Double days, hard

Training
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Heya

I’m re-thinking my current plan, where I will do hard runs and bikes on the same day (Tu,thu,sat).

I don’t expect to have a problem doing them, but I am wondering whether I’m gaining as much as if I only did one hard session per day.

The idea is to stick to easy days easy, hard days hard principle, to ensure good recovery.

But I’m also thinking “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” and “minimum effective dose”.

E.g.

Tu am bike - long vo2 intervals, pm - club run, threshold 8-10km

Wed am 20min jog, pm 1hr swim

Thu am bike - short vo2 intervals, pm - club track intervals

Fri am 20min jog, pm 30min easy spin

Sat am bike - 9-12min threshold intervals followed by 20-25min of threshold during park run

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Probably people with more knowledge than me but I’d advise against it and if you’re fatigued will you actually reach the targets for the second session.

Less of a problem if you’re in your 20’s and a pro.

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Remember those days, you could pretty much do what you wanted with little consequence. Recovery was so much quicker.

Doing stupid :poop: like drinking 10-12 pints and running a sub 20 minute 5km the next day to go and pick the car up. :laughing: probably would have been better without the stupid sh1t though.

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The answer will come when the quality of the “quality” sessions becomes compromised…why not back to back but overnight…so pm and am with a recovery session pm…

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What is a long VO2 interval?

Why a 20. min dreaded J word?

Why two bike VO2 sessions?

Two Js???

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Its a big depends…

This is how I look at it…

If you can’t hit the required quality you need to change something.

Not early season, but as fitness is starting to come I like to start to introduce double days, but with bigger days (more quality, more load) comes more recovery requirement, i.e. two easy days before the next big day.
Not sure if true for most, but I find I am much more tolerate of a large training load the fitter I am (relative to my own fitness of course)

…

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I would say you’ll either see a decline in the quality of the hard sessions over time, or a decline in the quality of your recovery afterwards, or both!

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Followed by injury or illness.

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Yeah what’s the intended outcome of doing two ‘hard’ sessions?

I know if I did that I’d need time to recover after, making both sessions largely pointless.

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The idea is for some easy day(s) easy between the hard ‘quality’ days instead of all days hard or moderately hard when there is never proper recovery.
I think the main issue is the overall number of quality/hard sessions and trying to cram them in and maintaining adequate recovery.

Personally I have no problems with double threshold or even VO / threshold in the same day if…

  1. I have a good aerobic foundation behind me or to put it a different way, decent level of fitness
  2. They are different disaplines, bike AM, run 9-10 hours later (for me only works that way around because the bike doesnt damage the muscles as much as running does.)
  3. After the first session, within life constraints I’m doing everything to prepare for the next session, eating well, resting when I can.
  4. I’m not having any life stress be it work or otherwise
  5. I only doing one or in exceptional circumstances when recovering extremely well two doubles a week.
  6. I have two easy days before the next quality/session

No way could I do two double days consistently and would not even consider three.

I have robbed this but I like the…

Big stress, big(ger) recovery idea.

Or more stress more recovery.

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I like this approach and do this more often than ‘true’ double days where its AM / PM, at least to start with, it informs me if I am ready for AM/PM (or at least might be.)

This is how I start to stack quality a bit closer together, its still a double within 12 hours or so, but you’ve go that sleep recovery inbetween sessions. It can be a nice stepping stone to the AM/PM approach.

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You’ll get injured and/or your performances will drop through the floor until you suffer from burnout.

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Yes.

And getting more hard work into more disciplines. Ie instead of two hard bikes and one hard run on distinct days, three hard bikes and three hard runs, per week.

Do we need that much stimulus?

Then you start asking, well what about heavy lifting - should that be done on this hard days too?

Some people say you should swim hard every session…do those go into the hard days too..?

How far do we take this principle of hard and easy days?

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No.

We don’t. As in hard, easy, hard, easy etc days

Appropriate stress and adequate recovery.
Might be 12, 24, 36, 48 hours recovery, it depends.

More stress more recovery.

If it helps think of sessions as connected to the following and preceeding sessions.

A certain workout or training day might require a sequence easier sessions

Going for a run…

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If that’s at 6:30/km pace then I might start listening to you :wink:

That’s very certain. Particularly without parameters as to how long the hard session are.

Let’s say the body will be in ‘recovery mode’ the following day, will it equally repair the running and bike damage? Or can it only do one at a time? Does it only do half the recovery if recovering from bike and run damage?

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That’s two hard days in a row, breaking the hard/easy day principle. I’d have six hard days to cover the same work, and only one easy day.

If the hard/easy day principle is no good, happy to hear your thoughts.

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It’s a fair point. For me a hard session/day is not an all out session by any means. Depending on where you are in the annual cycle, it’s hard to give examples but anything deliberately at or over threshold effort is in the hard category to me.

So you can imagine making both sessions achievable. Or if it isn’t you can space more, fuel better, or tweak the structure of the workout.

On occasions I’ve done this a low, so as per the OP, doing the work is not really the question I’m posing - it’s how we know whether we would benefit from it?

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Out of interest what is your definition of hard? Do you measure the sessions in TSS? I’m curious as my session today was a V02 bike set (44 TSS) and a 90 and 60s threshold (80 TSS) run set. My set tomorrow is a threshold bike set (48 TSS) and Z2 run (72 TSS).
If I can understand your workouts then I can comment on the amount of work your sessions will take.
Edit - having looked at my TP account my coach is looking for me to hit 500-600TSS per week

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Did that have to be exactly 6:30/km, how far?

11km at 5:50/km 114 bpm is that near enough. :wink: Finished feeling better than I started which was the goal. Is that :hear_no_evil_monkey:

I was trying to be concise, I couldn’t think of a scenario where it would be a good idea. IMO (as laid out).
Moderate enough to cope with I think it would just be lots of fatigue without a positive fitness gain.
Hard enough for performance gains and I think, the people that said illness and or injury are probably correct.

Your general question, how do you know if there might be a benefit,
past experience (what works for you),
law of averages,
what generally works,
experimentation,
the amount of risk you are willing to take verses possible but not guaranteed rewards.
Etc.

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I don’t know when the next intended quality session in suggestion / question why not PM/AM, but its 36 hours easy / recovery if you go into another PM/AM cycle the next PM (unless my maths is incorrect)

I did the PM / AM quality session thing Monday PM and Tuesday AM with PM being easy/recovery, I won’t do another quality session until Thursday though. Tomorrow evening might progress easy to moderate if recovering well.

Summary
Friday - Rest / off
Saturday - AM Hard, in the form of moderate volume (25km)
Sunday - AM Easy bike, PM Very easy run, technical swim i.e easy
Monday - AM Recovery bike, PM Quality run 17km including 12km MP to tempo
Tuesday - AM Quality Bike 2x 20’ threshold, PM Very easy run.
Wednesday - AM Easy bike, PM Easy to moderate run

All that to say just my opinion but its better to keep the quality higher quality and spreading it out a bit more, that might mean spreading the sessions into 10 days instead of a week.

Details with more notes AKA boring

Friday - AM/PM Easy / Recovery
Plan:
AM or PM Easy Bike,
PM/Midday Very Easy run.
Actual: Total days rest
Notes / Why? Because the day at work was massively stressful, any training would not have served me well. Save it for the key session tomorrow.

Saturday - AM Moderate but Hard given the volume
Plan:
AM 25km Moderate Long Run (note not an easy run)
PM Rest
Actual: as per plan, seasons bests for 10 miles to 25km but still at training pace, not racing
Notes / Why? Had recovered well, good nights sleep, followed plan, tomorrow is Sunday easy volume and AM Monday recovery, so can push it a bit

Sunday - AM/PM Easy Volume
Plan:
AM Easy bike 2hr
PM Very Easy Run 6-7km
PM Club Swim
Actual: as plan
Why? Notes: bike felt easy, the run needed to be very easy (finished it feeling better than at the start) Swim, well I can’t really swim well so mainly technical work, not taxing or fatiguing from a fitness point of view. Not much if an addition to the fatigue from yesterday if any, but decent volume

Monday - AM Easy / PM Hard
Plan:
AM 30 minutes easy bike, loosen up the legs.
PM Run 17km with 12km at Marathon pace or a few second per km faster about 85% of optimistic current 5km pace.
Actual: As plan
Why? / Notes: AM bike nice to spin the legs, ended getting of the bike refreshed, lunch time a quick 1.3km at about the 12km main set pace for the PM run. Idea to see if recovered enough for the session. PM session went well, legs heavy in the last 1 - 2km but could have done 13-14km at that pace if really pushing it.

Tuesday - AM Hard / PM recovery/easy
Plan:
AM Bike 60 minutes 2x 20-minute
PM Easy 11km Run
Actual: as plan
Why / Note: Quality in the morning and then appropriate recovery before next key / quality session. Finished the easy run feeling better and the end and better the long it went on.

Wednesday - AM Easy, PM Easy (possibly easy to moderate)
Plan:
AM Bike 90 - 120 minutes easy
PM Run 10-12km easy or easy to moderate with 5x strides
Actual AM 105-minute bike
Notes: sleep good, hydration no so good. Target middle to lower of the ranges planned

That is how I think about planning it :hear_no_evil_monkey:

Have an overall progressive plan and a rough structure so you have a chance of planning it around life and successfully getting the work done, but be prepare to rip it up and change as needed because life and how the body responds.

:hear_no_evil_monkey::hear_no_evil_monkey::hear_no_evil_monkey:

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