Minimum “Sufficient” Dose of Aerobic Training

TLDR: Is 45 min sufficient for a “dose” of aerobic training, or should I just stick with an hour?

Hi all! I recently sprained my ankle running back to a trailhead (fortunately dodged the bullet of a worse injury) and am likely going to be spending a lot of time on the bike over the next few weeks. I had been planning to start my first 50-K training period in two weeks (using Evoke’s training plan) so keeping aerobic fitness is a must, but ideally, I’d like to continue my efforts to fix my ADS before/as early into the training period as possible. Given the low impact of cycling, and thinking about how the biogenesis response by the mitochondria starts ceases within 12 hours, I was thinking I’d try to do AM/PM doubles (something I’ve done well with in past marathon/run training) while I’m out of weight-bearing commission.

Considering the different modality (cycling vs. running), any general/useful rules of thumbs (e.g. 90 min on the bike = 60 min running), and my goal of fixing ADS as opposed to training for peak cycling performance, I wanted to see what an ideal and/or efficient and effective length of Z2 cycling would be. Ideally, I’d like to do an hour each but, especially early on, I think 45 minutes would be a safe bet to ensure I can keep up this routine. I looked to see what research might be out there (not that I know how to find it very well), but the studies I saw on aerobic development seemed to focus on 30-minute vs. 60-minute periods, which unsurprisingly, showed a preference for the longer 60-minute period.

I was a little hesitant to post the question because I’m mentally already telling myself “anything is better than nothing”, but I would be curious anyone’s thoughts. Personally, I’m thinking:

1. 60min/60min splits would be best case and what I should aim for as soon or as much as possible;
2. 60min/30-45min (full hour priority, then anything over 30 min for the second session is good) would be second best;
3. and then shortened sessions (e.g. 45min/45min) would be the last option if I needed to back off some but still wanted “decent” adaptions.

Thanks to anyone who reads this and feels like giving any thoughts!

• This topic was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Nathan.