Hi guys,
a new user here, i am enjoying the platform and probably i will surely susbscribe after my trial period will end.
A few questions that seems not yet answered here on the forum.
I bike to work every day, it is a 15-20 min ride (in Z1-Z2) in the morning and the same in the evening. So it yields a 30-40 min a day with very low load (around 20 per day). Now i know that these rides won’t improve my fitness, but ignoring them completely it’s wrong (i already did that mistakes months ago, it takes its toll from fatigue management point of view), since at end of the week that will be 2, 2,5 h of ride time with a total load of about 90-110. Not negligible since i am training 6-7 h per week on top of that. Now my question is: how can i incorporate these commuting rides into the athletica training plan ? (right now i am in low volume mtb xco)
Now i created manually a workout to match these rides and manually added to the plan. Will the AI take into the considerations these “workouts” and adjust things accordingly ? Should i switch to mid-volume plan to tell the system that i will probably do more hours? At the beginning of the plan i got the warning that my fitness value was too high for the plan i selected (low volume mtb xco).
Thanks for your advice
BR Marco
Hi @marcodm ,
Welcome.
Incorrect. These rides will improve your fitness and they are indeed not negligible. Just record these as you are doing and the load will be included in your totals. You can replace any ‘aerobic development’ sessions for this work.
Yes - not necessary to manually create them unless you want to. Just record them and they will be captured as an unplanned session. Or move a similar session into place and change the duration planned if you wish.
This is up to you. The warning means you have the scope to do this if you wish to be challenged more. The choice is yours.
Hi Paul @Prof , thanks for the reply, really appreciate this. Now i know how to manage my daily routine into athletica, nice.
One final comment/question frome regarding my experience with the training plans.
I got this workout scheduled: mtb hot laps
It prescribes to do 2x 17 minutes efforts at a power output very close to my personal best for this duration (that is 252 W, the workout indicates to ride at the range 250-281 W) and it is not feasible for me to ride that long at that power output. Also the workout prescribe to do the ride in XCO course of something similar, but in the xco laps that have around where i train there is simply no terrain to keep that power constant or closely to that range. Too much technical sections, small descends, gnarly sections where sometimes you do not even pedal or have to accelerate hard to get over a steep kickers. So i was wondering, what is the scope of this workout ? I interpreted like this: instead of during 2x17 steady continuous effort, jut getting the total time in that power zone prescribed in the workout ( so 2x17’= 34 min of time at the prescribed zone sprinkled during the ride). It is correct, or the aim of the session was to really ride that hard for that long time ?
Thanks, really enjoing the platform now.
Hi @marcodm. Yes - this is where you need to begin to learn how to adjust any plan to your context. The idea for that session is race specificity and time at your race HR. Yes indeed, on a MTB race your power output will fluctuate like crazy, but your normalized power or MP4 will be around that power. Your HR will also be about that high. So here is where you should just go by feel. Do two efforts of about 17 min in length where you feel like you are in a race situation for 17 min. Then rest for 5, then do it again. Let the power and HR be what it will be and focus on the mental effort and feel first and foremost.