Thatâs what I was saying - everyone is different! I personally hate having a schedule and being told what my ride is going to be - this is why I have had a lot of trouble committing to TR. I think they make a great product, but Iâm hesitant to sign up again based on my history of ghosting my plan lol.
One more thing I overlooked. I had followed the low volume plan before and did two 60 min and one 90 min hard interval rides per week. The suggestion now is for two 60 min and one 45 min hard interval ride plus one 60 min endurance ride. Total time in the updated plan is up 15 mins, but intensity is reduced. Can you explain why this might be? I have to assume that Iâd have more adaptations by going back to the original low volume schedule, or by increasing the third hard interval day from 45 mins to 90 minsâŚright? Iâve selected balanced as the option. Even upping to demanding doesnât give me a 90 min hard interval ride. Just adds a fifth day and extends the endurance ride to 90 mins and adds a 30 min easy day for the fifth.
Just hesitant to âdropâ my intensity/hard intervals for this offseason. Wondering what the science behind no hard interval days beyond 60 mins is.
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Food for thought for those of us who arenât racing: it would be great to have the option of an extensive (e.g., extending the length of threshold and below intervals) instead of increasing the intensity of the intervals. Especially for those of us over 50.
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+1 for extensive programming. Even for those of us that are racing, there are plenty of reasons for doing extensive work.
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This is probably the key reason for me manually overriding my TR-generated plans - or simply scheduling my own blocks manuallyâŚ
I have a gazillion workouts across various zones that Iâve favorited/starred as being useful for progressing duration (vs. intensity), making it easier for me to select a replacement workout with a similar PL to the one that TR was suggesting for me. Be nice to have an option instructing the machine to favour extensive progression automatically, or for it to just figure out when this approach or intensive progression work should be preferred!
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I could have done with this today when Storm Ashley came. The group ride was cancelled. This will become more common over the winter, so I hope the feature to swap to an appropriate indoor workout wonât be too far off.
I used the TrainNow recommendation but was a little surprised to get a climbing workout rather than endurance given the Group Ride instructions were to go easy and let the group go if necessary. Is that because TrainNow isnât forward looking and has seen Iâve had an easy recovery week already so upped the intensity whereas the plan knows what is coming up and still wants to keep things easy, ready for the upcoming more intense workouts?
Iâve set up a plan with no goal or event just improving FTP. In a couple of weeks time weâve decided to make a day of it and the normal 3 hour road group ride will be a 7 hour gravel ride with a lot more climbing and likely double the TSS. Whatâs the best way to enter this into the plan and get the VO2 workout the day before and after reduced? Is it to increase the intensity and duration of the scheduled group ride or remove the group ride and add a C event? Iâve tried both and donât get any adaptations. I read elsewhere in this thread that the adaptations for tapers will happen nearer the time, how much nearer? I altered a ride in the next few days to be more challenging to test this but didnât get an adaptation, how quickly after a change to the plan should I get the adaptation message?
Context and feedback on the custom training plan. Youâll probably see from my training history that despite being a long term subscriber I donât follow a plan and use the TrainNow feature when I canât ride outdoors. I was intrigued by the new plan so thought Iâd give it a go. Typically I ride with mates a couple of times a week and usually get a red or yellow light the day after. The reason I ride is for the social aspect. Iâm not going to drop these rides and miss out on seeing my mates plus the ride intensity wonât change based on my training needs, itâs based on who is pushing the pace. Mark is a half wheeling git! Therefore in my instance, the plan needs to be tailored around what I normally do.
I did wonder given how the new plan is marketed to analyse my past riding history and not require an A event if it would it recognise the pattern to my riding i.e. ~3 hour outdoor rides on Wednesday and Sunday and then give me a plan around this. It doesnât. Obviously, it gives me the option to select the days I train and whether theyâre outdoor group rides or indoor turbo sessions. I altered the Wednesday and Sunday slots to give me 3 hour outdoor group rides. I notice on every 3rd week the outdoor ride duration and intensity reduce so Iâll have to increase them back up. Itâd be nice to set fixed sessions in place.
What is the historical analysis looking for? Is it what my current riding looks like or how experienced with interval training am I or something else?
Given the above I think when the wizard runs and is analysing my training history there should be a summary of what it has learnt and how it will be applied to the custom training plan. Iâve no reason to believe that itâs custom otherwise.
I think that the output of the historical analysis could also be that it states on average you ride on a Wednesday for this duration, with this intensity, with this average TSS shall we use that in your custom plan going forward and enter this as a fixed Wednesday session. Likewise for Sunday.
If the plan were truly custom and learning from my history could it summarise as an output what I need to work on to get better at what I currently do. It doesnât matter to me if this is climbing or raising FTP for example, just build the plan that makes me faster based on what my outdoor rides need most. Or is this the same issue as WLV2?
Iâm aware that the Wednesday and Sunday group rides are currently generating lots of red lights. If the output of the history analysis is that this is detracting from my potential, should it tell me this and set me a plan to get better at what I currently do if that is my goal? It might even say stop riding as you are for 8 weeks and weâll get you properly to the level required to ride like that.
I would hope that a personalised custom training plan would incentivise me to improve and therefore be a reason to stick to a plan. The incentivisation seems missing in the instance of not having a competitive event to train for since the plan doesnât tell me what itâs doing for me and why. I chose FTP increase but I could just as easily have chosen climbing, which is best for me?
I could just carry on riding Wednesdays and Sundays as I am, enjoying the rides and doing other activities on the days Trainerroad suggests a workout, what would I miss out on?
HTH Scott
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Youâve summed it up well. TrainNow operates independently of any plan you may have and the longer term goals the planâs geared towards, and instead looks only at what workouts/rides youâve just done recently to inform its recommendations.
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Yes, TrainNow always offers 3 workout suggestions - âClimbingâ, âAttackingâ and âEnduranceâ - with one of those 3 suggestions highlighted as the Recommended one. Which one of the 3 is recommended depends on what TN sees you as having just done in your immediate ride history, eg. if it sees youâve just done intensity it will recommend the endurance workout, etc.
The key thing is that its suggestions are not informed by any plan that you may be following, and its recommended suggestion just depends on what youâve done in the day or two prior. Quoting TRâs Sean from an earlier post:
TrainNow will give the same suggestions whether or not youâre on a training plan, and no matter where you are in your training plan. So those endurance, climbing, and attacking rides it recommends are all appropriate to your Progression Levels in the respective zones, but do not take into account rest days or the upcoming daysâ scheduled training. If youâre on a training plan, defer to your planâs recommended workouts. TrainNow is intended for athletes not on a plan or those who like to occasionally choose structured workouts, and is not meant to replace a training planâs periodization (the rhythm of train/rest/repeat).
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TrainNow is definitely giving personalised suggestions, because itâs playing hardball with me and just refusing to co-operate on a red light day:
Just. Stop. Training.
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For clarityâs sake, this is expected behavior â TrainNow wonât recommend workouts on red days. There does seem to be a display bug, though â you should get a message on that page that looks like this:
Weâll fix that issue in the app so everything is presented as it should be.
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TrainNowâs suggestions are personalized - I donât think anyoneâs claiming otherwise - but theyâre not informed by your plan, only by your history. Whether you have an active plan running or not, TNâs suggestions, and which of the three it highlights as recommended - will be the same, informed solely by your past history. The presence of a plan doesnât change this, as it doesnât look at your plan. So no trying to steer to you towards, or substitute for, whatâs coming up next on your plan if you have one.
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In many ways some of the confusion over adaptive plans is the same as the 1990s waterfall delivery of IT compared to the 2020s agile delivery of product.
1990s decide in advance what we will do, then create a plan to do it, then execute the planâŚthen bring in audit to find out why it didnât work. Repeat.
2020s decide why we want an outcome, continually change how we achieve it, post on social media about how amazing we are. Repeat.
I prefer the new world, with all its flaws.
I think thereâs a typo. Audit should be adult 
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The information you give us (while going through Plan Builder) about your discipline, goal and desired time to train helps us choose the right energy systems to target and optimise while you move through your Training Plan. There is significant overlap between the energy systems required for âBuilding Enduranceâ and âIncreasing FTPâ but the adaptations may differ depending on what energy system should be targetted given all of the other information we have at hand.
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Is this really the way TrainNow was envisioned? I canât think of any reason it should not recommend a workout if youâre asking for one. You could argue, âbut it will interfere with the following days in your training planâ, but thatâs the whole point of AT, isnât it? Shouldnât TN recommend a workout and then the plan adapt based on what I do?
Hey! Sorry for replying late on this one, @kosmo886 
I am not sure what training plan you are choosing as I donât see one in your account, but the differences you are seeing may be attributed to the type of plan you are choosing and how PB now recommends a training plan based on your riding history 
Even if PB recommends one duration, it doesnât mean you canât change it to a different one to meet your needs time-wise. When you get to the Schedule section, you can adjust these with the drop-down menu:
I also wanted to note that because an interval session might not be as long as 90 minutes, it does not mean youâre dropping the intensity of a workout. If anything, oftentimes, the intensity is increased in shorter durations to still get the same training benefits and activate the correct energy systems.
A good example of this is Workout Alternates⌠Say you have a 90-minute Sweet Spot workout, but you only have 45 minutes to train that day, the 45-minute workout is likely going to be more intense than the 90-minute so that you still get the intended training benefits scheduled for that day.
Hey @Pbase
This is intended. TrainNowâs purpose is to give our recommendation for the right workout, given your fitness, today. On a recovery day our only recommendation is a recovery day, so thatâs what TrainNow recommends. Youâre free to choose a workout from the Workout Library if you like, but on a recovery day that is TrainNowâs recommendation because itâs what itâs designed to do.
A good example would be; much like you wouldnât ignore your coach when they recommended rest, so why would TN let you ignore the Red Day.
I get what youâre saying, but you can also find lots of comments from TR staff complimenting people for riding through a red day and having some big achievement. You can also find instances where people rode on a red day and then the next day was green. That being the case, I would think TN would make a smart recommendation to help people looking for a workout, no matter their RLGL status. I just find the whole thing very confusing when we hear both âdonât ride on a red day and we wonât even recommend a rideâ but also âwow, you rode on a red day and achieved so muchâ.
Thanks for the reply, btw!
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Has anyone been through a full month of training using the new plans? Any monthly check-in or adjustment to plan?
Canât really get a straight answer on the monthly check in which has been mentioned and whether the plan changes hours? I am on the rest week and nothing yet with future weeks the same as the original allocation and static hours.
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I just put the ârecommendedâ schedule on my calendar. Iâve compared this schedule (4 workouts, including two 1-hour and one 45 min intense plus a 1hr endurance) to just 3 day options with all intense days. The system recommends the intense days to be two 1hr and one 1:15 session. It says increasing the 1:15 to 1:30 is too much volume. This is exactly what the low volume plan had been and that I had followed for a few years. I am quite confused by how this is working. Iâve also compared the longer vs. shorter intervals. They might be relatively more intense for shorter workouts, but the TSS is longer in all cases for the longer interval sessions. ie. comparing a 1:15 vs. 1:30 sweet spot workout.
It seems like a significant change with Trainer Road now and as others suggest, itâs generally dropping volume and/or TSS from a place where I was nowhere near overtraining. The question becomes whether I should drop the intensity by adding the 4th day of endurance as recommendedâŚor up the plan to something other than balanced. even though time is something I donât have in excess supply.
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