Split long bike??

Carole Harbison

Hacking the early in-season here...wondering if anyone has experience/thoughts on splitting one of the long weekend rides much like we're splitting the long run in the last couple years' plans. I have some weekend travels that will make doing two long rides on the weekend impossible, and want to move one of them to a weekday doing, say, 90 minutes in the morning and another 90 mins-2h in the evening. 

A bit of googling on the subject found one coach who suggested it could help with building endurance since recovery from the morning ride would be incomplete, but suggested keeping both rides below the aerobic threshold (~75% of FTP, like the ABP ride). Out of necessity in week 6 of the 2018 Full plan I did the weekend FTP work this morning with a bit more in Z2-Z3, and planned to ride some more Z2-Z3 tonight. 

I think I'd try to avoid doing this later in the plan, but am hopeful that I can build endurance without just building pointless fatigue this way in the next couple to few weeks. I plan to keep one long weekend ride intact! Thoughts??

Al Truscott

Carole, remember that you're not "officially training for an Ironman" until week 9 (some would even say week 11) of a 20 week plan. At this stage, its still mostly about building speed and strength. Endurance is a secondary consideration. If you you were someone who had never before done or trained for, say a century ride, must less an Ironman, then, yes, getting used to the idea of a long ride from a mental and rear-end perspective does have some value at the stage of your training. But you are familiar with how to pace and fuel rides longer than 2-3 hours to avoid bonking and overusing leg muscles, and so IMO it's not necessary to nail every single long ride in the progression from a fitness perspective.

If it were me and I could not fit in the prescribed "long" ride, I would emphasize getting a bit more intensity on that day, rather than trying to fill the volume cup completely. Say two hours @ 0.78-0.82 IF (20 min warm-up, 90' @ 0.8-0.85, 5' cool down).

As a side note, while there are many ways to skin the IM/Triathlon training cat, trying to mix together different coaching philosophies and strategies seems problematic to me. The EN plans have a sound logical progression to them, based on one way of thinking about IM bike training ("fast before far"). Other plans we come across may have different progression strategies.

John Withrow

If you logistically can't do the long ride, I don't see any problem with splitting it and getting in the work you can, when you can. 

But think about your personal situation before you follow some random dude's advice off the internet...   For instance, I am somebody who has less time to train than my body could actually absorb.  So if I were splitting my long rides out of necessity, I would be going hard for each of them (i.e. Zwift race or FTP intervals), at least for the morning one.  If you're struggling a bit in the afternoon session then just revert to ABP stuff.  If not, go at it hard again.  In many ways, this is all just a TSS accumulation game, especially during the build phases (final race prep is a bit different).

BUT, If you have a history of "Overtraining" or are new to the triathlon world, then it would be more conservative to just log the time in the saddle and not overdo them with FTP or VO2 work.

I think it's unlikely that you overdo it (on the bike) with splitting these longer efforts but doing the same (or slightly higher) total workloads (measured by TSS if you're a Trainingpeaks nerd like me).   The run is a slightly different story where excessive pounding with extra "speed work" is more likely to lead to injury.

Paul Curtin

Al Truscott said:

trying to mix together different coaching philosophies and strategies seems problematic to me. 

Agree with John and Al on this; you cannot cross the streams:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaLZHiJJnE

Paul Curtin

Carole -- I love the idea of a split bike.  I've done it before out of necessity and it worked okay for me.  Don't expect much that second ride ... zone 1-2 easy spinning

But I'm not keen on the idea of moving it to mid-week; that messes up the other WKOs.  I peeked at Week 6 of the IM plan and it has a hard run on Tuesday and a long run on Thursday.  Adding a ton of bike work on Wednesday could add unbalanced stress.  Maybe push that run to Friday if your weekend is going to be completely sideways

Let us know how it works out!

Carole Harbison

Good input all! Totally agree following random internet advice isn't the way to go, but it's interesting to see how many different ways people skin the training cat. I am definitely moving around the other workouts this week (and most weeks, let's be honest) but use the principles of separating workouts with any intensity and having 1-2 days that are "easy" at regular intervals. 

Since I felt like I could manage it, I did the two rides with intensity yesterday--the first half of the weekend ride with FTP work (8, 12, 6 at Z4) then Z2-Z3 for a total of 90 mins, then in the PM did a 30 min race and got notified from Zwift that it raised my FTP. Ha!

Today I did a 35min TRP run and tonight I'll do an aerobic 45-60 mins on the bike with long run moved to Friday. I also dropped down the intensity of Tuesday's run,  I have to be careful with too much run threshold work in the best of situations.

Hack on!