Quote Originally Posted by Catrin View Post
The point is, regardless of your training plan, to listen to your body. I learned last summer that regardless of what plans we develop or follow - if'en we don't listen to our body then we might not reach our goals. Personally, if I tried to ride 6 days a week like your plan on the Kanbike site, I would quickly find myself injured again - but that is me. I will only ride 4-5 days a week - and my two rest days won't be together. IF I ride the day after my long ride, then it will be an easy recovery ride - or I will do something completely different.
Catrin gives good advice, and that is listen to your body. The plans for adding bike miles look great on paper, but everyone is a different age with different limitations and riding in a different climate on different terrain and on a different bike.

I can ride 6 days a week, but then I am eventually riding tired all of the time, so what is the point to it. When I do my challenging rides well-rested, either with respect to distance or climbing, I have a better ride with respect to speed, power and stanima. When I do a metric or century, I don't get on my bike at all for the two days before the ride, to ensure that I am rested, particularly if there is a lot of climbing involved.

How I train doesn't relate to the guideline training plans at all because I train for climbs as well as distance, and I keep my riding schedule flexible so as to accommodate any changes to my physical condition. In other words, I listen to my body rather than conform rigidly to a schedule. If I do two days of hill repeats with a lot of elevation gain, and on the third day my intent was to ride 60 miles but I wake up and my legs are still sore from the climbing, then I don't do 60 miles.

To answer your question, look at the training plans as a quideline only, ride your best, and always be flexible with your schedule, take extra rest days if needed so as to give muscles time to heal and recover, and to avoid injury. If on a long ride, one where you just increased the miles by quite a bit, if when you get home all you want to do is crawl into bed and go to sleep, then stop adding miles for a few weeks until your body adjusts and gets stronger. Remember, rest days are just as important as the cycling days.