I’m a 55-year-old cyclist who enjoyed a fantastic summer riding 200k a week with a great group. As winter approaches, I’ve transitioned to TrainerRoad (TR) and requested a customized plan. I did a ramp test as requested. The first few rides felt manageable, but as the load increased, I started feeling extremely fatigued, even though I was completing all the sessions.
I tried to adjust my plan, but TR doesn’t seem to allow for fewer than two hard day per week, even in their Master plans. Should I consider lowering my FTP manually to start at a more sustainable level? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Structured training can be more fatiguing than 200k per week group rides.
If the fatigue is more than you want to carry, then reducing the workload can reduce the fatigue.
You could lower your FTP, but I think a better solution is to use workout alternatives to choose an easier workout on the hard days. Choose one with, say, 0.5 - 1.0 lower PL than that proposed.
Match the training to the cycling you are training for.
That means that you might even choose to swap out hard days for simply more endurance / tempo volume, if that is in line with the group riding you are going to be doing in the summer.
Same can apply to the easier days in the plan. If the suggested workout is too much (too long / too high intensity), swap it out for one that is a bit easier.
Also be sure to answer the post workout survey appropriately. Very Hard / All out responses will help the AI algo to adjust your workload down a bit too.
Consistency first, volume second, intensity third isn’t a bad way to think about it in this case.
First and foremost, the suggestions already mentioned are ideal.
To answer a question about whether you ‘can’, you can certainly go in and delete a high intensity workout and replace it with an endurance ride of your choosing.
The plans are just that, plans. Something to go by assuming it’s AI works perfectly (although there’s a ton of other factors it can’t pick up), and also assuming nothing meaningful comes up in your life requiring you to alter the plan. As an example, I’m between plans right now and battling a brutal cold and recovering from a fractured scapula. My auto detect FTP dropped a disappointing 10 watts today. If I was in the middle of a plan there’s zero chance I could have stuck with it now, or otherwise during the 5-6 weeks I’ve had recovering from my injury.
Some good generic tips on the thread but if you share your calendar we’ll be able to see more of what’s going on.
There is never a need to manually alter your FTP. Have you been filling out the post workout surveys and marking them as very hard or all out? The training adapts to your ability to complete and recover but you need to let TR know through the surveys.
I’m going to have to differ a bit with some of the other thoughts here. Being new to structured training, my guess here is that your FTP is inflated. You should try to do a more comprehensive FTP test to try to get your threshold set properly. There is a small room for error between sweet spot and threshold and if your FTP is set too high, every sweet spot workout becomes a threshold workout. Every threshold workout potentially becomes VO2. Even endurance could be tempo. That kind of error adds up to fatigue pretty quickly.
The ramp test is good for the majority of the population but it follows a Bell Curve distribution and if you are near the ends of curve it’ll either under or over predict, depending what end of the curve you are. You are maybe at the end where you’ve over performed on the test . In which case it would be a good idea to lower it to something you feel is sustainable and in the long term use AI FTP D to detect your FTP.
Agree with the last couple comments on the FTP (possibly) needing to be adjusted.
As much as we all dread FTP tests, they are sometimes necessary to set a realistic baseline, especially if you’re basing your FTP on outdoor vs. indoor. It’s not uncommon for people to have pretty different FTP numbers outdoors vs. indoors. I know that was the case for me when I started doing structured workouts indoors for the first time. My FTP indoors was quite a bit lower than outdoors.
Ideally TR will updated your FTP via the AI FTP detection over time, but it sounds like it’s possible your current FTP is too high.
I don’t even call it a ftp test anymore but go find a 10 mile segment with no stops or maybe a u turn. See what your average power is for 30+ minutes. Maybe knock off 5 watts and use that number.
It’s more of a long threshold session and you’ll have better training than any other “test”. Just my opinion.
Also check fueling issues…. Make sure you have a snack during a 60+ minute ride.
Get anyone with a big anaerobic capacity but who’s not well endurance trained to do a ramp test and it"ll likely spit out an FTP estimate that’s 20 or 30 watts higher than what they can actually hold for 40 minutes or so.
Exactly. I can easily get the ramp “test” to over estimate my ftp by about 50w, similarly even doing the 20m test properly (with a 5m blowout effort) it over reports by about 20w.
Sure they work for some people but like you said anyone with a larger anaerobic capacity can easily break them.
One is far better off doing an actual test rather than relying on a piece of software to slowly adjust towards what you could have been training with from day 1
Agreed in recognizing that “never” is a sketchy absolutist statement. Mismatched power meters, major health changes and likely many more factors may lead to manual edits of FTP to being very necessary. I have lived thru those above and more so I firmly believe that there are clear reasons to take control in the appropriate times.
If it’s only been 2 weeks, you are experiencing the difference between fun rides with buddies and trainer sessions ( with no pedaling breaks.) You might think about pausing the workout for a min or 2, during a recovery section. The 4 th week is a recover week so hang in there. You will adapt over time. TR needs more than just a few sessions with power to figure out what adjustments to make.
I was in a similar situation a few years back. The TR plans had too much intensity.
I did a few things:
Lowered my FTP by 5% vs the ramp test result. I skew anaerobic, so the ramp test over-estimates my FTP.
Stopped doing threshold and high sweet spot workouts. The hardest sweet spot/threshold-style workout I do is 90% of FTP for 1 hr, and that has me on the limit - probably indicating my FTP is still too high.
Do one intensity session per week - usually a hard VO2max session, or occasionally a session like I mention above in #2.
The rest of my indoor sessions are Tempo or Endurance.
This keeps things sustainable for me and avoids excessive fatigue.
. In which case it would be a good idea to lower it to something you feel is sustainable and in the long term use AI FTP D to detect your FTP.
