By Ric Stern
The Tour de France just wrapped up, and for many of us it stirs up that familiar daydream: if only we had unlimited time to train, we could be in it (if we could also wind back the clock and become 20 again ;-)!). I know I do!
Look, even if we could do that (have unlimited time to train and wind back the clock), the strong likelihood is that we couldn’t actually ride the Tour de France. But as far as I’m aware no one can wind back the clock (!), and most of us are stuck with limited training hours due to work, family, or aging. So this week’s article is about training with limited hours.
So how do you train for an event, a race, or simply to be the best, fittest you with limited hours? In many ways it’s not dissimilar to training with unlimited hours. However, if you’re lucky enough (is that the right term?) to be able to train for 30 hours a week, you have to moderate the intensity, because otherwise you become fatigued too quickly.
Does this mean that if you’re short on hours you should cram as much intensity in as possible? Unsurprisingly, the answer to that is also no, because you’d be too fatigued and unable to recover sufficiently from one workout to the next.
Riders tend to feel that having more hours to train is a good thing, and to a certain extent this is true. The more you do, the more you can do. But that shouldn’t stop a time-crunched rider from improving, or even doing better than someone with more hours. Okay, if you’re attempting the Transcontinental Race or RAAM and you’ve only got 6 hours of training time per week, then you’ll likely find these events or similar extremely difficult, but intelligent training can help you improve.
Intensity
Whether you’re doing ultra-distance events, long gravel rides, or short 1-hour criteriums, they all benefit from some intensive training. As we age, it’s likely that we have to space out our intensive rides to allow for recovery. Back-to-back intensity can be destructive (however, there is a training option based around this, which I’ll mention later). Protecting our recovery and prioritizing good nutrition and sleep helps. But how many intensive days should you be doing each week?
Most, but not all, riders should be aiming for 1 to 3 intensive sessions per week (with the proviso that 3 probably shouldn’t happen every week).
Threshold efforts, VO2max efforts, and supramaximal work are what I mean by intensive, and these sessions can be condensed into under an hour. You can get on the indoor trainer, get a 10-minute progressive warm-up completed, and then knock out the efforts. Done and dusted in 60 minutes.
Moderate
I’m not going to start this by saying it’s a trap, but lots of moderate training (we call this MIET, moderately intensive endurance training, at CycleCoach, but others call it Sweetspot) is the middle ground that lots of time-short riders fall into. Not quite long endurance, not quite hard enough to be intensive, and it’s reasonably easy to rack up more than several rides per week at this level. Never quite recovering, never quite pushing the envelope, it’s an easy way to build fitness and then find progression plateaus.
However, in my opinion, incorporating a reasonable amount of training at this level is useful and tends to help with increased fitness. The genre of training this relates to is pyramidal, and a fair chunk of work can be done this way (just not every day).
Low intensity, “long” rides
Whether you’re short on time, a track sprinter, or have a lot of time to train, a long ride (long for you) can be a great way to train, and this sort of low to moderate intensity should form the basis of your training (even if most of the rides aren’t that long). I’ve done steady rides on the indoor trainer that felt like they went on for hours but didn’t get past 60 minutes!
The training option I mentioned earlier
Block training is a way of condensing most of your intensive rides into one week. Let’s suppose you were doing a 4-week block of training aiming to increase your VO2max. The usual way of doing this would be, for example, to schedule 2 intensive sessions per week of VO2max intervals over the 4 weeks. With block training, you could end up doing say 4 or 5 VO2max sessions in week 1, creating a huge training overload (with large amounts of fatigue), and then in the remaining 3 weeks completing just 1 VO2max session along with endurance work.
However, the main issue with block training is that week 1 (where you cram the intensity) can be extremely fatiguing, which is definitely an issue as we age. Realistically, you’d have to work really quite hard at the recovery aspect to ensure you get through the training: making sure your nutrition is spot on, your mobility work, your sleep, reducing life stress, and so on. This can be difficult if you’re balancing work and family and don’t have a chef on hand to create macronutrient-correct meals!
The Key to Making Your Training Work
Work out what training time availability you really have. Be conservative. If you end up finding that your longest training day is going to be a Wednesday, then make this your long ride day. I know you may want to meet the group on a Saturday, but if that interferes with home life, then make the compromise and do the group ride only occasionally.
Then you can fit your shorter, more intensive, or moderate rides around this. Generally, a hard interval day is easier to slot into your training week in the day or two prior to the long ride. Scheduling it the day after a long ride can leave you fatigued and underperforming when you really want to be going hard.
Can you really do a good quality ride in less than 60 minutes?
Yes, really. Have a plan and cut some of the wishy-washy clutter out of it. 3 x 10 minutes at threshold with 5 minutes recovery between efforts: 10 minutes warm up, 45 minutes of threshold and recovery, and 5 minutes cooling off. Done.
Two sets of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off: 10 minutes warm up, 10 x 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 10 minutes easy recovery, and 10 x 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off. 5 minutes cool down. Done in 45 minutes.
Conclusion
With effective training that fits your schedule, even time-poor riders can improve and do well. Work out what time you have, prioritize fitting a long ride in if you can, and fit the intensity around it. You can add in some short steady rides as well, where there’s time. And don’t just do high intensity work (you’ll ramp up fatigue and burnout). Also, don’t skimp on nutrition around the key sessions (intensive sessions and long rides). It’ll help you recover quicker and adapt better for the next sessions.
Be realistic. On limited hours you can build real fitness and do well at most events, but if your goal is genuinely long (ultra-distance), there’s a limit to what a few hours a week will prepare you for.
If you’d like help putting your available time to best use, that’s exactly what MAP: The Build does. Tell us how much time you’ve genuinely got, a little or a lot, and your goals, and we’ll build a structured four-week training block around it, delivered straight into your TrainingPeaks calendar, ready to ride. £25 (around $33) per four weeks. Have a look here →
Ric Stern is founder of CycleCoach and has coached athletes to World Championship gold, Commonwealth medals, and Paralympic podiums across 29 years.
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