Climbing Road Race and Rolling Road Race plans have been improved to fall in line with the newly revised Base and Build plans and be more specific to your race goals.
What’s New
In the second round of Specialty Plans updates (the Century plans were the first of the Road Specialty plans to be updated), Coach Chad revamped all Climbing Road Race and Rolling Road Race plans.
Consistent with all TrainerRoad training plans, the newly revamped road-specific plans are each offered in three volumes: low, mid and high. All updated low-volume plans have a total of three interval workouts a week, mid-volume plans include five workouts a week and finally, all high-volume plans consist of six workouts a week.
The Types of Fitness You Will Gain
The fitness that’ll emerge from the Climbing Road Race plan is the ability to sustain a higher percentage of your functional threshold power for extended segments — think climbs anywhere from 12-40 minutes long. The fitness you can expect from the Rolling Road Race plan, on the other hand, is the ability to tackle undulating courses with short difficult, VO2max-like efforts.
What to Expect
In a nutshell, across both newly updated road Specialty plans the TSS has been evened out. This is supported by the removal of many high TSS workouts. Weeks 1-6, for instance, are essentially the same TSS. For road racers planning to race on a frequent basis, this gives you the option to either scale up or scale back your week’s workouts based on the demands of your racing schedule.
After your first six weeks of steady TSS, you’ll hit your first of two taper weeks. Entering into your seventh week of training, there’s about a 30% decrease in TSS, followed by another 50% decrease leading in your final eighth week of training. While volume is reduced, intensity remains high to keep you sharp and primed for any B- or A-priority events.
In line with the new Base and Build plans, another theme of the newly updated Road Speciality plans is that your recovery weeks are focused on true recovery. Everything takes place at about .60-.70 intensity range. On top of that, there’s also a small smattering of sprints added into each recovery week to keep neuromuscular power sharp.
Why is There a Drop in Stress from the Newly Updated Build Plans?
In Base Phase plans the ramp rate is pretty steady, then that ramp rate grows a little bit in the Build Phase. Entering into the Specialty phase, it’s the time to back stress off slightly so that freshness can come to the surface and riders can race well both during the week and weekends. The newly updated Climbing and Road Race plans reflect this logic.
There’s about a 20% decrease in stress load relative to the newly revised Build phase plans across these new road Speciality plans. Again, this is to bring a rider’s freshness to the surface. We’re not as much focused on building fitness as we are honing it and making it very specific to the task at hand, which in this case is climbing and rolling road races.
How Do I Choose Between the Climbing and Rolling Road Race Specialty plans?
Climbing Road Race plans assume you’re going to be tackling more sustained efforts, whereas the Rolling Road Race prepares you for punchier, shorter-lived efforts.
Twelve-minute climbs is about where we draw the line, as they are much more of a steady state affair. Anything less than twelve minutes can veer heavily toward aerobic capacity and higher intensity efforts. That said, here’s a good rule of thumb: If the road course you plan to race has climbs that are in excess of 10-12 minutes, something like the the Cascade Cycling Classic for example, lean towards the Climbing Road Race plan.
But if the course’s hills are more rolling in nature — so frequent and each about ten minutes and under — then the Rolling Road Race plans is your best bet. A good example of this type of race would be the European Amstel Gold Race. Even though there’s a lot of climbing over the course of that race, those climbs come in short bursts.
How to Get Started on a New Climbing or Rolling Road Race Specialty Plan
If you’ve recently started (before May 8, 2017) a legacy Climbing or Rolling Road Race Specialty plan and would like to update your plan to one of the new plans, you must stop your current plan and reselect the plan you were on to access the new updates.
If you’d like to update your new plan with completed workouts from your legacy Speciality plan, you must unassign the workouts from your past plan in order to assign them to the new plan. It’s recommended to delete your original plan to disassociate all your completed rides. This will allow you to more quickly assign those completed rides to your new plan.
What’s Next
Stay tuned for more newly revised Road Speciality plans! Coach Chad is currently working on refinements to the 40k TT and Criterium Speciality phase training plans to fall in line with the recently updated Base and Build plans.
Have a question about the latest training plans update? Leave it below or send our support team a message to support@trainerroad.com.
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I use trainer road a lot in the off-season. How would you recommend incorporating this plan during in-season, where I’m not interested in racing, but want to build my skills in climbing first, and rolling second.
I commute to work a couple days a week, 14 miles one way, and take extended rides on the weekends, 60 – 100 miles with varying degrees of elevation change.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark,
Great question! Just like you train with us in the off-season, training through these plans will get you fast during the in-season as well. Our plans are designed not to just weave in racing, but to increase your cycling capabilities in a specific way that translates to being quicker on the bike. That could mean faster for racing, or just faster to beat your buddies out on those weekend rides. 🙂
In the case of the RRR and CRR plans, there is quite a bit of overlap between the adaptations we’re try to achieve. That said, your focus on climbing first and the shorter, punchier stuff second, would best fit the RRR plan. If you were to only focus on sustained climbs, you may not have the power for the short punchy efforts. But if you focus on the shorter, intense stuff, there will be more overlap that bleeds into your capabilities climbing.
Happy Training!
I’ve just started a medium rolling road race training plan a couple of weeks ago, before the change.
Comparing mine with the new one (both medium) I must say that I’m not pleased with the changes. I understand all the benefits mentioned on this blog post, however it looks like TSS increased roughly 60 points per week. Usually I can’t commit more than 1 hour / workout during weekdays and it feels that the new medium looks like a high. The new medium plan contains a few workouts lasting 75min, sometimes even twice a week.
Kind regards,
Gustavo
Gustavo,
Thanks for your feedback! All the changes that have been made to the plans have been made with the sole intention of getting cyclists faster. In this process, our head coach designed the revisions to ensure the training load progresses throughout your training. That means there were some increases in TSS that were made.
If the mid-volume plan doesn’t quite fit your time availability, you can always drop into a low-volume plan and weave some short, aerobic endurance workouts within your week to keep your training on track. Another option is to stick to the mid-volume plan, but do shorter workouts on those days with 75-minute rides scheduled. We’ve created 60-minute versions of all scheduled workouts for this exact situation. When you find you don’t have the total 75-minutes, search that workout name with a “-1” or “-2” to find a 60-minute variation of it. 🙂
Hope this helps, Gustavo.
Cheers
Hey Nick,
I appreciate the follow up. Thanks for the tips.. and good to know what -1 and -2 means. 🙂
Kind regards,
Gustavo
You’re very welcome!
Happy Training Gustavo!
My riding has improved greatly thanks to Trainer Road.
I will do the ride up Mount Evans this July. I live at sea level. 8 or 9 days before the ride I plan on staying at 7,000 feet to better climatize before I take on the Mount Evans which is a ride up to 14,000 feet. What taper or other rides would you suggest leading up to thee ride?
Thanks,
Larry
Larry,
If you’re following a TrainerRoad training plan, Weeks 7 & 8 of the Specialty plans are taper weeks that reduce the volume of training to bring out your freshness for an event.
If you’re following your own plan and need to construct your own taper strategy, first evaluate the training you’ve done running up to the event. Then, knowing that a taper is “a [progressive] nonlinear reduction of the training load”, you could try and devise your own. Or use one of our Specialty plans to create your week of training based off of Weeks 7 & 8. 🙂
Hope this helps get you on the right track Larry! Have a great ride on Mount Evans!
Any plans to update the triathlon plans? While I race xterra and have been following the short power build to xc mtb specialty plans if been trying to follow the run and swim recommendations from the Olympic tri plans. I noticed that those plans don’t really back off the tss during the specialty and one might not be able to fully recover with the scheduled taper. So I’ve been I kind of no man’s land here hoping I’m not backing too much from my build workload but want to make sure I’m getting in enough intensity.
Hi Chris,
We do have plans to improve our triathlon plans as well. We’re just not exactly sure how it’ll fall into the roadmap of revisions. It’ll be among the revisions made to our off-road plans as well. 🙂
As for your approach, it can definitely be a bit tricky dialing in the balance of run/swim/bike workouts. That’s why we tend to recommend our triathlon plans; since they consider the balance of stress from the three disciplines throughout the plan. Since you’re in a bit of unchartered territory, it’s going to come down to being sensible and listening to your body. The TSS will be reduced in all of our plans towards the end of the Specialty phase, but you’ll need to balance that reduction with a somewhat proportional reduction in the volume of your bike workouts. This is because the MTB specific plan assumes you’re only training for MTB, not the run/swim stuff too. You could use the structure of the bike workouts from the Oly-plan to best balance your bike workouts.
Hope this helps! Have a great remainder of your season Chris!
Hi,
how would you consider preparing for a race like this:
http://eu.ironman.com/~/media/74d6ba4bba76481da4e4ecec2a9d42ea/im70%203%202016%20bike%2090%20eng%201%2008%2016.pdf
It’s IM 70.3, with rolling hills, max 3-4km each and not very steep (like 50m on 3km). But a lot of them.
Is it just better to stick to the “pacing” triathlon plan or would it be interesting to see the rolling hill plan?
We believe sticking to the paced strategy seen in our triathlon plans would be in your best interest. Rolling Road Race does look to fit well, but you’ll want to be more focused on pace than that plan prescribes. The 40k TT plan would be a good alternative, but that would mean you’d need to bring your own run/swim stuff into the mix. Just because we balance the three disciplines in our Triathlon plans, sticking with one of the Tri plans will likely suit you best. 🙂
Hope this helps Simone! Have a great race!
When will the Crit plans be similarly revised?
Week 8 of the plan is meant to be repeated throughout the race season for 4-6 weeks of B events. The newly revised RRR plan backs way off the TSS while maintaining intensity in the shortened versions of Huxley and Joe Devel. Week 8 of the unrevised crit plan takes a different approach – it has three workouts totalling 359 TSS at an average IF of .89. That’s a steep load for maintaining race form.
Would Chad recommend adjusting Week 8 of the old crit plan to something more like Week 8 of the RRR plan by doing the hour version of Xalibu, and one of the hour versions of the two simulated crits (Tour de Nez or Nevada City) or is the load in Week 8 of the new Crit plan going to be different?
Thanks
Hi Mark,
Thanks for posting!
Went ahead and chatted with Chad about your thoughts. Considering the Crit revisions will be similar to the recent RRR improvements, your approach will be great. Those are actually many of the changes that will be made in the revisions that are taking place as we speak. 🙂
Hope you crush those crits this season!
Thanks! Me, too 🙂
http://etapecaledonia.co.uk/about/
What would you recommend as build/specialty planfor this route, lots of flat bits with a climb in middle, and lumpy at start and end. Middle climb will take 30 mins?
I’m a 2w/kg rider…81 Miles 1100M of climbing in total
Hi,
Thanks for posting!
A great plan choice for Etape Caledonia would be to start with our Sweet Spot Base training plans. Then after establishing some foundational aerobic and muscular endurance, move into our General Build plan to expand on those abilities you formed in the Base plan. Finally, depending on whether you’re racing this event or if it’s just self-paced, select either Climbing Road Race Specialty plan or Century Specialty plan.
Hope this helps! Have a great race out there, and ride hard!
Thanks for the advice NIck, at 100Kg, FTP 200W, I won’t be racing…
This article is very helpful to learn basic climbing or rolling road terms before you get started!!
Thanks!
Happy Training!
This article is very helpful to learn basic climbing or rolling road terms before you get started!!
I need some advice I had 2.5/12 off the bike due to work n a crash, slowly got bsck on tje bike with windtrainer n some old sufferfest vid and GCN HITT training session. However 2 weeks ago I got trax flux n subscribed to TR. I did my first FTP test and started high vulome 2 road plan. My question is I have a 160km fondo/ timed ride/race 8weeks after the base finnishes do I do another base phase or do a build or sprcisllity phace. The ride has 2000m of climbing with aprox 1500 on the last 60km. The goal is sub 5hr as i did it last year in 5,35
Andrew,
Glad to hear you’re back in action! And welcome aboard!
It would be best to follow a Build plan after moving through the Base training phase. This is because the progression of workouts in the Build phase will play on the advancements made during your Base training. You’ll be able to capitalize on the fundamental skills you’ve established and set the stages for further increases in fitness throughout the remainder of the season.
The general build plan would be a good choice as it has a nice balanced focus on sustained power (for those longer climbs) and anaerobic power delivery (think breakaways/short, punchy power).
Depending on where your event falls in relation to your training plan, consider including a small tapering strategy leading up to the race. If it lands at the end of that final recovery week in Week 8, it’s likely that’ll tone down the volume enough to leave you fresh for race day.
Hope this helps!