Training smorgasbord

Responded to a forum question yesterday asking how people dealt with training plans, where planned workout could not happen for one reason or other.

This was something I learned from last years experience. I found that trying to plan a given workout on a given day was both time consuming and pointless. More often than not I did not do the workout and sometimes even when I did some of the fun was taken out because it felt like going back to school.

So this year have adopted a smorgasbord approach. I have a range of workouts suited to the training phase I am in and pick and choose from that according to time, conditions and how I feel. I use WKO and its performance management chart to take care of ensuring my overall training load is on plan.

Today was good example. I had a day off so had planned a middle distance fixed "E3" ride. I got up to find that weather was combination of wind and rain and prospect of slogging round for a few hours outside had little appeal. So instead I stayed indoors and did a highish (for base) M1 session where I ramped up from 230W to 300W over 60 mins. The whole session including warm up/down came in at TSS 115 IF 0.847 (This compares to my last fixed ride that was 2:40 long, with a TSS of 106 and IF 0.647, showing loads comparable, albeit at different intensity )

I felt really good and strong doing the workout and overall am sure it did me more good than slavishly following a rigid plan.