Top Tips when following your Training Plan

Training
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To help you make the most out of this training plan we have created a series of articles to help walk you through some issues that most people face at some point during a training plan. A little extra reading now will go a long way in ensuring your success over the course of your plan!

When you start a training plan, we often have questions that come up quite often, check out the articles and links below to find out more and make sure you are getting the most out of your plan!

TSS Values:

The “Planned” values found in our app and in TrainingPeaks are based on the workout files that only use FTP, which does not necessarily match up with the power targets you were actually given in the video. For some riders, you will regularly see IF values well above “planned” and for others, you will regularly see IF values well below “planned”. It’s OK, don’t worry. Keep calm and Suffer on.

If you want to learn more, you can read up on how 4DP impacts TSS and IF here:

Heart Rate Monitors:

If you plan on using heart rate to monitor your training efforts, here are the main things to keep in mind.

  1. Heart Rate has a lag time, it will not start increasing until well after you have changed intensity.
  2. Heart Rate should not be used to guide shorter duration efforts. This is why some intervals in your outdoor workouts do not have Heart Rate targets.
  3. Heart Rate can be influenced by sleep, hydration, life stress, medication etc. Try and take those factors into consideration when using heart rate to guide your efforts.
  4. The heart rate targets you see are based off of your LTHR as set in Full Frontal. If you use a different method to determine your LTHR the zone targets you see here might be incorrect.

Want to find out more:

Your Outdoor Structured Workouts:

To ensure you get the maximal return on suffering, some plans include structured workouts for outdoor riding on the weekend. Make sure you have a look through so you know you are still working towards your plans outcomes:

Weekend Group Rides:

Riding bikes is fun, and few things can be more fun than going out and smashing it with some of your cycling friends.

With that in mind, we understand if you want to add your weekend group ride into your normal training, and since we can’t stop you, we want to make sure you consider these guidelines.

  1. Swap the scheduled “harder” weekend ride with your group ride. On the other weekend day you should aim to complete an Endurance+ ride that keeps your total weekend ride time close to what is planned.
  2. If the group ride leaves you holding on for dear life, then replace one of your hard weekday rides with an easier recovery/Endurance+ session. What ride to cut out? The ride with the lowest star rating in your Full Frontal determined Strength.
  3. On rest weeks you should do your best to avoid your group ride altogether. The key to getting faster is hitting the training hard, and then hitting the recovery hard. If you want to be the hammer of the group ride you need to be smart about when you give your body time to rest.
  4. Have fun!

I hope you found these recommendations useful, if you want to keep reading, click on the link below so you can find more in-depth articles on multiple training topics:

15 Likes
2

Great article.
I just started my 2nd SUF program (full century, 12 weeks), and I am also looking to combine more outdoor riding from now on. Fitness kickstarter (1st program) was great, but I missed the outdoor riding and did not want to overtrain too much.

Two questions;

  1. The outdoor rides in the full century program are mostly on weekends. I guess it is not a problem if I swap these with weekdays? Or is the order of trainings within a week important? Other than taking care of intense/recovery? E.g. not a 4 hr outdoor ride just before the nine hammers or sth.
  2. I am riding outdoors, mostly just to enjoy being outdoors, not looking for intense rides/going fast, especially not during winter. If the planned outdoor workouts are trainings, I might not be able to follow these accurately, also because of the traffic etc. Is that a big problem for the full century 12w program?

Thanks.

3

Hey, sounds like you’re doing well with your training!

The plans are built on the presumption people have more time to train on the weekends so thats when the outdoor rides are. If you want to mix up the order a little that’s fine but make sure you are taking enough recovery after hard sessions.

The closer you follow the plan the better results you will see but if you can’t do some of the outdoor rides as prescribed don’t worry about it as some training is better than no training. Keep getting those miles in and you will ace your century!