🎉🎉🎉 Announcement: Personalized Custom Training Plans! 🎉🎉🎉

[Jonathan]

@talltill

Plan Builder suggests I do 4 short workouts a week. If I change the settings because I want to train more, I get a warning. What I do not understand is, why PB not only ramps up the frequency as requested, but also the duration of the individual workouts. If there is a potential for overload, why not keep the duration down whilst adding easy rides?

I think it’s important to note that when you make a change to the Customized Schedule Recommendation like training 6 days per week instead of 4 days per week, it isn’t going to optimize a 6-day training plan for you as that’s not what is optimal to begin with.

Explaining the principle behind the 6-day plan having longer workouts, the decisions TrainerRoad makes are based on the analysis of the over 250m activities in our database. Through that analysis it has learned that for athletes for whom it is optimal to train at a higher volume (ie: 6 days per week), doing many short workouts isn’t as productive as doing longer workouts.

From a practical perspective for you @talltill , if you are going to choose not to follow the Customized Schedule Recommendation and do more training volume, I’d definitely suggest reducing the number of intense days, but I’d suggest trusting TR first.

[kitenski]

This looks interesting, I cancelled my TR in August as was riding outside twice a week and doing at least one Zwift race a week.

Would this take that into account and allocate a weekly Zwift race at all? Or at least block out the one day a week for a race?

[Duppie606]

I do get a consistent error when making any change (duration, indoor/outdoor, day of week etc.) Once I click try again it works.

I use a current version of Firefox on Windows 10

[ivegotabike]

I ran the planning process and, once I had adjusted the duration of the endurance rides to fill the time I expect to have available, it looks eminently sensible.

Producing the plan is quick and easy.

[aarono]

I got the exact same thing

[Buckethead]

I just switched to using this - nice. I like that we can go back and edit a plan after adding it to the calendar.

One question that I think I saw above, but want to ask again. My plan has switched my 90 minute threshold workouts to 75 minutes. Will the workouts stay capped at 75 minutes throughout the full plan - or will they update to 90 minutes as the PLs increase? It seems like my time on bike and in workouts actually is going down this year if I stick to the recommendations. I ended up switching to 2 days intensity for masters and 4 days of workouts instead of 3 (which is what I have done for a bit now).

[tuff_plantano]

I had this same error when attempting to update my existing plan so I deleted that old plan and was able to create a new one using the new functionality

[talltill]

It would still be neat if I could tell Plan Builder on how many and which days of the week I want to train, and how much time I have available. The resulting plan could come with a warning that this is not the optimal plan, but it would still give me a choice.

My compliance with the suggested plan would be terrible. There’s no way, I would only do a 45’ workout on Saturdays. I’d also sneak in easy rides at least on Wednesdays…

[berto2cj]

Clicked the link on the pop up to edit and clicked next. It errored. Click try again. It worked.

That process repeated until I got a 7 day recommendation.

I think with this and no calendar support on mobile I am done with TR and won’t renew

[Jonathan]

@kitenski

This looks interesting, I cancelled my TR in August as was riding outside twice a week and doing at least one Zwift race a week.

Would this take that into account and allocate a weekly Zwift race at all? Or at least block out the one day a week for a race?

As part of analyzing your historical training data, it will know you’ve been doing those weekly Zwift races.

It isn’t going to prescribe those races as part of your training plan, but it will prescribe a level of training stress that is appropriate with your recent training history.

If you want to make space for those Zwift races, you could change a prescribed Hard Intervals day to a Group Ride, but it is worth noting that since it isn’t structured, there’s no guarantee you’ll get the original training benefit of that day.

That said, you will receive additional guidance on how to approach that race in a way that increases the chances that you’ll get the originally intended training benefit.

[ming]

@berto2cj @Duppie606 @aarono @tuff_plantano

Ah, I’m really sorry about these errors and potential bugs. There’s been some spike in server load which might be contributing to those errors, but we’re investigating and working to get everything fixed ASAP. Thanks for letting us know.

[NateP]

Is this cycling only or triathlon plans too?

[Jonathan]

@talltill

It would still be neat if I could tell Plan Builder on how many and which days of the week I want to train, and how much time I have available.

We think that would be neat to have in the future too .

@talltill

My compliance with the suggested plan would be terrible. There’s no way, I would only do a 45’ workout on Saturdays. I’d also sneak in easy rides at least on Wednesdays…

You’re of course welcome to train as you wish! This new feature is simply providing you with the option in which it is most confident that will deliver the most performance improvement.

[Jonathan]

@NateP

Is this cycling only or triathlon plans too?

Cycling only, for now. Triathlon is upcoming.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Buckethead

One question that I think I saw above, but want to ask again. My plan has switched my 90 minute threshold workouts to 75 minutes. Will the workouts stay capped at 75 minutes throughout the full plan - or will they update to 90 minutes as the PLs increase? It seems like my time on bike and in workouts actually is going down this year if I stick to the recommendations. I ended up switching to 2 days intensity for masters and 4 days of workouts instead of 3 (which is what I have done for a bit now).

We’re adding a monthly check in that will give you updated recommendations. If you should increase your volume, it will recommend that.

[Nate_Pearson]

@talltill

It would still be neat if I could tell Plan Builder on how many and which days of the week I want to train, and how much time I have available. The resulting plan could come with a warning that this is not the optimal plan, but it would still give me a choice.

This is on the roadmap still; this release is one of the required steps in that direction.

[Kaj_Johnson]

I’ve really been looking forward to this! However, I’m experiencing a similar issue as others have noted. When I REDUCE volume from the recommended plan, I get the warning that the adjustments may lead me to burn out. Surely this is a bug?

[Nate_Pearson]

@berto2cj

Clicked the link on the pop up to edit and clicked next. It errored. Click try again. It worked.

That process repeated until I got a 7 day recommendation.

I think with this and no calendar support on mobile I am done with TR and won’t renew

Thanks for reporting the bug! I don’t even know how you got a 7 day recommendation . I didn’t know the system could do that. We should have that fixed today.

For mobile, we have calendar support on our iOS app.

[Nate_Pearson]

@NateP

Is this cycling only or triathlon plans too?

Just cycling for this first launch, but we’re going to do triathlon too.

[Nate_Pearson]

@Kaj_Johnson

I’ve really been looking forward to this! However, I’m experiencing a similar issue as others have noted. When I REDUCE volume from the recommended plan, I get the warning that the adjustments may lead me to burn out. Surely this is a bug?

It depends how you stack your week. You could reduce your volume but stack intensity too close. Then we’d predict burnout/failure and we’d give you the warning.

But it could also be a bug :-D.

What’s the situation? Can you post screen shots of the two plans, please?