The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

How to Best Choose Between a Virtual Race vs Planned Interval Workout? (#236)

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 236

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OVERVIEW
Virtual racing on TrainingPeaks Virtual, Zwift, Rouvy or other indoor cycling platforms can be a fun and intense addition to an athlete's overall program. They can even become the central focus of your season! But too much virtual racing can work against you by removing too much of the specificity and contrast your training plan needs in order for you to experience gains in fitness and performance. If you want to jump into virtual racing or hard virtual group rides, here's a guide on how to do it wisely and effectively. 

TOPICS COVERED

  • Swap race for interval session?
  • Mistakes to avoid when adding virtual racing to training plan
  • Bringing contrast to your training

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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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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS. 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.

Speaker 1:

We've had some good questions piling up from you, our audience, and I'll start by answering one of these today. Then I'll knock out a bunch more of them in the coming weeks with our signature short format episodes. Let's not waste any time and just get right into it. Here's the original question, again coming from an audience member. I'm one third of the way through the new competitor program and really am enjoying it. Any suggestions on how to incorporate shorter Zwift races into it? Maybe just replace a hard day with a race once or twice a month? Thanks much, Matt. Yeah. So incorporating Zwift races into a training program this is a question that I get a lot and I do see some bad habits with just probably too much Zwift racing, or at least I have some advice on how I think we can better weave it all together. So for some context to everyone listening, Matt is referring to the CTS membership, where he says he's in the new competitor program or a phase of training within that. The CTS membership is a way to get CTS workouts, training programs and have access to our supportive community without being fully coached one-on-one. So it's a more economical option for those wanting to be on a training program with some extra perks but not full customized coaching.

Speaker 1:

Now, whether you are a coached athlete, a self-coached athlete or you're on the CTS membership or anything else, my answer of how to incorporate a Zwift race or multiple races into a training program is very simple yes, swap it for a hard interval day, so long as that hard interval day is closely related to the stresses that you're going to be doing in the race itself. So let's unpack that a little bit more. Yeah, Matt, you're on the right track, but I just I want to kind of double click on what I said and make sure you kind of know what I'm talking about and then how to adjust when the training program adjusts as well. So what that means is typically, if you're in some sort of threshold or sweet spot or FTP phase of training, swapping an interval session out for a Zwift race is a decent option because it'll be really similar from a training stress score and the stress or strain that you're putting on the glycolytic energy system or on the body energy system or on the body. If we're talking FTP intervals or sweet spot or something like that, it's going to be anywhere around 85% to 105% of FTP. That's going to be the intervals that you'll be working with when you go to a Zwift race. You will likely average power somewhere within that 85 to 105% of your FTP. It's a hard threshold day, plain and simple. So you can also do a Zwift race and then check your TSS or intensity factor of that race itself and compare it to the prescribed workout and if they're similar, that's a great way of making sure that you're kind of staying on the program.

Speaker 1:

Let's take a look at an example here. So let's say you're doing a program and your hard days for the week are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In those days maybe you have some form of threshold work each day that the total interval time is around 30 to 40 minutes of total work or total time in zone for each workout. 30 to 40 minutes of total work or total time in zone for each workout. So, for example, that would be a three by 10 threshold at 91 to 105% of your FTP. Now, if you're following this program, you probably like doing intervals, you like training, but maybe you want to change it up and do a Zwift race. Simply skip the Saturday intervals and do that Zwift race. I find that there's a lot more time spots available on Saturday and if you're like many of my athletes, you'll have a little bit more time in that day to warm up, hit the race. Hit the race when you want to and maybe even sneak in a little extra riding time at zone two endurance or something like that afterwards to get a little extra volume on the day. So this is a solid way of incorporating some of that virtual racing into the program. You can also do this weekly if you really want to and if you're really into Zwift racing and you want to change it up, Okay, but you know, if you like doing solo training. There's no need for you to incorporate Zwift racing at all. You can simply do your interval work, progress through it and it's all good.

Speaker 1:

Swift Racing just adds in a variety and for some people it's really exciting and they enjoy it. And I should mention here that Swift is not the only game in town TP Virtual, Rovi and there's a few others out there, existing. In particular, TP Virtual is a new virtual riding and racing platform and it keeps on evolving. It has some unique and different racing that is pretty different than Zwift. So stuff like scratch races, missing outs, time trials, points races, team points races, road racing, crits and a ton of other stuff. They're doing some really unique work on TP Virtual, and there's some other cool stuff too, like automatic workout uploading and automatic thresholds carrying over. So I'll link to a little bit more about that in our show notes, but I just want to let everyone know, if they didn't know, TP Virtual is another really cool training racing platform if you're looking for something different other than Zwift.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I covered what to do and how to do it. How about we talk about how and what not to do? First thing of what not to do is don't do a Zwift race if your program is calling for something overly specific or individualized to your training, like one minute max efforts with long recovery periods or VO2 intervals, so something like super hard that again, like I said, has long rest periods, and certainly don't do the intervals during the race. That's just plain silly and not effective. When you're doing training like this, the hard max efforts or VO2 and that kind of thing, the rest periods are just as important as the work periods to deliver the training adaptations.

Speaker 1:

Typical Zwift racing or virtual racing platforms they're hard from the gun, from start to finish, and maybe you have some micro drafting recovery breaks in there. Like I said, it's mostly threshold, mostly hard tt stuff. It's good, it's it's quality. Well, I mean, it'll make you tired and you'll rest and you'll get better from it. But when you have something that's more specific or say harder or easier, just different, don't do the swift race. So, like I mentioned, maybe some of the TP virtual races can mimic some of that VO2 stuff on their shorter races and like the missing outs and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

But overall, if you're doing specific work, stick to the specific work and virtual racing is not that specific work. It's not going to be your best option to replace it. So during threshold blocks, go for the Zwift race. Other times don't. So the second thing not to do is, if you're following a good training program and you want to add in Zwift racing, don't add in the racing in addition to the intervals, Okay, and in my example before I said, just replace it this time. The bad habits I see is they want to do some Zwift racing, so they add it in, but they're going to keep all their interval days. Okay.

Speaker 1:

This puts you in the boat of going hard pretty much every single day for many days in a row, many weeks in a row, and if I or any other coach with a podcast out there has told you anything, it is likely that going hard every single day is not a great strategy in training. That is the quickest road to burnout, staleness and unproductive work. As a self-coached athlete, my best piece of advice is to follow the program, and even if that program is a bit more conservative than you'd like, that's probably better, because when you miss a good night's sleep or you miss a workout or you have a long day at the office, you'll have some padded in bandwidth to help you not burn out, and so reaching for the stars in training every single day is not advised to anyone, even my elite athletes, but especially the time-crunched athlete, my elite athletes, but especially the time crunched athlete. Finally, my last point here is remember to bring contrast to your training. Keep your hard days hard and your easy days easy. That's what bringing contrast to training means. This pertains especially to the time crunched athlete and especially on the higher intensity days. So what is higher intensity? Let's just call it zone four and higher for my argument's sake here. Okay, so that's threshold and above.

Speaker 1:

My general advice is to keep high intensity sessions to two to three days per week for most weeks Now. This can be using hard intervals or group rides or, in this case, a Zwift race or virtual race of any kind, or group rides, or, in this case, a Zwift race or virtual race of any kind. The other days of the week are good for zone two endurance riding, recovery, miles, rest days or strength training. Now, this framework usually hits the mark for most busy people to do enough of the targeted work without going overboard and getting too tired. On any one day you may be sitting there listening to me and thinking I can do more than that and, yeah, you probably can for a short time. You can get away with four to five days of hard intensity in a week and that's, you know. That's. That's very realistic. However, if I'm doing that with an athlete, I'll usually pad it on the backside with extra recovery or just more endurance work to slough off some of that strain and stress associated with stringing together a bunch of hard days in a row.

Speaker 1:

So there's a time and place for weeks like this. But in general, you are better off playing the long game, combining high intensity with endurance days, maybe even alternating those and letting the CTL rack up over months, versus one or two big glorious weeks and then you get sick or burnout or get injured or something like that. So keep in mind, long days are hard too. Now, if you're fortunate enough to rip out a long ride on the weekend right now and you're trying to work on building that endurance with longer and longer rides let's say you're going for three and four hour rides versus the 90 minutes and two hour rides that are typical on the weekend for time crunch athletes then that long ride becomes a quote hard day too when it comes to playing this whole contrast game. Now maybe it's all zone two riding, but because you're riding for longer than you're used to, the TSS is racking up. You're out there in the elements longer, there's more strain occurring to your body in those final couple hours compared to the first two hours. So keep this in mind when you're tallying up all the hard days versus easy days, and this will help bring balance to your training program as well.

Speaker 1:

So let's take this thing home with a couple summary points. The best way to incorporate any virtual racing into your training program is to do the racing on your hard days, so long as the hard days mirror what the virtual race provides. Most virtual racing is threshold based, so I suggest doing the races on the days or phases of training where threshold is the focus. Anything specific or max effort based training. I suggest sticking to the prescribed workout itself. Keep your hard days hard and your easy days easy, and you'll have success over the long run.

Speaker 1:

That's it. That's our show for today. If you liked it, please share it with a friend. That's the best way to grow the show and to get more advice to more good people. If you have a question for me or our team at CTS, head over to trainrightcom backslash podcast and you can ask any question that's related to all things endurance training and we'll do our best to answer it on a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you back here next week for more actionable training advice. Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable 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.

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Adam Pulford

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