I have been using TrainerRoad for about two years now, and it has worked well for me.
During the winter, when the days are shorter or the weather is bad, I usually stick to the prescribed workouts. However, during the summer, when the days are longer and the weather is good, I like to extend my rides.
Over the last few months, I have been replacing some workouts with longer rides. My challenge is that I would like to do a 1- to 1.5-hour high-intensity workout followed by about 2 hours of endurance riding. While 2 to 3 hours of VO2max or threshold work can be fun, most of the time I prefer to combine the interval session with a relaxed gravel or MTB ride afterwards.
One option would be to schedule an endurance ride after the workout, but I’m not sure how TrainerRoad will handle that, since its philosophy is often that less is more.
Thanks for the information. So instead of having a trainingplan of 4 rides between 2 or 3 hours. I can change it to 4 rides between 1 or 1,5 hours and extend it with the Z2?
Just keep your hard interval session on your calendar and once completed go out on a z2 ride. No need to add the z2 ride to your calendar. Strava or your bike computer can just upload your data to TR.
It’s more about how the human body handles training than a philosophy. So let’s say you do an hour ride, you get 10 “damage” to your muscles, and after recovery you get a 10 mitochondria increase…I’m making up numbers and units for illustration.
So if instead you do a two hour ride, do you get 20 mitochondria? If you do a ten hour ride, do you get 100 mitochondria? Its more likely that you get 100 damage but only 20 mitochondria.
Because our bodies don’t work like that. There is an amount of adaptation you can gain, and beyond that you are just adding damage and recovery time. I think TR are trying to find that best stimulation and gains at a manageable cost. Some times that means doing more or less than a rider wants to do.
Thanks, thats why I find it easier to stay with the trainingsplan in the winter vs in the summer. In the summer I enjoy the longer rides more haha. Beside of the duration, sometimes i’m done with doing the workouts. Most of the time I do the sweet spot and threshold worksouts on the same track, doing multiple loops. One, because I can focus more on the workout and Two because of the safety of other people. Doing the same loop 2 or 3 times a week is a little boring so thats why I Like to do an extra hour or 2 after the workout.
I do this all the time. Do my 90 minute interval workout on the way out, then extend doing Z2, or sometimes tempo or SS on the way home. It allows me to increase volume significantly in the summer, and my fitness definitely improves with the increased volume, your mileage may vary.
Are you talking about a second activity, or a second planned workout?
I don’t think there’s anything magic or hidden here. We simply look at what you did for the day and use that to predict what’s next.
There is a good chance that your upcoming training will change if you’re doubling the planned duration of riding for the day, or if you are pushing past the norm for your training, though.
Over time, as you build resiliance to that type of riding, you’ll likely become adapted to the load and we’ll give you a slightly longer leash.
Oh, I was mostly unsure how the prediction handles it. I’ll sometimes add planned z2 to an interval day if it makes the prediction go up.
Does it just assume that rides are back to back? Does it matter which it thinks is first, or if one was for later in the day instead of combining it into one long ride.
I don’t have all the answers here, but I’d assume that if you have scheduled start dates for each activity and the harder session is later in the day, there’s a chance that it could be adjusted to account for the fatigue of the first ride, depending on how hard it is/was.