I think you may have said this before Brendan but you could split workouts into at least two types, one aimed at improving physiology and structured so you can manage the load over weeks, and one aimed at performance be it racing or TT. The two clearly overlap but doing hard group rides a lot (perhaps good for some racing practice) will mean you could lose control over the type and level of stimulus you want. But if you only do highly structured and controlled workouts (which includes VO2 sessions) you’ll get good stimulus but not the practice of having to respond in race type situations. So a mix of the two sounds right, and perhaps more structure early in the season?
exactly. structure helps you build in progression. otherwise we would all just do kitchen sink work, or race in place of training, because that's as specific as it gets. train with structure, and then break the structure close to racing.
I think you may have said this before Brendan but you could split workouts into at least two types, one aimed at improving physiology and structured so you can manage the load over weeks, and one aimed at performance be it racing or TT. The two clearly overlap but doing hard group rides a lot (perhaps good for some racing practice) will mean you could lose control over the type and level of stimulus you want. But if you only do highly structured and controlled workouts (which includes VO2 sessions) you’ll get good stimulus but not the practice of having to respond in race type situations. So a mix of the two sounds right, and perhaps more structure early in the season?
exactly. structure helps you build in progression. otherwise we would all just do kitchen sink work, or race in place of training, because that's as specific as it gets. train with structure, and then break the structure close to racing.