Weekend outdoor workout order

Training
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I am doing an indoor/outdoor plan and the weekend/outdoor workouts usually consist of 1 “interval” type workout and one long endurance+ workout. Sometime the endurance rides are on Saturday and other weeks on Sunday. I know the order of the midweek workouts is critical to fitness gains, but can i switch the order of the weekend workout without reducing the fitness benefits? Mostly I just want to line up good weather for interval type workouts.

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Totally unofficial answer but yes you can. I mostly say that because that’s what I do! Maybe it depends very slightly on what you do on the Friday but I think there’s more than enough “margin of error” in the non-custom plans to allow for sensible tweaking to make them work for the weather etc.

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I have a question that is similar enough to the OP that I thought I would post it here. I’m new to Sufferfest and just started the 100m Gravel Grinder Training Plan. The schedule has a long ride on a Friday which I can’t really do given my conventional M-F/9-5 work schedule and then an indoor workout or shorter outdoor ride on Saturday and then a mix on Sundays, sometimes it is a rest day which again, doesn’t mesh with my work schedule.

Did I miss a setting when I set up the plan originally? Something that would have resulted in a more conventional set up, long ride on the weekend, rest day on Monday or other weekday? Alternatively, what is the best approach to swapping out the endurance day for Saturday or Sunday?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

  • John
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Hey @JohnW
Welcome to SUF! It sounds like you started your plan on a Sunday.
No worries on swapping weekend rides. Good advice from @JamesT
in the above comments. Let us know if you have any other questions.

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You can choose the start/end date when you apply the plan, and that date can be any day of the week. You can even play about with the dates and see how it looks in the calendar before applying the plan. Look for the “plan dates” box where it says SELECT PLAN. Once the plan is applied you can’t shift it but you can delete and reapply - go by end date if you’re already part way in and don’t want to start again from day zero (e.g. pick an end date ~10 weeks from now if you’re already 2 weeks in to a 12 week plan). The FAQ page probably explains it better https://thesufferfest.com/blogs/training-resources/in-app-training-plans-faq

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Great, thank you for the additional detail! I’ll check out the FAQ and look at reapply the plan to suit my schedule.

  • John
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James/Spencer,

Thanks for the guidance, if I would have read the plan description completely the issue I raise is addressed, “endurance rides are on Sat/Sun when you select a Sunday as a finishing date” or something like that. I deleted the plan, restarted it w/a Sunday end date and its all good now. The event is on a Saturday but I’ll just tweak the schedule when I get there.

Thanks again for the assistance and quick response.

  • John
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Typically you want to do the interval workout first when you have good legs and can get the most quality out of your workout. Then you do the longer endurance ride after when you have fatigued legs and you benefit more from the endurance portion.

But, if you need to fit them into your schedule, it won’t completely wreck your plan to switch them around once in a while and you might see a few odd benefits here and there from making your body do something it’s not used to.

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I’m coming into this a bit late, like a year late because I was looking for a different type of conversation today but thought I would drop a note about my thoughts on this topic. Traditionally, I am in complete agreement about Intervals while fresh then the endurance ride which results in gaining an expanded generalized endurance however if you were to switch this up once it awhile it would be much more like a race scenario were everything is easy peasey steady eddy in the beginning and then towards the end things heat up, so switching them up would have fatigue in your legs but also work on anaerobic endurance and hitting those targets that you need to hang on in the end and therefore possibly gaining some mental fitness in what your legs can really take.