So Plan Builder has decided there’s enough time to give me a partial Build in between Base 1 and Base 2, which makes good sense. Cool.
However, it’s got me doing a recovery week next week, then 2 weeks of loading (Build), then going straight into the first five loading weeks of Base 2 without any recovery week in between. That’s 7 loading weeks in a row, which seems unwise to me.
I was off last week for a holiday (the only planned time off I put into PB when I originlly built my season), so, although I’m still shedding a bit of travel fatigue, my training fatigue is actually fairly low. This is effectively my first loading week after a recovery period. I’m thinking that means I should skip next week’s recovery week and go straight onto those last two Build weeks, then have my recovery week right before I start Base 2.
That makes sense, right? And if I drag and drop all the workouts on my calendar to make this happen then they’ll still adapt with AT, correct?
Or is there something to be said for a 7 week marathon loading cycle?
I think it’s a bug of plan builder being too rigid and trapped into combining the existing block structure from the static plans towards a fixed date (some A event).
I think PB needs some edgecase bugfixing @SarahLaverty@ZackeryWeimer but sometimes TR seems to argue that it „depends on the recovery needs of the athlete“:
Thanks @Rizzi thats helpful to see. Especially to note that it’s not necessarily the intention of the TR training philosophy even if it’s not a priority for them to adjust the software just now. That tells me I’m probably making the right call swapping things around, rather than unwittingly knee-capping something clever they were trying to do with my progression.
Cheers!
Yes, TR told me the one week of build between B1 and B2 was a bug they’ve seen. They manually adjusted my plan but still had 6 weeks of B2 without a recovery week in the middle.
As a 53 year old, I don’t want to do a VO2, Thresh and SS every week for 6 weeks. I dragged and dropped the weeks to have a mid block recovery.
I love TR as a framework but I’ve also offered to others before definitely use it as a tool, and not be so beholden to it. If you’re feeling rough, better judgement may say override the AI plan with a couple recovery days. Or even reducing one workout down to a Z2 ride might be enough reduction to put you back to feeling right.
This is an edge case that pops up from time to time depending on the duration of your plan relative to your events and the experience level selected. We’re keeping track of when these happen so we can work on improving Plan Builder, so we appreciate the heads up!
Seven weeks without a recovery week is tough, so breaking things up would be a good approach to take here.
Checking out your plan, it looks like you’ve just started that Build block you mentioned. The way you proposed moving things around would be a solid way to reorganize things.
You’re currently in Week 9 of your plan, so I think shifting Week 10 (your recovery week) out would be a good move. Slotting Weeks 11 and 12 in immediately after your current week will give you three good weeks of training, and then you’d get that recovery week before you kick off Base 2 in Week 13.
I’d be happy to make those changes for you if you’d like, or I can leave it up to you if you prefer. Just let me know!
