Did TR gave me way too much intensity based on my life situation?

Similar experience. I started with LV plans for rolling road - for about 9 months. Then with work reductions w Covid I increased to MV. I think that’s where problems started. I was feeling fatigued in specialty phase and quickly switched to LV climbing and restarted. That was ok initially and then I started failing again. much to my surprise.

I think it was a combination of issues - too much volume and a lot of life stress with some real deadlines. I also think that the climbing plan wasn’t great for me as a choice.

And as a result felt guilty about not riding FWIW I’m 58 and pretty fit

I’d suggest a real break. I’ve found a real break for real recovery, both physical and mental/emotional is more useful than taking a week off. In the long run a return to mental and physical cycling health will do you better. Persisting with short “recovery” attempts will make you miserable. Over time I have found my mental and emotional states around the bike are as it more important than physical. It’s a razor edge - I ride for mental health and yet too much riding is a bane for it

By all means talk to your GP and rule out other health issues. And then allow yourself recovery. There isn’t any shame in that

After 2 months off I’ve started riding. Outside just for pleasure other than commuting short distance to work and inside with train now when I feel like it and only then. I started at 30 min endurance rides and stopped if it felt like too much.

Ultimately I realized my riding is for fitness and fun. I don’t race. I don’t even ride with others anymore. If I make it a contest I can’t win or a test of wills needlessly I’m doing myself a disservice

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you sure you didn’t get covid and not realize it?

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I’m a fan of the Scientific Triathlon podcast, week after week Mikael Eriksson has world class coaches and physiologist on the show. A consistent comment from coaches that work with age group athletes is something along the lines “most amateurs have a busy family life and stressful jobs, and therefore recovery is a real issue and I prescribe plans with that in mind.” Something to think about.

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going to get tested
also I am planning to see GP my pretty soon

I am pretty sure that this is the limiter for me. I would love to up the training volume, but that would cause additional stress. Even now I feel like everything is pretty tight in the morning (I train in the morning).

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In retrospect, I agree that TR is a tool. despite the hype about AT, AI FTP detection, PL, one needs to put their life situation in context and go from there. TR doesn’t know about my life stressors or medical situation that one might be in

my biggest takeaway from this situation is that as painful as it is not being able to ride my bike, I feel like many of you said here I will come back stronger but that I think I learned a huge lesson and that is the biggest thing for me.

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Can I just ask when TR was giving too much intensity, were you answering “too intense” or “poor sleep” in a struggle survey? I think we’ve established that if you put other reasons it doesn’t necessarily adjust future workouts down?

Really, I view my default option for a struggle survey as “too intense”. And then I get future workouts adjusted down - poor sleep/ nutrition/ motivation/ lack of time are all life factors that make it “too intense” for me on that particular day.

To intense, but thats the crux of the issue isn’t it, to intense is not the same as to much intensity, I can handle hard workouts, just not as many as TR wants to dish out, if you do 3 workouts in a week and the first 2 are moderate hard, and you fail on the third (with a lower PL) is it becasuse it was to intense ?

Yeap

Ditto

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@Macy that is a difficult question to answer. But the short answer, yes I was answering the surveys as either very hard or ALL out. as far as reasons I was bouncing between stress and fatigue

I think when I answered stress is when it gets complicated. many times TR would not adapt while selecting Very Hard. part of it was because I was told by support that VO2 is supposed to feel very hard. then I asked if should I select very hard…really never got a good answer from TR support

towards the end, before being overtrained I learned that VO2 and with combination with ALL out TR then would only adapt. So that took me a while to understand how my responses would affect AT. In my opinion, there needs to be better education on how to better respond to AT. I know many times in the podcast you will hear John and Nate say don’t overthink and just answer how the workout feels but I disagree with that a bit.

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I also disagree with it.

They are giving general advice which will work on a massive scale but doesn’t necessarily work on a personal scale.

If do a workout that should be very easy but is hard because I had an unscheduled team ride the night before, I am not going to rate it hard. That would just mess up my training plan by lowering the PL for that system. Lowering the PL will give me a too easy workout next time.

It is a great system, but you can optimize it by adding the human element of thought into it. AI is good but it doesnt know what it doesnt know.

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Spot on. There need to be more education, features, whatever… on fatigue management. I realize there are folks who can handle MV for years with no issues. But there are other folks who are not as educated therefore we end up overtraining or simply hitting plateau

but hey, this is a learning experience. You only learn when you fail

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This is a problem, but I hope progression levels v2 will help with this.

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Could you post some screenshots of your weeks from calendar with what workouts you got? From the time where you think you got the non-adapted workouts and before? And what plans you were on?

I was on the Climbing Road training plan, here is the before and after

the first week was the block leading to my heavy legs. although at the time I was still feeling pretty strong. it almost felt like somebody flipped a switch. one block I was fine the next block I was junk. you can see in the fist picture some ALL-TIME PR’s. but also you can see the way to much insensitive. It didn’t seem that way at the time. at the time I felt like I was on the top of the world

then the second picture is when I was almost done with the build phase, entering into my speciality phase

you can also see my PLs going up a bit more but then going down. in the fourth week is when I really felt extremely heavy legs. that is when I was adjusting my responses to my surveys. even changed the week a bit by doing a SS instead of the prescribed VO2 interval. by then It was too late

you can see on the Saturday workouts, I could no longer sustain the same Threshold workouts, so I kept adjusting them many cases manually in other cases I had to go back to rides after the fact and select ALL-OUT so AT would adapt