Hi. Looking for suggestions on plan adaptations moving into winter and indoor training.
Currently my target is 4 scheduled workouts a week. 2 sweet spot (1:15 hrs) and 2 endurance (2ish hours).
I did check plan builder to increase my workouts to 5 scheduled ones a week and is coming back with only 1 endurance ride per week with 3 “hard” + 1 “easy”. Really 4 is a happy number so it would just be replacing an endurance with a hard day.
Curious what people’s thoughts are around a balanced 2 hard/2 endurance vs 3 hard 1 endurance schedule.
For consideration my aerobic decoupling on inside rides is sub 4% generally speaking. Recovery generally also feels pretty decent. My curiosity is with a volume target of sub 8 hours what’s the optimal gain. I’d love to hit 10 but that’s my longer term goal for next summer.
I always try and do 5 starting with an easy recovery ride, 2 back to back sweet spot days, day off then a weekend of zone 2/3. Fit in a short yoga session on days off too.
Did you try the Masters setting in Plan Builder, I think that gives you two endurance days at Mid Volume (Im on LV). Regardless I’d go with Plan Builder to have it sprinkle in VO2max, threshhold (over, unders) and adapt, and if the masters version isn’t giving you a 2nd endurance day adapt one in weekly. FWIW, my SS block ends this week for my LV plan and good mentally to see it swap to a VO2max/ Threshold block, it should be physically good for me too.
If you’re training 4-5 days and less than 8 hours a week and want to see the best results with your fitness, I’d recommend three hard workouts if you’re able to recover between each of them.
Either option is a good plan, but when you start to get really low volume, you likely aren’t going to be able to build/maintain as much fitness without a good amount of hard work.
Winter is when I build most of my fitness, as it’s when I move most of my training indoors, which brings more focused, efficient training through TrainerRoad workouts. I’m always surprised by what five workouts a week with three hard days can get you over the span of a few months.
I’d do what feels best for you and is enjoyable/sustainable over the entire winter season.
You can adjust the number of days with intensity on Plan Builder, i. e. you will be able to ask it for a 2 + 2-day plan. You can also set the max workout duration according to your preferences.
Have you tried that?
It all depends on what your goals are, where your fitness is and what else you do in life (i. e. how much training is sustainable).
Sounds great. I figure I’ll give that a go and drop it back if its too much!
bonus question, should i end an existing plan or change it? I had set it arbitrarily long (into february) since i didn’t have a specific event in mind; was just using it for base/build. In this case i would just extend the end date to start of May.
Do you have any events you’re thinking about doing next year? If you have any of that information, I’d plug it into your calendar and build an event-based plan.
Even if you don’t have exact dates, it could help to try to get close.
Otherwise, running a goal-based plan through May is totally fine! If any events pop up between now and then, you can add them then and switch over to an event-based plan along the way.
Hitting a bug when trying to change the end date of my plan to May 1st. Perhaps its due to the length?
Start date is 05/06/2025 → new end date 05/01/2026 which throws an error. Given that, end the plan and start a new one? I don’t have any target events to plan for at the minute.
Not necessarily. If you’re on an event-based plan, it’s always good to use the same start date for your new plan to ensure that you pick up your training where you left off, rather than automatically starting back in base.
For goal-based plans, it’s not always such a big issue, but it can still be annoying. I’d just be mindful of your training phases and do your best to line things up in a way that works for you.
