I've read a lot about the importance of 'consistency' in effective training, and am wondering how people manage this when they have wildly fluctuating training time available week to week?
I'm lucky as my job and family commitments generally give me lots of flexibility to train, and some weeks I'll have 12-16 hours available, but my work forces me to travel frequently and I can often be away from home (and bike) for some or all of a week and my available time might drop to perhaps 6 hours or sometimes only just a weekend ride or 2. For me the challenge is that there is no pattern to this, and it literally can vary this much week to week, although luckily I'm rarely away more than 1 full week at a time. Typically 40 weeks of the year I am away between 2-5 nights. I usually have some visibility of the schedule 3-6 weeks out so can plan to some extent but it makes consistency impossible to achieve unless I simply plan to the lowest number of hours each week.
Right now I tend to use the time available so some weeks do more L2-3 volume and others I do less volume at higher L3-4 intensity. If I'm away all week then I try to ramp up as much as possible the week or 2 before and use it as a rest week. This year was my 2nd full year riding and according to Golden Cheetah I saw my CP rise from 201w to 270w across the year, so I'm making good progress, but am wondering how to step it up for 2012? I should add I'm NOT a racer but focused on longer sportives including European mountain events and a 3 day 340 mile early summer event again in 2012. At 75kg I need to continue to focus on FTP development and endurance for long (100+ mile events).
The big question for me is whether to continue with a highly varied training approach or try and have more week to week consistency and perhaps leave training time 'unused' some weeks? I'd appreciate any thoughts please.
Many thanks
I'm lucky as my job and family commitments generally give me lots of flexibility to train, and some weeks I'll have 12-16 hours available, but my work forces me to travel frequently and I can often be away from home (and bike) for some or all of a week and my available time might drop to perhaps 6 hours or sometimes only just a weekend ride or 2. For me the challenge is that there is no pattern to this, and it literally can vary this much week to week, although luckily I'm rarely away more than 1 full week at a time. Typically 40 weeks of the year I am away between 2-5 nights. I usually have some visibility of the schedule 3-6 weeks out so can plan to some extent but it makes consistency impossible to achieve unless I simply plan to the lowest number of hours each week.
Right now I tend to use the time available so some weeks do more L2-3 volume and others I do less volume at higher L3-4 intensity. If I'm away all week then I try to ramp up as much as possible the week or 2 before and use it as a rest week. This year was my 2nd full year riding and according to Golden Cheetah I saw my CP rise from 201w to 270w across the year, so I'm making good progress, but am wondering how to step it up for 2012? I should add I'm NOT a racer but focused on longer sportives including European mountain events and a 3 day 340 mile early summer event again in 2012. At 75kg I need to continue to focus on FTP development and endurance for long (100+ mile events).
The big question for me is whether to continue with a highly varied training approach or try and have more week to week consistency and perhaps leave training time 'unused' some weeks? I'd appreciate any thoughts please.
Many thanks
