Just looking for a little guidance for tomorrow’s Sunday 2hr Zone 2 ride, target TSS 98
Each day this week I rode a little longer in Z2 after my workouts (made them yellow!) , today on my SS group ride which was to be 2.5hrs with target TSS of 140, I hit that target in 2hrs so I went a little longer but stopped at the 2.5hrs. So I have a surplus of TSS so far for the week.
Tuesday target TSS 68 did 84
Wednesday target TSS 67 did 83
Thursday target TSS 47 did 66
Today (Saturday) target TSS 140 did 164
Again all the surplus was in Z2, I only have 22 TSS to hit my prescribed goal for the week.
Do I ride the full 2hrs or just ride to get the 22 I need tomorrow?
Well the plan instructions always say more zone 2 is better if you have the time and can recover from it, so I’d think the answer is do you have the time and feel like you can recover from whatever amount you choose to do.
Certainly you’ve earned the right to do something else with your Sunday if you like!
HI Gavin,
Can I kindly ask how did you achived a higher TSS on a daily basis if you are following a plan?
Did you manually modifed the plans?
I am interested to see by doing more a day as prescribed by the plan would be required more resting?
It’s a Z2 ride so you can flex this a lot depending on how you feel, do more, do less. Keep the periodization in mind too, weekly TSS builds each week as you move through each 3 week progression, before dropping for the rest week. So what you do may depend on which week you’re in as well. I’m personally bent towards absolutely emptying the tank at the end of week 3, and going into a rest week, otherwise I’m more likely to keep to weekly TSS. If you go over in week 1, are you going to follow that through the next 2 weeks as well and do even more to keep the progression up? The other thing I’ll look at is how monstrous the Tuesday ride is looking, I treat that as a #1 priority for the week and want to be strong for it, so again over-cooking it on a Sunday is a risk, if you’re struggling with recovery.
I’m completing week 2 of 18wk SS and feeling pretty good so far with the load. I’ve been riding Z2 on average 2hr/day 5 days/wk since we’ve been forced to ride inside here in Toronto, so since December, before starting the plan, and the week before I started I took it easy in preparation.
I have gone over on TSS without modifying the plan as in my pre-activity comments in the workout session area of TrainingPeaks it read - more is better so ride longer in zone 2 if you can and have time AS LONG as it doesn’t affect your recovery and POWER OUTPUT for the workouts downstream
This was on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s workouts. So I inquired about it last Sunday and was advised I could do up to 30mins after a session in Z2 if I felt up to it, so I did.
What to do then tomorrow, maybe at least ride an hr or so maybe 1.5 see how things feel and if things are really good go the full distance.
Sounds to me like you’ll be fine with 2 hours of Z2, I wouldn’t sweat it too much. Might be a bit more of a dilemma if you were talking about a 4hr+ sweetspot ride with ~300 TSS on the menu, and you only had 22 TSS remaining. Remember the zones are pretty wide too, so you can always go more moderate in Z2 and knock the 2hrs (or more out).
Cool, ya you’re right that Z2 band is pretty wide. I do however try and hold that in the middle of the band after Saturday’s ride.
I don’t Zwift and all my training is on rollers so I’ve kinda been doing my own intervals for Saturday’s SS group rides, last week I did 12 mins with 6mins rest, today I did 15mins with 7mins rest to make sure I surpass last weeks total time in ss zone - hope & trust this is okay. The neat part which I’ve noticed is the further I get in to the workout on Saturday’s the better I start to feel and my power increases slightly the past couple intervals, I gather that’s the diesel engine they refer to!
