I’ve recently been out for around 6 weeks with a pulled calf.
I have been keen to get back on the bike and have been doing up to 30mins of Zone 2 riding on my turbo for the last week.
So what comes next? Do I continue to do short workouts but increase the intensity working my way up to ‘The Cure’ or ‘Joyride’ and then increases the length of the workouts after. Or do I go for longer workouts with low intensity such as ‘Open 60’ or ‘Open 120’ and then increase the intensity and add in intervals after.
If you’re doing 30mins Z2 I would do a 30-35min ride next with a short tempo or sweetspot section. If you get no pain then, I would increase to 45mins with a bit more sweetspot. If that’s OK, 45mins with a small dose of work at FTP (even just 1 minute perhaps) or a very short VO2 max effort. If that’s good, then increase to an hour with mixed intensities but make the intensity durations short. Then increase the duration.
So… Both, but neither. What I mean by that is I’d increase the intensity by doing increased harder efforts but NOT to the point of doing a whole session like joyride. Introduce harder intervals but make those intervals shorter than they usually would be. Once you’ve done some VO2 power efforts and are then able to increase their duration you can then feel confident about getting back to proper sessions.