Distance not taken into account in training plan

Training
1

Hi,

I have signed up for an 85mile road race (with hills) in May and wanted to use trainer road to guide my training.

I expect the race to be 5+ hours, but my training plan didn’t ask me about the distance of the race and all the training between now and race day is an hour or less.

I’m new to this type of thing but surely that’s not correct?

Any ideas?

2

This is actually how TR works. The time, and type of event, are what is critical to developing your training plan for an event. With regard to the length of your training sessions, though, you have a couple of options:

  1. Edit your training plan and specify the amount of time you have available to train each day of the week. (https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038029531-How-to-Change-your-Training-Plan-Volume) TrainerRoad might not schedule you for the full time you have available each day, but should work toward that, as long as it feels you are handling the volume acceptably.
  2. Just follow the plan ‘as-is’, but do some longer rides when you feel like it. These rides will still be taken into account by TR (and it may alter future workouts accordingly), but you’ll get some longer rides in.

With either option you can also use the ‘Check Volume’ option occasionally to see if TR thinks you can/should change the number of hours of training each week.

Personally, I find a mix of options 1 and 2 to work best: Set up your plan with the number of hours each day you are available (or want) to train, and then still do some longer rides once or twice a month even if they are not on the plan. TR is generally based around people who are time-constrained for training, so the sessions are typically shorter than you’d think, but with more intensity. As far as overall fitness goes, this concept seems to work pretty well. But, at least IMO, there is no substitute to doing some rides that are closer to the length of your event, especially if it’s on the longer side. An hour of intensity just isn’t the same as 5 or 6 hours of saddle time (and those longer rides will also help you figure out your nutrition and hydration). Just be sure to not do too many of those really long rides, or you may find yourself not recovering properly.

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3

Hey @Mikefivex :slight_smile: Welcome to the Forum!!

I see you’ve created a custom training plan for your Event so this is a great start!

TrainerRoad will recommend the best training schedule based on your training history and personal biometics, but as @NigelTufnel11 mentioned, you can manually adjust the durations of each workouts, as well as drag and drop workout to what day you would like to train.

Since you have already created your training schedule you can simply hit the “Edit Weekly Scheduled” from your Calendar and make any edits, like capping your Endurance weekend rides at a longer duration.

Here are instructions on how to: How to Edit Your Training Plan Schedule

As @NigelTufnel11 also mentioned, you can use the Check Volume feature: How to Change your Training Plan Volume

Note: I’d recommend using this after a full training phase (Base, Build, Specialty).

Lastly, as you get closer to your Event, it’s always a good idea to throw in a few longer outside rides to test your bike, gear, nutrition, hydration, etc…

Here is a great article that may be of help!

4

Riders naturally think in terms of distance, but I’ll add that for training purposes, it’s time and level of effort that matter. I figure when I’m riding the trainer I’m not going anywhere so speed and distance are both zero. It’s largely the durations and Watts that matter. For a given time and effort, I’ll often get only half as far on a mtb ride than on road ride. Distance doesn’t directly figure in.

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5

They stated that… they have considered the time… about 5hrs

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