Episode 199: Is Training Twice a Day Good for Time-Crunched Cyclists?

IN THIS EPISODE

• Question: Is one long ride better than two shorter ones?
• 3 Strategies for Double Days
• When to use double days
• Are Double Days always good/better?
• Risks associated with Double Days
• Is a double day better than a single long ride?

LINKS
- Benefits and Risks of Two-a-Day Training for Cyclists
- Two Shorter Rides or One Really Long Ride: Which is better for training?
- Do's and Don'ts of Double Day Training for Ultrarunners 

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Chapters

• 0:07 Training Strategies for Time-Crunched Cyclists
• 9:50 Benefits of Double Day Training Strategies
• 15:03 Training Podcast

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

From the team at CTS.

Speaker 1: 0:08

This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford. More and more questions keep rolling in from you, our listeners and our diehard fans. Thank you all for that. I've also been out at some big races around the country and it's been fun to meet more of you, our audience members. Thank you for saying hello and telling me what you like about the podcast. That's really good feedback and lets us know that we're doing some of the right things here on the show. Now, if you're new to the show, welcome. What we do here on the Time Crunched Cyclist podcast is answer audience questions, explore curious topics and distill answers down in the area of endurance training into short and sweet actionable episodes so that you can get on with your training life and don't have to listen to another two-hour podcast. We try to keep all these around 20 to 30 minutes in the spirit of time crunched-ness. So, with that said, let's get on with our audience.

Speaker 1: 1:47

Question for the day. All right, here's the original question. Hi, due to my schedule and other life things, I don't have more than two hours straight I can train. I'm training for a hundred kilometer road race later on this year. What would be the benefits of doing a quote big day on the weekend with a couple two hour rides to make up for the lack of a single long ride and training? Would I still get some of the benefits on of a long ride by splitting them up like that, or would it be a waste of time by adding in a ton of fatigue with little benefit? Thank you in advance, adam. Well, hey, adam, cool name, by the way.

Speaker 1: 2:28

Yes, a second time riding in the day, or what we call a double day, in order to get more training volume and or training effect is a viable way to do it. But to answer your question more fully, I think of it in three parts or three questions when it comes to doing double days versus a single session alone. Okay, so here are the three parts. If yes, then when? If yes, are double days always better, and if not, when is it not? And then, finally, is two by two hours better than a contiguous four hour?

Speaker 1: 3:05

So to further explain that, I think it's best to zoom out a little bit from the training session itself and think of it like in a total week, sort of training block. If your goal is to simply get in more time, and maybe even time at a certain intensity, or do more total work on the bike, then adding in another session with a two-hour ride will definitely check the box. So let's just say, going from a normal six-hour training week to eight hours or eight hours to 10 hours, you're increasing total time and that will benefit you down the road for your event, benefit you down the road for your event. Now, if we zoom out even more, let's just say going into, you know, a phase of training, what we would call base training or build, where we're talking about weeks. Or you know, a month or two when you're trying to increase fitness there for an event, say, down into the summer or into the fall, since we're listening to it here in the summertime and you're a time crunched athlete, you're doing that six to eight hours of training time per week. You'll need to look at creative ways to increase fitness or CTL, because at some point you know the unique limitations of being a time crunched athlete is we top out at CTL. Consistency and intensity are, then, our friends as we try to move the needle forward, but we we do need to look at creative ways to get in more total training time.

Speaker 1: 4:33

Okay, writing double days or doing two days gets this done. Once again, you're doing more work in a certain amount of time, and this time phrase is now into a phase of training or months, and that will add up very well over time to get you the fitness that you need in order to have more fun or go faster at your event. Now we can. We can play this game even more. It was zooming out even more Okay. Into a year, okay.

Speaker 1: 4:58

And if you're a time crunch cyclist and your total annual volume has been consistent, but say it's on the low end of things and you want to look for creative ways to increase this, double days can also help with that over longer periods of time. Total hours done or total miles written, add up in the bank of fitness for future dividends down the road. Okay, so that is how. That is how consistent endurance training works. It is playing the long game of riding the miles in order to get that base fitness and or increase your CTL so that you have that aerobic fitness when the time comes to use it. So yes, adam, I'm a fan of this. Even when you can't get in a full four hours continuously, it fits the game plan for total training.

Speaker 1: 5:45

So the second part is if double days are effective, are they always better? Okay, now, in the answer to that, I say no doubling up. Let's just say, on the extreme side of things, doubling up every day is not effective and doubling up every weekend or every weekend day Wouldn't be my advice either. Well, why is that? With increased fitness will come increase fatigue. Double days will increase your fatigue and decrease your recovery time as well as just total total time time. It's going to take away from your 24 hours in your life. These are costly moves for a gain on the bike which should be calculated based on your life situation. My advice for time crunched athletes is to have a good plan in place, suited for your goals and your goal event.

Speaker 1: 6:36

When you're in a base or build phase, like we talked about before, when you're looking to increase that total fitness, doing double days once or twice per month is really effective. And then what I would say to even further is put the harder session first in the day. So what this could look like is, let's just say you do a zone two ride in the morning and you do a zone two ride in the evening. You go both based on feel. I'm guessing that you'll probably your normalized power might be a little higher in the morning than it will be in the afternoon. Either way, it's still zone two. Get them both in. You're checking the box. Now. This also could be a group ride in the morning, which is hard. It has intensity intermittently sprinkled throughout, and then you're doing your endurance ride in the afternoon. Get that first session in done when you have a little bit more energy and the second ride. You'll still get good benefit.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Now this can also be intervals of zone three or zone four in the morning when we're in that base to build phase. Yes, I do some zone three and zone four work for time crunched athletes in that base and build phase and do that in the morning, do the endurance in the afternoon. Those are all scenarios that I would advise. Each of these scenarios will increase the training effect and boot up CTL for that 100k event and boot up CTL for that 100k event. Now, additionally, if you're into, I would say like the ladder build or the prep phase so we're getting closer to your event what I would do is decrease the number of times that you're doubling up on the month. Okay, or let's just say you're doing double days two or three times per month in your base and build phase. Now I'm going to advise you to decrease it. Maybe you still do it one weekend per month, and what we're going to do there is you're going to maintain some of that training effect but you're going to start to exchange some fitness for freshness. Meaning CTL might come down, but you're going to be more fresh for your training sessions. Ctl might come down, but you're going to be more fresh for your training sessions.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Now, what this kind of like once per month double up session could look like is just a shift in intensity zone four or zone five Again for that morning session maybe, maybe you still do that group ride and then you do your endurance ride in the afternoon. Now you're hearing my common message of doing that first session harder when you have more energy and then doing the second session as endurance or less intense later on, and that's going to give you the best benefit. Okay, you're going to be fatigued for that second session and that's fine. Getting in the total time, getting into work, that's the goal. Recall that the whole point of training is to get tired, then you rest and then you improve. I find that by doing your more intense work first and then doing the aerobic ride second, that gives you the total training effect that we're looking for, but you'll get better results from it. Now can you do intensity for both sessions? Yeah for sure, but now you're accumulating're, you're accumulating even more fatigue. So proceed with caution If you're doing double days with a ton of intensity on on each session. So a few notes on double days for for the cautionary tales of it.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Note that, first of all, pros oftentimes do double days. Okay, now, this could be, and actually they do quite often. So it could be their bike session in the morning, strength session in the evening, could be hard intervals in the morning, endurance later on, like we talked about, or they do double up with hard intensity in the morning and evening. They do that the next day is maybe endurance or easier, and then they'll do another double day within that week. Double days are effective for driving adaptation hard, but it's aggressive and should be done with a good recovery plan and within that context of a solid bigger picture plan, or what we call annual training plan, for when it makes sense to do it based on your goals, versus just always doing double days on Saturday because you heard on a podcast. Okay, don't do that. Pros can do this because they simply have more time and they have the lifestyle to maximize recovery and recover faster than us who are crunched on time. Okay, and this can lead to more aggressive training sessions and aggressive training results because of it. Now, you shouldn't do what pros do simply because they're pros. Okay, you can. You can take a few of these plays from their playbook and do double days, but go for the training effect that is more aggressive and then recover super hardcore on the backside of that to make sure that you stay on track and get the full adaptation. Okay, just don't forget the recovery part of that.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Now, to answer your question directly on is two by two hours more effective than a contiguous four-hour ride? My answer here is no. I'd say that the contiguous four-hour ride will be better for various reasons. If you're doing a longer endurance event, if that is your goal thing, that you're doing your race, your a hundred K event. Now, I don't know how long that a hundred K event will take you to really depends on how much climbing there is, what the road surface is if it's gravel, if it's mountain bike, knows, let's just say it's over three hours and somewhere between three and six hours.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Okay, the reason why the continuous four hour ride would be beneficial to do at least once, if not maybe a couple of times, is you'll have more time in position. Okay, Contact points like your hands, your sit bones, your feet, uh, your sit bones on the saddle. Okay, all all these things are going to get tired and potentially painful the longer you ride. So doing some long rides will help you get used to this and help prevent some of that. You'll die. You'll be able to dial in fueling strategies if you do some of these longer rides. When you go and you ride longer, your thirst and appetite can change. So learning what to give your body as things change and what to give your body late in a ride versus early is critical, and you only really find that out on those long rides. Early is critical and you only really find that out on those long rides. Mental toughness we know that there can be exponential fatigue and depletion that occur. That occurs on long rides in your training, depending on your training history, your fueling habits and getting through these hard times as part of an athlete's training process, and longer rides can help with that.

Speaker 1: 13:10

Durability this is another thing I've talked about on several episodes. We know that there can be exponential strain in our aerobic and anaerobic training systems. With longer rides developing durability to hold up over time to perform in the long run, I find is best done with these continuous rides. Long run, I find is best done with these continuous rides. Finally, specificity you won't have a couple hour break in the middle of your 100 km day, so it's best to train continuously for that specificity. However and here's the huge asterisk, adam, for your unique situation, right, if you can't train continuously for four hours, two by two hours, that's the next best thing. So definitely do it. Okay, chop up what you need to in the day, but double up. That that's exactly what I would say Now, in summary, doubling up is an effective way to get training in.

Speaker 1: 14:06

I do think that all athlete types can benefit from it, but, as you heard, there's a time and place for it. If you can get a long four hour ride in at least once without a break, there's some benefits there for sure. But definitely get creative on how to get it all in and doubling up. You're still going to be on the right track for that. So thanks, adam. That was an awesome question and there's a lot more that we can, you know, talk on it too, because there are some stuff that changes when you double up in that day.

Speaker 1: 14:38

In closing, thanks again for not only listening to the podcast but sharing your questions, your challenges and your curiosities by writing to us here at CTS. If you're new to the show, how you do this is by heading over to train rightcom backslash podcast and click on the button that says ask a training question. Your submissions get sent directly to me and we'll do our best to answer it on an upcoming episode. So that's it. That's our show for today.

Speaker 1: 15:03

If you liked what you heard, please share it with a training partner or a friend, and that's the best way to grow the show and make sure that you keep getting actual training advice to help you reach your goals. Be sure to come back next week for more and until then, keep getting out there and keep training right. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actual training advice, head over to train rightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.