience. The Trainig Bible will really fill in a bunch of the 'knowledge' gaps you currently experience. Then, you'll have a context to better accumulate, understand and register your experiences.

Chances are that reading The Training Bible won't result in huge changes to how you train. The time you have avaibable and when will remain the same. The nature of how to best use that time will remain. But, you'll be empowered to design and modify your own training sessions. And, perhaps just as importantly, how to transition between your two events this summer. Based on our previous discussion, there isn't enough time between them to perform a TCTP 3 week recovery and then 8 weeks of build prior to the next event. So, a modified plan is going to be a neccessity.

My biggest concern is that upon reading the Training Bible you won't be returning with as many questions and we'll be deprived of hearing about how well your training is going. It's always great to hear positive news from those whos efforts are paying dividends.

Jeez, that is complicated! Our cat just decides which foot area she wants to block from us, and does it.. When one of us kicks or shoves her too much in our sleep, she wakes, groans at us, and takes the other one's foot space.

I'd let your resting heart rate tell you. If your RHR is elevated when you wake up in the mornings, then you need more sleep/recovery. If it is normal, then the amount of training and sleeping you are doing should be fine.

Same here. I'd have to cut cycling and swimming except for commuting to get close to 8 hours.

Wake up at 7, work at 8 (optimistically), leave at 5 and arrive at gym to coach at 6. Finish coaching at 9, home by 10, dinner and wind down by 11. If I need to shower it cuts into sleep time. To swim I get up an hour and a half earlier. The days without coaching I can (A) train after work or (B) sleep early enough to make up for lost sleep.

Training beats not training, even if it cuts into sleep.

Then weekend races require getting up at 5 am, but with coaching I can't get to bed before 11 on Friday. Saturday night the options are (A) skip out on going out after dinner time (B) live on 6 hours of sleep.

It's a very rare night that I get 8 hours of sleep. It doesn't happen weekly.

I could totally never live with your schedule, maybe I am way older than you, though. I'm on my feet much of the day at work and the nature of my job means that what goes down in a given day is frequently chaotic, 100% of the day it's intellectually engaging (I have to be on my A game every moment of every day) and frequently emotionally draining. I work in theory four 10 hour days with 2 hours of commuting, but in reality I leave when my work is done, be that 4pm or midnight. When I get home, I eat dinner, do something relaxing and go to bed. My work makes me tired, so I generally sleep pretty well and I'm too tired to stay up late.

What kind of coaching are you doing? Is it a second job? Do you think the lack of sleep will catch up with you eventually?

H