I run a business and have 3 young kids. As such, I can get to a weekly cycling volume of approx 9 hours (with 2-3 weight sessions on top which I want to maintain), but it’s hard to make long rides work. To get to the volume, it involves breaking up my training to morning and night, and the longest ride time I can make work is approx 2 hours on Sunday.
I’ve been training like this for approx 18 months and have seen decent results, but interested in people’s opinions about workout duration vs overall volume. Am I limiting my potential severely by doing 2 1 hour bike sessions in 1 day, compared doing 1 2 hour ride? Assume they’re the same intensity, will it have the same or close to the same benefit overall?
Likely impossible to answer but thought I’d throw out the question.
“Am I limiting my potential severely by doing 2 1 hour bike sessions in 1 day, compared doing 1 2 hour ride?”
My understanding is not really, unless you’re trying to extract out your absolute best possible performance in an event thats longer than your long rides (i.e. longer than the ~2 hour mark you spend time training over, like a 4+ hour event).
There was a YouTube video on this recently I thought (GCN I guess??) that seemed to suggest two sessions a day might actually be beneficial compared to one longer ride. Not sure how well-sourced their research on this was, and they put in some caveats around it being more taxing, not everyday etc etc [I’m sure you can find it with a search]
For the longer event scenario, you’re losing the specificity of training exactly what you’d be doing in the event (long time in the saddle with no rest)