Advice please: low or moderate volume?

Training Training Plans
1

Hi all.

I’m training for Yorkshire Long Course Weekend, but not the run. It’s in 12 weeks time and I’m doing the long swim and middle distance bike, very close to a hilly metric century.

I would like help on choosing between the two options. Before this year I’ve raced standard distance (40km) aquabike so it’s a step up in distance. I spend about 3 hours a week swimming so don’t have a lot of time.

What I do have is along commute. It’s close to a 4 hour round trip. I’ve spent the past few months building up to the point where I can do that once a week and 1 indoor sessions, possibly getting to 2 by the end of the plan.

Either metric century plan option requires some adaptation. But would people recommend I scale the moderate down, or view my commute as extra zone 2 to the low volume plan? The terrain of my commute is the closest to home half is flatish half involving 3 moderate hills. I also have the option of train one-way cycle the other. Whichever I do I’ll be swapping the longer rides out for my commute.

TIA

C

1 Like
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How many hours a week are you cycling at the moment?

I would treat your 4hr commute as the long Z2 part of the SYSTM plan, but all SYSTM plans have the long Z2 rides on the weekend only i.e. day 6 and 7 of the plan. You’ll be best changing the the plan start date from the default of a Monday so that day 6 or 7 is the weekday that you do the long commute.

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According to Garmin not quite 4 hrs. I’ve always needed to shuffle workouts when I’ve done the TT plan in previous years.

At the moment I’m leaning towards the moderate, they start off almost identical. And it’s the length of the lower intensity rides that’s different between them.

I’m more worried about getting half way in then finding it’s too much. It’ll be a faff to swap in another plan at that point.