Breaking up with TrainerRoad?

Training
1

For context: I’m a 51 year old male in Vermont. Been mountain biking for the past 4 years but new to gravel. Last season was my first on a gravel bike, I fell in love with it, and I wanted to try some races this summer.

I signed up for TR in January and loved it. TR imported all my MTB rides and assigned an FTP of 193. I clawed my way up to my current FTP of 210 as of April 19. After hitting 210, it projected an FTP of 225 by May 17.

Then the weather started getting nice here in Vermont. After a brutally cold winter of doing TR’s structured workouts indoors, I couldn’t wait to get out and just ride. I just wanted to enjoy long gravel rides and MTB rides. I was so happy to be outside. I stopped following the structured workouts and rode whatever I felt like.

Here’s where things get interesting:

  • Week 1 outside: I did 450 TSS on the bike. TR recomended 390 TSS.

  • Week 2: 412/409

  • Week 3: 343/158

  • Week 4 (this week, so far): 207 out of 498. I have my first race Saturday: 50 miles, 5,500 ft of climbing.

With each week of outside riding, even though I was putting in more TSS than prescribed, my FTP projection kept going down. My projected FTP for May 17 is now 209, one watt less than my current FTP.

I’ve done some research and I get why this is happening (sort of). Long endurance rides outside, even at very high TSS, give the algorithm almost no information about my FTP. You can put up 450+ weekly TSS at 0.85 IF and the model sees a lot of volume but nothing that touches the part of the power-duration curve it cares about, so the projection drifts backward. However, from my perspective, I don’t think my fitness is regressing - I feel stronger after doing my long rides.

I feel more race-ready than I would if I’d stayed on the trainer doing intervals. Outdoor long rides have taught me how to handle the actual fatigue of being on the bike for hours and how to fuel properly. For Saturday’s race specifically, I think I needed the outdoor rides more than I needed another VO2 block.

Question 1: Is there a point to having TrainerRoad if I plan on riding unstructured?

TR was an incredibly useful tool in the off-season, but now that I’m racing and riding outside on actual terrain, I no longer see it as the source of truth about my fitness. Is it worth keeping? Is there a way to just ride freely outside and still have TR be useful? Maybe for fatigue detection? Maybe to do an indoor structured workout every now and then on rain days? Curious what other TR users do during the on-season. Do you stick with structured? Drop it entirely? Some hybrid?

I have considered doing structured workouts outside but it’s really challenging in VT. We have no flat roads, treacherous long climbs, and endless descents. For MTB, most of our trails are pitchy and technical. Honestly, I don’t want to mentally focus on intervals outside. I want to ride.

Question 2: What’s the deal with race week? (see screenshot)

TR wants me to do a VO2 max workout today, 3 days before my race, and it’s classifying that workout as “easy.” Is there such a thing as an easy VO2 max workout? Should I even be doing VO2 work 3 days before a race?

Any advice and feedback is appreciated.

Week 3-5
Week 3-51920×1076 273 KB

Week 1 and 2
Week 1 and 21920×863 231 KB

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I think, for some, TR has always been a seasonal training tool whenever your particular ‘indoor season’ happens. They’ve mentioned on the podcast they get seasonal users. The current outdoor ride bug with the new AI isn’t helping at the moment but i gather there is a fix for that on the way?

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Question 1: Is there a point to having TrainerRoad if I plan on riding unstructured?

I live where you can ride outside year round, but having the option to hop on the trainer and do a workout, recovery ride or whatever is worth it for me. It is about convenience. And then there’s the times my wife is out and I am home on Dad duty. But everyone has different life situations and it is really an individual decision.

Question 2: What’s the deal with race week?

Race week is another individual thing. Some do VO2 intensity work as “openers” to get the legs going. Personally I like a little fatigue going into a race. Not much but going in on total rest I can feel flat. Again, it is an individual thing.

4

Good question here! You’re not the first to ask if TR would be useful if you’re temporarily not doing structured TR workouts. :thinking:

You’ve done really well so far in terms of pushing up your fitness, so congrats on that. It’s also cool that you’ve recognized that there is more to fitness than FTP. Those long, unstructured rides that you’ve been doing are certainly good for preparing for long events.

Keep in mind, though, that switching from short, structured intervals to long rides isn’t just changing the type of stimulus you’re getting, but also increasing your volume substantially as well. What you’re feeling now could be a volume thing, not necessarily a stimulus thing. It takes time to confirm that.

Also, you’ve got to be careful with quickly increasing volume, as things often feel fine at first, but you could get roasted in a matter of weeks. :meat_on_bone:

If you’re able to sustain lots of long, unstructured training, and it works well for your fitness, that’s great news. For some, that works well enough for their goals.

For many of us, though, it’s hard to keep that up longer than a couple of weeks. In those cases, the best scenario is usually to mix in ~1 long ride a week with ~2 harder workouts a week and then as much easy riding as you can productively manage long-term. While you might not live in a place where you’re lucky enough to have terrain suited to perfect power graphs and outside workouts, there is likely somewhere nearby where you could make certain types of workouts work.

At the end of the day, you’ve got to do what works for you and what you enjoy. If you’re able to achieve your goals and enjoy the process without TrainerRoad during the summer months, I don’t think I need to try to convince you of anything else. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Based on my experience, though, it’s likely that you’d benefit from having TR there to guide you through a custom plan that has at least two structured rides a week, though you might have to continue on down your current path first to see how things go for you. :+1:

In terms of your upcoming race week, we don’t put full tapers in place for B events, which is why you’re seeing that 60-minute VO2 workout a few days beforehand.

5

Structured training isn’t just hitting power targets..simple hill repeats are structured training.

I live in place similar to yours. After some cycling around and watching maps I found that I have all I need for outdoor structured training (no mtb). I have long and short climbs, shallow climbs everything. Can be a bit annoying to do 4-5 hill climbs for 4-5x10 sweet spot, but you get used to it. The one thing I like most in TR is ftp detection. It is spot on for me. It takes time to combine workout with the outside world, but it’s worthy.

6

Thanks for the great response, Eddie. Good point about the sudden jump in volume. I think TR is worth keeping around for fatigue detection alone. Also, the weather isn’t great every day here, so it’s nice to have for rainy days.

Follow-up question though: any idea why today’s VO2 max is predicted to be easy? That’s not typical of a VO2 workout.

7

Question 1

I like to keep riding structured year around, volume is seasonal/event based, but like Eddie said I like two structured rides per week. In season I ride 6 days a week, out of season 5, I do 90% of structured intervals indoors for efficiency, sometimes I’ll do the TR workout on my head unit outside, but its generally hill repeats, I might as well just do them on the trainer. I have a dedicated indoor bike (pain cave), I am ready to go in less than 5 minutes, I can be done and doing other things instead of faffing around looking for my gloves, making sure varia is charged etc. I do long rides mostly outdoors, but if I am not training for an event, these will become shorter rides indoors so I can do other things like golf, spend more time with the family.

Question 2

Its a B race, I like to keep intensity high and drop volume just a bit, if its a low B, closer to a C race I would also do a shorter Thursday endurance workout that week. If I drop both intensity and volume I find that I show up to races really flat, no energy, legs feel like garbage, I am asking myself what is wrong with me. It messes with my race experience, I don’t race a lot (3/4 times a year), so like Jolyzara I would rather have a little fatigue than be fully rested, but its an individual thing/maybe age related too being a masters rider.

8
  1. If your‘re not going to do any structured training, then I would not use any plan for structured training. I continue training structured through a season and have tried outdoor workouts but only find I maintain or gain fitness through continuing indoor workouts
  2. Go by how you feel. I’ve had some PR performance with three hard indoor sessions the week of a race. Turn the intensity down or rest if you prefer, it looks like you have a sweet spot alternate for the vo2.
9

After some digging, I’m assuming that was a bug of sorts.

It looks like you typically have sweet spot workouts on Wednesdays, and that one was switched to VO2 for some reason.

I looked up what a 60-minute on/off VO2 workout we would have given you on the 6th, and I’m seeing Bashful, which is the same level as Bird -1, but has a lower NP, IF, and TSS. That workout was most likely to be hard for you, so that easy tag might be a bug associated with us switching from sweet spot to VO2.

10

Are external rides even taken into account of the FTP prediction?

Ive noticed similar with my FTP prediction creeping down as ive been doing outdoor rides & races which had equal or higher TSS than the planned workout that day.

But my TT and hard effort times have been getting better so I know I am not actually losing power. That then asks the question, was the higher FTP figures ever real in the first place.

Happy to continue purely as I am getting faster, regardless of what my AiFTP is.

11

G7 - replacing a planned structured workout that targets a certain zone/system… with equal TSS is definitely not going to progress you or appear to a Coach as a progressing in your plan. 100TSS vo2max workout is much different then a super easy longer 100TSS beer/coffee ride with friends.

If it was a race, probably triggered some sort of good training load (40k TT for instance… great steady threshold effort!) or a very punchy road or MTB race would have a profile possibly very much benefiting your VO2 or anaerobic training, especially digging really deep. However often it could set you back in fatigue load and also not hit the systems quite as well (lots of coasting and easy and surgy power not in high zones consistently) So long term I would guess AiFTP / AiCoach… gets worried about being able to progress you in your workouts and having energy to hit the numbers.

Also there is a bug on how outdoor workouts are handled, doesn’t sound like from how you are doing it … it would be in play, but not sure. Long run it should be fine, but prediction gets weird … on detection date it should be ‘good’

12

That all makes sense

But the same drops occur when replacing workouts with similar effort races.

E.g. tonight is my final workout of the block before my next AI cycle which starts tomorrow.

It was going to be a 1hr SST session at 64 TSS made up of 2x20, leading to an expected FTP drop of 1.6% tomorrow.

I have agreed to do a TTT tonight instead which will take around 40 minutes with the entire 40 mins at SST to threshold. I also do a 30min Z2 ride prior. TSS is expected to be 80 for the pair.

Ai now predicts I will drop 3.6% tomorrow

So based upon one SST workout being dropped and replaced with a TT that has an identical amount of time at the same effort or slightly above, I am due to lose an additional 2%

Cant see how that makes sense, except for being punished for not doing a TR workout.

I may do a test of this by creating a workout in Zwift or Rouvy the exact same as a TR workout & doing that rather than the prescribed. See if the Ai changes based on source rather than only effort.

13

See what it’s like after you do the TT.

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This comes up often and it’s a tricky dynamic. If something is an A race, then it’s simple and you do a proper taper and sacrifice a bit of long term fitness for the sake of peaking for the event.

But when it’s not an “A”, race, do you disrupt your training a little bit to be fresher for a lower priority race? That obviously impacts your overall training progression, but if the B race is important (ie - a series that is part of a bigger goal, etc.), it can certainly be the right decision.

I only do a couple A races per year. For any B/C races going into those target races, the B/C races just replace my weekend ride/training and I don’t alter my training for the sake of being fresher for those B/C events. If I’m not going to do a proper taper/peak, experience tells me that being “a little fresher” doesn’t make much difference in the race results. If an A event is really an A event, then everything I do in training is for the sake of maximizing results for that event. If a B/C event happens to land during a rest week, then I get a “lucky” taper. But if it ends at the end of a hard build block with a ton of fatigue, I’ll race with fatigue. And I’m often surprised how well the legs respond to those situations. I’m not saying that’s the best approach for everyone, but it sure makes training simpler when you aren’t trying to be “a little fresh” for B/C events at the cost of disrupting training for your A events.

15

agree, most of the time when I see weird lowering of my prediction, even the day of or day before FTP update date… I do the workout that is projected Hard… I do it… mark it as Hard and FTP updates to much higher. Not sure if it is using Heart rate response in this instance or maybe it is my increasing recovery time watts a bit, extending WU/CD, or upping target by 1-2% for a few seconds here and there?
IDK - just keep doing the work, swap out workouts occasionally if it seems needed. Keep moving

16

Got worse lol

Went from -1.6% with a Planned TR workout, to -3.8% with a planned TT with equivalent time & TSS

After the TT, it went to -4% lol

Planned TR workout was 74 TSS @ 1hr
Planned TT+Warm up was 80 TSS @ 1hr 15
Actual TT+Warm up was only 65 TSS @ 45min (Was a more leisurely affair due to team ability balance)

Planned workout power curve was:
40 min NP = 217W, 20 min NP = 223W

Actual TT Power Curve was:
40min NP = 224W (+7W), 20min NP = 242W (+19W)

Still cant understand why that is lowering my FTP compared to that single TR workout.

17

We’re you in TT position?

How does your power output in that position relate to your normal training position?

18

Sorry to hijack the post, but what bug is that as I do a lot of my riding outside

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With regard to structured training outside, you don’t have to overcomplicate it IMO. I have a ~15 minute gravel climb I use for threshold efforts and a ~5 minute road climb I use for VO2 style efforts. A little bit of intensity is no harm. I use intervals.icu to keep track of my FTP since TR doesn’t really rate outdoor efforts properly. I will probably go back to TR for the winter but the weather is too good right now to spend riding indoors, especially after the misery of winter '25.

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It was indoor on Zwift so body position was the same as my normal training.

Answering the Q though, my TT position power is within 1% of my road bike power (a good bike fitter and shorter cranks FTW lol)