Do we know when? Historically I have set up my Plan Builder plans to be polarized as that seems to be most effective for me. Will we be able to select a “polarized” option so it applies it all base and build blocks?
If not this functionality to set the base and build blocks types as spelled out here would be nice:
Good timing as I’ve done my last session to get the correct progression levels set.
My comments:
I like the clearer guide through and goals “Increase FTP”
I did have to go through the plan builder more times then I can remember to get it set right for me based on my experience of time available and intensity that I can sustain. The masters setting was particularly well hidden and I kept on forgetting to set the outside ride day back to inside. Maybe both of these could be set as questions on a page?
I’m not too sure on the relationship between training approach and then overriding the time allocation. Ultimately the workouts have to fit within time constraints with work and life. Does that make setting a training approach redundant? I couldn’t really see much difference with what it set between balanced and demanding when comparing the two after setting the time available. And does setting demanding and then masters make it more of a moderate plan? I know I don’t do well with 3 intensity days a week.
I tried to create my next training plan with it and for the most part, it looks very good. However, as someone who does not race at the moment (too many commitments), but still wants to train regularly, the limitation to 3 months makes it less useful. I typically plan for a 6-month block. Splitting that in two with two Base-Build-Specialty cycles does not seem like a good fit for me.
What should I do here, should I instead opt for “Train for event” and create a fake A-event?
Hey there,
You can select “Other Duration,” which will provide you with options to build a plan out for longer than 3 months:
Hi,
Great feature, really, but I have a doubt: I deleted my “old” plan, recreated a custom plan, and the Tuesday Hard Intervals are always the same during a phase ???
By example:
I wouldn’t worry about the workouts being the same each wee. They will change as you progress through the plan (adaptive).
Thanks, I missed that button. Maybe you can make that more prominent?
I picked Road > Group Rides, hoping it’d be similar to the Crit plan, because I want to focus on shorter, more intense efforts this year. It’d be nice if there was additional explanation what each plan focusses on.
One more question: I commute, which adds about 6 hours of riding per week. I pace by heart rate (no power meter on my commuter) and I am mostly doing commutes in Z2. Is there a way to tell Plan Builder of this additional load? E. g. it proposed a 30-minute endurance ride on the second day, but I am tempted to simply delete it and do strength training instead. After all, I’d spend 2 x 30 minutes in Z2 on that day anyway.
Thanks so much, just re-signed up for the annual plan!
Got the email about this new feature yesterday and given that I’ve been trying different things out recently to decide on how I want to train for next summer, I thought I’d sign back up and give it a go.
Run a couple of plans through plan builder, 3 month endurance focus and then a shorter plan leading up to an audax I have in November. Both occasions it suggests five days training, but Wednesday is only 30 mins and very easy, I’d rather do four days and make Tuesday/Thursday a bit longer which would free up Wednesday for the gym. If I make this change, does this affect the optimisation of the plan?
Also, and reading some of the posts on this thread, it doesn’t seem to want to give me any longer rides at the weekends, which is the bread and butter so to speak of my training as these days my ‘events’ are longer distance things such as audax. Will the plan gradually ramp up the length of the outdoor endurance rides, if not, will it affect things negatively if I do more than the 90 minutes suggested?
My goal for next summer is a series of rides 200/300/400 and 600km , the 600km will be over two days, I was hoping that this new feature would help me with the ramp rate required, rather than just prescribing interval workouts. What would be the best way to set the system up to get it to work best for me in this situation?
So I’ve my first plan all setup, looks good, using the tactic of an outdoor group ride for a weekly indoor race seems to work fine.
I also play field hockey, with training on a Wed and a game on a Saturday, should I add them in manually as runs or just leave it out?
I applaud continuous development & improvement of the product, but from my attempt so far at creating a plan I’m not seeing any obvious presence of any new ‘smarts’ being present in this release.
For me, the update looks and has behaved principally as a new front-end (UX update) to the same underlying plan generator; and required the same adjustments from me to get something that appeared reasonable (adjusting daily volumes etc). Cannot see any apparent signs of my past ride or workout history having any obvious effect on the plan construction. 
Awesome stuff, been wanting this for a long time!
One small bug on my end. I created a new plan with the new builder but my Career page still says the name of the old plan.
Edit: Just realized it’s not a bug, plan name is not shown in calendarV1. However, in calendarV2 the Discipline/Goal badge isn’t showing.
Keen to try it out but everytime I click on my plan to adjust it I get the “ouch we’ve taken a nasty spill” message
Good feedback, thanks for that! I’ll pass it on to the rest of the team.
Your commuting rides should be taken into account by Red Light/Green Light, but I’ll check in and ask if there’s another recommended way to “pre-plan” those commuting hours.
Hey Bruno,
Thanks for the heads up – we will take a look at this!
Same here. Exactly my thoughts too.
Not wishing to sound too churlish, but the default plan offered up gave the impression of having totally ignored my prior (workout & volume) history and appeared more at a beginner / new to structure level. Dumb rather than smart. Not really what I was expecting to see.
Please stop using ‘m’ to indicate miles; that’s what everyone uses for meters. Miles is ‘mi’. And this is coming from an American.
Yeah, thanks. I’m asking, because my cycling volume went up quite a bit recently, and I de-emphasized endurance rides on the trainer.
I was asking, because it is not clear to me whether Plan Builder takes this into account:
The plan it created for me suggests it did the latter. The endurance ride on the second day is only 30 minutes long (and I might delete that in favor of strength training). Interestingly, it also shortened the Saturday workout to 1 hour (also great as I re-scheduled that for Fridays).
I might be a bit of a edge case with this, due to injury and illness
This year I have been putting a lot of emphasis on time on the bike, building it gradually doing around the 10hour mark, and 2 hard workouts per week, done me ok in 12 hour gravel races and multi day events, have my highest ever FTP and was close to 4w KG, I feel that a lot of MY problem when using TR in the past was that I cut out my commutes e.t.c to focus on intensity over time on the bike, this did me no favors
So this was working for me, but in late July I picked Covid up and this hit me hard (T1 diabetic), just recovered from that, and then fell down the stairs and broke my foot
I decided to give TR another go (mainly as I can’t do a FTP test for a while) with a priority of getting my hours on the bike up whilst increasing the intensity while my foot improves, last few weeks have been 7hrs 343TSS, 8hrs 425, 9.5hrs 470
The new new plan builder has me at 5 hours and a TSS of 290, in the last 7 weeks (despite recovering from covid and breaking my foot) I have 1 week with less hours, and 2 with less TSS, I don’t intend to follow this “optimum” plan
It feels to me like TR has gone back to prioritizing intensity and the expense of hours on the bike, and for me that doesn’t seem to work, Group rides that I do on a Sunday are 4hours at least, so to balance week days against weekend days (important to me) I need to be looking around the 8-10 mark
