Half Monty - but the weather is sooooo good

Training Fitness Tests
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I’m guessing the answer is simply to push my schedule a week but I’d love any input.

I have a Half Monty scheduled for Saturday, with this week being a tapering week. BUT, the weather is awesome, Wednesday is a holiday and my buddy invited me on a 180k ride with an excellent coffee and cake stop around halfway. The ride won’t wreck me - I’m in Berlin and it’s as flat as a pancake here - but it’s not the scheduled half-hour Zone 2 ride in my current plan (200 mile gravel plan, 2 harder weeks/1 easier week). The ride will be Zone 2-3 but more like 5 hours than a half-hour.

Should I just push the test a week?

That means I’ll lose one week from the training plan, essentially. Then I’m six weeks out from my targeted event (1,000km gravel event).

Or just skip the fitness test, and keep the rest of the plan the same?

I doubt there’s a perfect answer, but any thoughts are welcome.

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My uneducated 2 SUF cents, take the ride with the friend. We train so we can enjoy riding so take it when you can get it.

You’ve got plenty of time until your epic gravel ride and this will not derail you.

You can shuffle the volume in the plan a bit, and reschedule the HM. You don’t need to be as fresh for HM as you do for FF or your event so I wouldn’t worry about that at all.

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Yeah, I think you’re right not to worry too much.

And to be clear, the question was less whether I should ride outside with a buddy or do the test inside while staring out the window :slight_smile: rather, is there a “best way” to compensate. I could have made that more clear.

Thanks much

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You were clear, I wasn’t :older_man:t2:

I think you could push the test out a bit. It’s not terribly taxing.

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My vote would be to do the test as scheduled. Half Monty is not too draining, and you should probably be recovered enough from Wednesday’s ride for it to be reasonably valid. If you really don’t like how the test went, you can ignore the results.

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Hey @barry, I agree 100% with Sir Wayne . I just re-read (again :man_facepalming:t3:) what I should have read the first time. Biggish ride on Wednesday, HM on Saturday.

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Get up earlier and do both? :man_shrugging:

:grin:

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Honestly, the argument „if you don’t like the results, just ignore them“ is so simple (and makes so much sense), I can’t argue with it :sunglasses:

Thanks all. I‘ll enjoy my ride in the sunshine, eat some cake at the halfway point & then slog away as planned on Saturday. The test will go however it goes!

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I only ride indoors to keep me going until I ride outdoors. When the wx is such that I want to ride outdoors, I quite indoor riding and Systm plans.

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