Splitting up your long workouts
400
Member
302 days
Sully800 posted 12 weeks ago.
Splitting up a workout does not have the same effect of one long effort. A half hour ride will not work your aerobic system enough to give you the benefit you intended from your longer ride. You are better off calling today's effort a medium ride, and then replacing your next scheduled medium ride with the 2 hours that you had planned for today (time permitting).
1435
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1269 days
brittda posted 12 weeks ago.
I honestly dont think a half hour would be worth it for the bike. I have read however (Runners World) with running 3 workouts, ie 5 miles in the am, 8 miles in the pm and then 5 again the next morning, for example draws similiar benefits to running the same 16 miles in one chunk. The idea is that your legs are not really getting the full rest they need to recover and thus you get a good "distance " work out in. Not sure if the same holds true on cycling though but 30 min does not seem like it would help much (but then again my week day rides are 2 hours so my weekend distance is more).
179
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339 days
Nutty posted 12 weeks ago.
Yeah the "30min isnt worth it" is what i ended up going with. Thanks for the advice.
Sully, i can honestly say it didnt even cross my mind to just trade it with another day, think that may end up being what i do. Thanks for pointing that out.
-Alan
My fancy new blogitty blog.
http://therunningfridge.blogspot.com/
676
Member
211 days
TriSooner posted 12 weeks ago.
Sully800 wrote:
I've read that for long runs, 20 miles for example, two 10 mile runs (one in the AM and one in the PM . . . on the same day) has the same effect. I can't cite the source right now, but my understanding from marathon training is that 20 miles in one day is 20 miles in one day. If this is in fact the case, it seems that it would also hold true for cycling. But for your original question, I don't think making up :30 is worth it.
Splitting up a workout does not have the same effect of one long effort.
So 325 hours a year of training and a 13hr finish gets you into the 16th percentile at Ironman Germany? Dude, wait, what?
91
Member
299 days
burnman posted 12 weeks ago.
Split workouts will have an additive effect (1) if the segments are each relatively long in duration, or (2) if they are high-intensity and in close succession. To piggyback on the marathon example, I wouldn't say that 10mi (am) + 10mi (pm) is exactly equivalent to 20mi, but it's probably not too far off. After the first 10mi, your muscles, joints, and aerobic system are stressed and could benefit from 12-24hr of recovery (guesstimating). If you keep that recovery period short (say < 8hr) then run the second 10mi, your body may still be sufficiently stressed to replicate a similar nonstop effort (maybe equivalent to 17-19mi).
Keep in mind that two separate workouts require double the warm-up and cool-down time - effectively reducing the time of your target effort. The benefit of long, nonstop efforts is that the warm-up/cool-down period is less significant with regards to your average effort, giving you more bang for the buck. Personally, I'm at a point where I can't convince myself to workout for less than 60-70 minutes at a time because it feels inefficient. As always, I'm not an expert - nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night - but I say ditch the patch workouts.
Well today was long ride day for me, but due to the incompetence of my coworkers i was called into work and had to cut down from 2hr to 1.5hr of riding today. My question to you guys is this:
Is it more beneficial for me to call it a day, take my 1.5hr ride, and try to get back on track next week... or should i go out for half an hour after work to at least get a full 2hrs in over the course of the day?
Thanks for your input guys.
-Alan
My fancy new blogitty blog.
http://therunningfridge.blogspot.com/