I’d like to boost my VO2 using one of the training plans, but keep Sundays free to ride with my club (Typically a 4-6 hour ride). Is there a way to designate a specific day to be kept free? or do I just ignore what the plan has for that day?
I have been doing the MAP plan, which would be good to give your V02 a boost (4 weeks) and started it on a Sunday, for the next 3 Sundays there is only a 25 min recovery ride planned so you can either skip it or as I do if i go on a club ride, just do it later on in the day. You can just remove it altogether as well so your plan does not show any “misses” of you can also shift the workouts around as you wish to suit any day you want to ride outside
Yeah. My club rides are usually pretty intense. I would choose a plan and the start (or finish) day of the plan so that it has hard workouts on the day that I would do the club ride, and then substitute the club ride for that workout. Of course you can always move or choose different workouts during the plan to adapt it to your needs keeping in mind the usual stress and recovery factors.
Thanks for the tip guys, I’ll give that a go
I think most plans have one harder session at the weekend and the other day as an endurance ride. I’d sub the harder session for the club ride, do endurance the other day at the weekend, but may be keep the total time on the bike the same by reducing the length of the endurance ride so you don’t over do it and can recover enough to hit the week day sessions hard.
yep, you probably want to build each week around the club ride. E.g. if it’s a hard club ride you sub out a hard workout, and then just make sure you go hard on that club ride. If it’s an easy club ride then you can sub out an easy day, but you gotta be extra, extra careful to keep the club ride easy. Then you adjust the workout days as needed if you’re more tired than expected. And you keep tabs on, are you still improving? And if no, then you consider how to pivot your plan.
other folks advocate sticking very strictly to the plans but i don’t think that makes a ton of sense, even if you’re not introducing club rides. Like, the plan will program workouts out months in advance, but the plan has no way of knowing what your needs will be at that point, it’s just an educated guess. So no matter what, learning to self-program or at least self-modify, is a key skill for long-term growth. that’s my view anyway
1 Like
I’ve gone for a 4 week training block to see how it goes. One thing I know for sure is that at my age if I’m tired there’s absolutely no point trying to force a session just because its in the plan! As long as Mondays are an easy day I should probably be OK, but its unlikely that my Sunday ride will be a very good match for the 60-90 minute sessions on the turbo that the plan suggests. Not going to lose sleep over it though, I ride primarily for pleasure, the training plan is an add-on 
2 Likes
Just as the others have proposed, go on with the plan and keep the Sundays reserved for group riding. I might have an activation spin on Saturday, and would recommend a recovery type session on Monday or a rest day.
Thanks Coach, will do 
1 Like