Hi There,
I am on a training “camp” and did an threshold effort at 292 watts for 45 minutes. My ftp is 296… I did about an hour more riding ( also down the mountain )
Should i assosiate with threshold workout like “connel” which is 45 minutes at threshold?
Or should i just leave it as is ( and does AI detect this as a workout still )
Thx
Hey there @Kbonde,
Good question!
There is no real need to associate this ride with a specific TR workout.
AI FTP Detection is going to read this data and consider it down the road.
Also, your current Threshold Progression Level is 4.5 and Connell is a level 8.0 workout. Associating this ride with that workout will cause Adaptive Training to prescribe your future Threshold workouts to be at a level 8.0 or higher. That’s a huge leap, especially since your last Threshold workout (Reinstein) was a level 4.5 and you rated it as “Very Hard.”
This is the issue with associating random rides, races, and other efforts with TR workouts. It’s not always fitting to assume that since you’ve done an effort like this once you can continue to do them in training week after week. The ride you did in comparison to the workouts in that 8.0 range is kind of like apples to oranges. Even though Connel has a 45-minute long Threshold interval which is similar to your effort on that climb, your training plan isn’t currently prescribing sustained power intervals, but rather over-unders.
Based on that assumption & logic, your next Threshold workout would be something like Spickard +6 if you associated your ride with Connell. 
I’d consider this type of ride a fitness test of sorts and simply a really beautiful day out on the bike that doesn’t need to relate to a specific TR workout.
Really nice effort on the climb! I’d love to make it out there someday! 
As said associating an outdoors ride can mess up your PLs and thus Training. Its also worth bearing in mind that the power sustained outside, particularly uphill may be higher than you can sustain indoors. I believe the current AI FTP D strikes that correct balance between outside power and inside power to optimise your training and that is the reason for the 10 indoors work outs requirement for it to Detect.
Thank you both for the great answars to my questions - seems logic - ( although that Reinstein workout was rated very hard because a 1 week stomach flu i think 
). I would NOT like to do the spickard +6 next time i ride indoors haha.
Have a nice day
gonna disagree a bit with the above. If you are working on threshold, why wouldn’t you want to progress in it? see the following presentation from WKO/training peaks, slide 31 http://storage-cdn.trainingpeaks.com/assets/downloads/WKO4%20Fatigue%20Resistance.pdf
So right time your time to exhaustion is 45mins, so you could progress with building that TTE by doing stuff that is, say, 2x25 threshold as a next step and keep working on that until you’re over 60mins of threshold time in a workout (that wouldn’t be limited to 1x60, but you could do like 2x35 and get 70mins of threshold work). It’s not really progression if you’re taking a step back, you’ve proven to yourself you can do 45mins of threshold, and you can keep building
I personally, just me, associate that kind of ride with Lola. Which is what I do when I do an Empirical Cycling style FTP test. It gets me closer to my real level with my known FTP.
Am I misunderstanding something, or does TR itself match some outdoor rides with the prescribed workouts?
Of course, as part of the official process of pushing a workout to a head unit, performing that workout specifically and uploading to TR afterwards. The act of doing a specific workout to plan is their emphasis here.
The issue specifically mentioned relates to the “associating random rides, races and other efforts…” aspect. This falls under the previous “unstructured” umbrella in TR terms and is not a suitable base for matching manually selected workouts that are “close” after the fact.
Two different use cases.
In addition, it will prescribe whatever ride you did with your planned workout. TR isn’t intelligent enough to tell if you actually did the workout.
I ran into this problem when it would associate with my morning commute, with my plan to workout AFTER work.
I would agree, but it is comparing apples with grapes, your outdoor progession, needs to be independent of indoors… imo
uh, no, that isn’t true at all. there may be cooling differences of course, but my threshold is the same inside and outside with the fans I use
Oh but it is.
That’s you, your thresold inside verses outside is irrelevant, it doesn’t mean its typical.
Nothing or little to do with heat (it can be a factor for sure), more a muscle recruitment issue and motivation.
As you’ve described it, this sounds like a tricky needle to thread. If you can do an 8, your PL is an 8. If that’s not the case, then you open a whole nother can of worms, no?
60 min at threshold is essentially a race effort.
Training at race pace has its value… but at that effort (training / racing) is very demanding physically. Trying to progress week after week is something you can not do indefinitely. In my experience (as coach & athlete), it is better to train under threshold (or if working at threshold, in intervals 5-15 min) rather than stretch yourself in an attempt to “pull it up.” This, in my opinion, is what leads to fatigue that is tough to come back from.
Again, my opinion, but I wouldn’t do any more than 1 x 40 min at FTP in training. Anything else you’re getting in to time trialing / race territory.
you did see the bit that threshold work isn’t limited to 1x60, didn’t you?
and of course you can’t add threshold indefinitely, threshold TTE is a limited block intended to build that time to exhaustion. and then, once tte is built up, moving on to a vo2 block is one possibility to raise the ceiling. that’s why TTE is part of a base cycle and not necessarily race specific
not sure why TTE should only be limited to time trialing/racing, it is an important foundation of any good training periodization strategy for all cyclists.
Just a heads-up in case anyone missed it, the OP’s plan settings don’t currently call for sustained work, so that’s a bit less relevant in this particular case. They are currently in a Gran Fondo Specialty phase where the goal isn’t simply focusing on TTE.
To answer the original question, you need to understand what workouts TrainerRoad is going to prescribe them in the cases of whether they do or don’t associate this effort with a similar TR workout. It’s not as much about training design or philosophy as it is about how the product works. 
As @Bbt67 mentioned, we’ve been clear in the past that it’s not always as simple as comparing apples to apples when looking to match a “similar” outside ride to a TR workout. A lot went into building out our workout grading system, and until Workout Levels v2 is released, it’s not going to be as simple as picking a workout that’s close and hoping for the best. 
We’ve had athletes reach out in the past because they’ve ambitiously knocked out a really hard high-level workout and now all they’re getting is reeeaaallly hard workouts.
@Jesse_Vernon1 Training isn’t always linear and workouts can’t always progress infinitely one after another. If you were able to dig deep and complete a high-level workout once, I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is going to be productive or wise to use that as the only benchmark moving forward while you continue to bury yourself in all-out efforts week after week. Some plans such as our 40k TT plan even call for multiple Threshold workouts each week, and each one can’t all have the intention of a new power PR. 
These types of historic all-out efforts are good to take on from time to time (such as in a race setting or in fitness testing), but it’s not necessarily the most sustainable form of training long-term (especially when considering really long efforts).
Think about when a cyclist sets a new hour record. Is that the new benchmark for their training (60 minutes at x FTP or higher only)? Or do they take that data into consideration and get back into regular training with the hopes of building back a bit further for their next effort?
This is a tricky topic but again, I think that the original question here is more of a how TR works one vs a training philosophy one. There is plenty of space on the forum for those conversations though! 
If anyone has any further questions about these types of situations in their training plans, just let us know and we’d be happy to chat about it! 
Thanks for the reply. What I’m taking from this is that the structure of plans is really important, and that even if you fell frisky, it might not be advisable to reach for a Stretch of Breakthrough workout, because you might throw the progression off entirely. Your hour record analogy is a good one.
Totally.
Progression Levels drive what workouts you should be prescribed day in and day out. They shouldn’t necessarily be representative of your personal records. Just because you can do more (power, time, intensity, etc.) doesn’t mean you always should.
There’s nothing wrong with all-out efforts from time to time, but they aren’t the best for training long-term.
Another analogy here – If you’ve watched the spring classics this year you saw that Van der Poel was absolutely on fire during the beginning of the season, and then started to fade during the last two races. This is because he probably built this training plan to peak for Flanders and Roubaix. Even though each of these races are weeks apart, the efforts caught up with him and it’s not sustainable to continue on like that long-term. For us, it might be a hard ride lasting 60-90 minutes, but for him, it could be a few hours with a really strong finish. 
Your training readies you for those types of efforts. Then it’s rest and rebuild for the next one.
I mean, he was 3rd at LBL
True! He’s had an amazing season, and is definitely one of a kind!