Training on five nights on, two off
Five eight-hour nights and two days off is a weekly cycle with very little slack. Here is how a fortnight of cycling fits around it without eating the recovery the night block already costs.
Who works it. Security, hospitality, logistics hubs and hospital night teams on eight-hour nights.
What makes it hard. Only two days off, and the first is lost to sleep. That leaves one genuinely free day a week, which has to carry the entire training stimulus — so what you put there matters more than on any other roster.
What a fortnight actually looks like
This is not an example typed out by hand. It is the output of the same rule engine that builds the plan on the front page, run against a five nights on, two off roster. The shift decides the size of each day, then the hard session goes in the best remaining window, then endurance fills what is left.
| When | Shift | Session, and why it is there | TSS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 Mon | Night | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First night of the run: the day is free, what follows is not. No quality, no long ride. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Days 2–5 Tue–Fri | Night | Z2 40′ · 40 min Night shift inside a run: endurance only, and only if the daytime sleep happened. Only if the daytime sleep ran past 5 h and Body Battery is at least 50. | 96 |
| Day 6 Sat | Day off | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First day after the nights. Easy riding resets the body clock faster than lying still. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Day 7 Sun | Day off | Tempo 2 × 12 · 62 min The day before a run of nights. Quality is fine, a long ride is not: two hours costs far more recovery than seventy minutes of intervals. Quality needs Body Battery of at least 50, over 6 h of sleep and HRV still balanced. Miss one and you move the session by a day rather than shortening it. | 52 |
| Day 8 Mon | Night | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First night of the run: the day is free, what follows is not. No quality, no long ride. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Days 9–12 Tue–Fri | Night | Z2 40′ · 40 min Night shift inside a run: endurance only, and only if the daytime sleep happened. Only if the daytime sleep ran past 5 h and Body Battery is at least 50. | 96 |
| Day 13 Sat | Day off | Endurance 45′ · 45 min First day after the nights. Easy riding resets the body clock faster than lying still. Below 40 on Body Battery, skip it without guilt. | 31 |
| Day 14 Sun | Day off | Sweet spot 3 × 10 · 70 min The day before a run of nights. Quality is fine, a long ride is not: two hours costs far more recovery than seventy minutes of intervals. Quality needs Body Battery of at least 50, over 6 h of sleep and HRV still balanced. Miss one and you move the session by a day rather than shortening it. | 65 |
Sessions are written as percentages of FTP, so they scale to whoever rides them — there is nothing here tuned to one person's numbers. The quality session lands on day 7, day 14; the longest ride on day 14. Change the roster and both move, which is the entire point.
The three things this roster decides for you
Eight-hour nights leave room that twelve-hour nights do not.
After a slept-through day there is a real window in the late afternoon. Endurance riding inside the block is possible here — just nothing hard, and only when the daytime sleep actually happened.
One free day a week means one priority, not three.
Pick the session that moves the needle and ride it properly. Trying to fit intervals, a long ride and a recovery spin into one day produces none of them.
Volume comes from the block, intensity from the day off.
This is the roster where the split is cleanest: easy miles midweek after sleep, the single hard session on the day you are actually fresh.
Do it with your own dates
The fortnight above starts on an arbitrary Monday. Yours does not. The week planner takes the shifts you actually have next week and places the sessions the same way, in your browser, with nothing sent anywhere.
The reasoning behind every placement is written out on the rules page — including the rule I got wrong first time and had to change after it failed against my own data. Eating around the same roster is covered on the nutrition page.
I work a rotating roster myself and publish the whole plan and its results, including the weeks that go badly. That is the only claim this site makes: not that it works for everyone, but that it is real and you can check it.