Is it possible to visit the Golden Ring in a week?

You can actually drive the Golden Ring route in a week if you have a car and about 7-10 days to spare. The main cities - Sergiev Posad, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Rostov, Uglich, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Ivanovo, and Suzdal - are located pretty close together, 100-200 km from each other. In a day you can get to a city, see the main sights (monasteries, museums, cathedrals), have dinner and sleep over, then keep going.

To keep everything from blurring together, it makes sense to pick 4-5 cities instead of all eight and spend about a day and a half in each. For example, Suzdal and Kostroma are worth longer stops - you'll actually enjoy them, the architecture is beautiful, there's a lot to see. Yaroslavl's worth taking your time with too, the center is historic. But Ivanovo you can breeze through in a few hours if textile industry and revolutionary history don't really interest you.

Just don't set your heart on seeing everything in a week if it's your first time. Take it easy, stop where you feel like it. Rushing doesn't help much - mostly you'll just get tired from driving and won't remember anything anyway.