Endurance Ride - Short Endurance Rides Matter

I didn't give enough credit to short endurance rides in the past.

After 10+ years of training, and countless long training rides, I got in the habit of thinking that the only real endurance rides that mattered were long. There isn’t that much information on the web or research on the value short rides that aren’t interval based, and cyclist in particular use long aerobic rides, endurance rides, to provide a backbone for all their other training work. I was like this for a long time too, but I’m choosing to stay in Dad mode for the time being rather than bow out for half a day and come home tired and unable to help my wife with the endless list of baby tasks that exist when you have a newborn.

3-6 hour steady rides solo, or in a small training group are so much fun! You get the opportunity to see a lot of countryside, can make squiggly fun routes, see new things, and make memories with friends. While the long ride is still a crucial and irreplaceable component of the program for a lot of athletes and coaches out there, I’m not able to do them consistently right now, and I expect that’s true for lots of busy athletes out there juggling work, family, sports and other interests. It’s still worth doing when time allows, subbing out long endurance rides for more intensity days won't solve your time crunched problems either, because it's just not sustainable to do 5-6 hard days per week! Endurance rides, even when short, if used correctly can still have a significant impact on your training load, and consistent improvement.

Even a 1 hour endurance ride can count if you hit it right. For me right now that means making sure I’m doing 2-3 endurance rides per week.

Haven’t Endurance Rides Always Mattered?

This is nothing new! If you have read any of our other blog posts, we have been talking about fixing your endurance for a long time. It was one of Brendan’s first posts! The point of bringing it up again is that all of these endurance rides count. Long and short. Even if you only have 90 minutes for your long ride every week, if you zoom out to see the forest from the trees, 1 or two extra endurance rides per week would add up to 8 extra rides per month on the pedals and that is significant!

Time Crunched Cyclist

Sometimes Being a Parent is Tiring.

Parenting has taught me a totally different kind of tired. It’s a different kind of work being responsible for a tiny human, and even adapting to that new schedule was a big change at first! From the first few sleepless nights until now I think my energy levels went in waves that I felt pretty helpless to control, so instead of killing myself to try and fail a workout, or taking a day off and “giving up” I would just climb on the bike, and let my legs get going until endurance felt fun, I snapped back into focus, and by the time I got off the bike 9 times out of 10 I would feel more energized than when I started.

For the time-crunched cyclist, the mindset is often “If I only have 60 minutes to ride, shouldn’t I just hammer it with sweet spot intervals every day?" The idea behind this is that you can make up for lost time by going harder. On the contrary, even if you only have 7-10 hours per week to ride, you shouldn’t start doing intervals every day. We want two key interval session where you show up fresh and ready to smash.

These two sessions are key to maximizing your training time, they are what will really drive your system forward. Shorter endurance rides will still give you plenty of benefit, but they aren’t too taxing and will leave you fresh to destroy those interval sessions. Going hard every day will just make you stale and unable to achieve the absolute intensity needed to get stronger. With added life stress from balancing a busy schedule, going hard every day creates a high risk of burnout.

Many athletes feel like a 60-minute endurance ride isn’t “hard enough,” and feel the need to push it harder. While a short endurance ride itself might not be too hard, showing up every single day to ride while balancing a busy schedule is hard. Look at the big picture. Consistency.

My takeaway was this: Something > Nothing.

If me or one of my athletes blow off a ride completely once or twice a week, you get way more behind, than if you don't stress and do what you can. If you know your endurance power, this should be doable day after day, and the repetitions are what’s going to keep your mind and body in the groove of pedaling and training. Try not to overthink it, just get on the bike and groove!

It sounds very cliché, but consistency is the biggest factor in cycling success. It might not seem like a 60-90 minute endurance ride would make that much of a difference, but over time this will really add up. Think of like a bank account. If you deposit $10 a day in your bank account, it might not seem like much, but over time it ends up to a whole lot of savings so that you can buy more bike stuff!

Should a Short Endurance ride be Harder?

You want to make sure you know your FTP or mFTP from WKO5 when you are riding endurance because the primary dial you are trying to move with this basic aerobic work is your maximal aerobic pace, AKA FTP! You can get a pretty good idea where your FTP is if you have done an all out effort of 35+ minutes, or if you are using WKO4 or WKO5, it can populate your FTP with the PD curve. Shoot me an email and I'll be happy to do this for you!

Use 75% of FTP as your target power and try to peg it there or beat it by a few watts every time you do a 1x endurance ride. Even 60 minutes of basic riding when done consistently you will feel your aerobic power improving after a few weeks when you show up to the group ride or hit that weekly Zwift race. You shouldn’t try and make these rides harder, save that for your actual workouts. Instead focus on repetitions in a week and being consistent week to week.

See Also: Maximize cycling recovery and perfomance with our cycling nutrition guide: Click Here

Endurance Ride Training

The conclusion on short endurance rides: if you are really too tired to perform a workout, don't just throw in the towel and head home. It won’t do you much good to bash your head against a wall trying to execute a workout that is too hard for your mind and body at that time, but it also won't do you any good to just blow the ride off and get out of the groove of training, or to get on the bike and do junk miles. Substitute an endurance ride if you need to. Something is better than nothing every time!

Make sure your weekly schedule has 2 or 3 endurance rides built into it. More workouts aren’t going to help you improve. An aerobic power sport like cycling takes time to get the body adapted, so be patient, but be consistent! Make sure you know your ftp, and if you have an accurate threshold power, riding at 75% of FTP is always going to help your fitness!

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Endurance Riding Training for the Time Crunched Cyclist