Started a high volume plan 3 weeks ago for a race in September - so far it appears this first 3 weeks has been on a base building - appears a lot of sweet spot workouts - coming fairly easy! Looks like things back off in week 4 , shows I have a Gibbs endurance workout labeled breakthrough - I’m concerned how this endurance ride is going to be considered a breakthrough as it appears much easier than the sweet sport workouts I have been completing! Any insight or input would be great!
Breakthrough / Productive / Achievable / etc. are based on the workouts PL to your WL for the specific zone. So even though you’ve been doing Sweet Spot workouts, having a high WL for Sweet Spot doesn’t impact the rating for an endurance workout (e.g., Gibbs)
I’m still a little confused - I’m concerned why such a easy ride is being labeled a breakthrough - the endurance ride will feel much easier than a breakthrough ride
Again - the Difficulty rating (e.g., recovery, achievable, stretch, breakthrough) is Zone specific. It doesn’t matter how proficient / high your Sweet Spot WL is, an endurance ride will be rated purely against your current Endurance WL. Don’t think of the difficulty rating as a rating of how hard a workout is in the absolute sense, but purely how much higher / lower the workout’s PL is to your WL for that zone.
This is one of the issues with TR’s WL / PLs: everything attached to them only has meaning in TR land, and the meaning doesn’t translate to “normal” meaning
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So you’re basically saying this will be a breakthrough for my endurance capabilities …. I feel that my endurance should be rapidly increasing with the sweet spot workouts …. However I have done a lot of structured training and really trying it understand the physiology part of it more this go around! Thanks for helping to break it down … not sure if I know what the PL and WL means that you’re referring to!
From my perspective, even the hardest TR z2 workouts are only difficult if you already have a lot of residual fatigue. The hardest endurance workout in the library are at an intensity of under .70 (some with tempo intervals up to .75) for 4.5-6 hours. Could be hard-ish if you are in a deep hole, but shouldn’t be hard for anyone doing big volume. I think this is a byproduct of TR’s heritage of “get strong without doing a ton of hours”. Nothing wrong with that, but they just haven’t historically been focused on big volume at z2. Gibbs is like 2 hours of .65 (maxing out at .70), that should be very easy for any high volume athlete unless they are totally cooked. I did sweet spot high volume back in 2020 and I remember that being pretty tough, with 3x30’s at 90%+ and stuff like that. If you can do 90 minutes at 90%+ a few times a week, you should be able to ride at .65 or .70 pretty much all day without killing yourself. I race a lot of long distance events and lean heavily on z2 an z3, so I generally dial up my own workouts for those zones.
All that said, your plan might be designed to give you really easy Z2 to help ensure you are hitting your other workouts. My wednesday Z2 is always super easy and short because I want to be fresh for a hard thursday. It still bothers me a little that TR shows those short/easy z2 workouts with a high progression level, but it doesn’t really matter.
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So maybe the plan is expecting me to be cooked from 3 weeks of sweet spot base building ??? However I’m feeling good - just rode a century ride at the calculated endurance ranges coming up with little to no issues with - was at exactly .70 if FTP ….
It’s a breakthrough for your current Endurance capabilities as measured by your Progression Level (PL). Especially if you haven’t done a long ride labeled Endurance, it will be labeled breakthrough. However, you’re right that your actual endurance has improved.
I think this is an example where Adaptive Training (AT) got the workout right for you by giving you a Workout Level (WL) that’s much higher than your PL would suggest.
Haha I’ve never done a HV plan but from what I’ve heard the cooking starts when the build phase hits…make sure you focus on recovery now!
Hahahahaha oh meeeeeee 
lots of build coming up ……
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Awesome!!! I kinda get it , I would expect breakthrough in overall fitness……
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Yeah do one or two and then you’ll see the PLs jump up and the endurance rides will be achievable or productive going forward.
Yeah, that’s why it happens, but it’s kind of a siloed approach that doesn’t really line up with how these power zones relate to each other. The power zones have significant overlap in their adaptations, so it’s kind of silly to show someone with high progression levels in a zone that is adjacent to one that is very low. If you are a 10 in tempo (or threshold), and a level 1 progression for Z2 (just because you havn’t logged a workout), that is wrong. It will correct itself and you can override to pick a workout that you know is more appropriate, so not a big deal, but I think it would be reasonable that the system would create minimums for adjacent zones based on overlap. Probably not a high priority shortcoming in the system, I hope they are putting every resource available on v2 of adaptive training.
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