Long story short. Every time there’s a high IF workout in the books for the next day I’m unduly stressed in preceding days.
Due to work I do the sessions early morning and everything about the whole experience is cortisol-releasing. Early waking up, going hard on the bike (threshold +), short time between breakfast and ride so still low muscular glycogen.
I have an OU tomorrow and really just want to sack it off. Long sweet spot workout done on Tuesday, high Z2 Wednesday (today) and then the OU on Thursday. Saturday more sweet spot. Absolutely gruelling that. Combined with job and gym I think the general base is a bit rough. Especially for winter? Anyone else notice this?
This is one good place that the ai/adaptive training can come in. Just tell yourself if it’s saying I should do this then I can do this. The mental load that’s reduced by letting it adjust after a skipped workout or life is amazing. It’s not perfect some workouts will still instill dred but I’ve found i feel much better about them since they implemented these changes.
Doesn’t sound healthy. It’s hard to make a recommendation without seeing a calendar but personally I would:
Toggle the plan to 2 Days (Masters Athletes)
Add intensity or volume elsewhere, make other workouts a little longer or add a z2 ride and then adjust as the weeks pass.
With RLGL and feedback surveys, I find this works for me as the buffers are there. Then as you say, it is winter for most of us now, if you are riding with a sufficient frequency and time spent, that’s personally enough for this time of year.
Totally understand, this fall I was doing XCO plan for an event which consisted of a ton of high-intensity intervals at VO2 3x a week. Of course the dreaded Katahdin workouts would hit every week and just get harder! I would be so stressed about how hard it was going to be that it made it hard to eat which I had to do for those hard efforts and still make it through the workday. Yes, they were as hard as I expected but I complete them all proper and never failed a WO and at the end of the workout they usually got rated as 50% so not as hard as I was worried about and I was usually pumped! I was flying come my event! I decided to resume this plan again after my event to get even faster but with no event on the horizon and the season winding down the juice might not be worth the squeeze of these extremely hard workouts and the pre-riding hand wringing. A lot of this it for me was/is mental which probably means it’s time to pivot to a different stimulus and perhaps work on some FTP or long effort in the off season. For me I know I will worry about how hard it will be but if I can complete the workout as prescribed and then I don’t even rate it an all out effort, adaptive training is doing its job and these workouts are not actually too hard. I know it’s just in my head and this is what is required to get faster. Respect the rest/recovery days if you already don’t and fuel as needed. I don’t have any great words of wisdom but I seem to do better if I just don’t look at the workout/numbers ahead of time. Just go in blind without knowledge to fret.
If I absolutely have to do them I make sure I have some poridge or something just before I go to bed - that really helps me - otherwise I just feel really under fuelled.
And I have absolutely zero guilt about making the workout easier, or even just swapping in an endurance ride.
I’d imagine dreading a workout that much, there is a reason for it. Training stress needs to be balanced with IRL stress, and for me, what you describe is what happens when I’m pushing myself too hard overall in life.
I’m not a professional cyclist and don’t need to train “perfectly.” Missing the odd workout or making it a bit easier, has basically no impact on my training anyways.
If it’s every high-intensity session that will cause you some problems and you might want to reevaluate the time of day you’re riding or your plan in general.
But remember most of your gains come from just consistent riding. High-intensity work has its role, but it’s just the icing. If its necessary, you’re not losing that much by avoiding high-intensity work completely.
Remember that one of the big roles of high-intensity sessions in indoor-training plans is simply to promote plan compliance, as people are more likely to skip endurance rides because they find them boring. If they’re having the opposite effect, don’t hesitate to drop or modify some of them.
Not the entire solution, but what about having a huge awesome meal the night before and filling up with carbs.
Something you really really love eating.
Then you can look forward to that all day, instead of the hard session the next morning.
Another obvious solution that is move a hard interval day to a non-work day. I’m guessing that’s not possible for your schedule. I do my hardest day when I can wake up, walk the dog, eat big, sit around a few hours, and just go when i feel like it.
I think this is a good point. There are usually 2x sweet spot workouts and one suprathreshold/OU workout. Shifting the OU to the saturday morning is definitely doable and keep the in week stressors to <100% efforts. I more often than not go the gym on weekdays as it round the corner from work so the weekend tends to be longer endurance/tempo/sweet spot stuff, but since the weather has turned, it may be best to lighten the in-week cortisol storms by moving the death workout to Saturday.
Sweet spot is still v hard mind, especially at 6am, just not as dire.
Dreading workouts is a sure sign that something needs to change.
It sounds like you’ve gotten some good feedback here, but I’ll throw mine in the ring as well.
If your job is really demanding and you’re accruing a lot of weekly stress in the gym, moving down to two hard workouts a week might be a good option. Alternatively, you could try to be strategic with the gym work and do it after your hard workouts only, keeping your easy days really easy and focused on recovery. Your calendar is packed full of activities, big and small, and you might have to dial back on some things if nailing your key workouts and getting faster is a top priority.
Moving your schedule around a bit, as you mentioned, is also a good option.
Early morning workouts are tough, and if you’re eating a solid breakfast and then immediately hopping on the bike, you’re probably not going to have a ton of energy since your body is focusing on digesting. If you don’t have time to let your body start digesting your breakfast before your workout, you might want to try eating afterward and having some simple carbs, such as a gel or some drink mix, before your workout instead.
Keep answering your post-workout surveys honestly, and TR will ensure that you’re in the right place. You’ve got a pretty low-level Threshold workout scheduled for Saturday. If that one feels tough, let me know, and I’ll take a closer look at how we can make things feel a bit better for you.
Sounds like great advice, tbh I’ve been thinking for a while that AIFTP is overestimating my ability. IF >0.75 starts to become gnarly, >0.80 despite PL is always Vhard or max effort. I don’t know if this is due to insufficient rest as opposed to physical Incapability, or simply aiming too high.
Monitor -1 tomorrow to fit in with working. Was planning a social ride on Friday morning of only ~90mins. Howard/auburn or similar over under session on Saturday. It may be one or a combination of stress, under recovery, lack of sufficient calories/nutrition, or over estimated ftp?
All highly possible. It’s not like I race so the need for race winning efforts is limited. I do have a solo winter cycling holiday in Lanzarote in December that would be nice to do some long miles, survive the winds solo.
The training during the winter is more to reduce depression in darker, worse weather, feeling accomplished when there is less of the optimism and social interaction of long summer rides and outside activities.
I got into what I now think was a training fatigue phase this past summer, trying to mix social rides, bikepacking trips, and TR training. The high intensity workouts got quite difficult, TR started recommending more volume, the intensity days would toast me all day, and I started feeling generally tired. Some honest post-workout survey answers got TR to back off a bit, but I do think that if you’re mixing real-life stresses, social riding, and TR workouts some extra care and feeding of the TR algorithm is needed … including intentionally skipping high intensity stuff in response to “real life stuff” that TR has no way of accurately assessing.
Do you use plan builder to set up a plan? Maybe configuring that to be less aggressive is an option. E.g. a goal of Gravel → Endurance would likely have less VO2. You could go with a masters plan, or lower the Training Approach slider to be less aggressive.
Trainer road plans are plain and simple too hard. Especially if AIFTP overstaes your FTP.
Historically I’ve always went for longer easy endurance over the perscribed intervals at the weeked, also I’ve ignored progression levels for endurance and go off feel, ie easyish.
On occassions where I have stuck to the plan it just seemed like madness that I was doing 75% hard intervals, it flies in the face of all common guidance. If you somehow manage to avoid sickness or injury then you can get very fit, I wont deny that. But there comes a point where you need to ask youself is it worth it constantly going around full of cortisol and impacting sleep etc.
Have a read of Phil Mafftones big book of endurance, its excellent and there are so many red flags highlighted related to TR.
I think it could be both. Gym + Endurance day before is still a fair bit of strain on your body, especially the gym work. 2.7 Sweetspot shouldn’t feel that hard
Week 42, you cycled every day. You then started this week, with Monday off the bike but went on a near 3 hour walk and then hit the gym. You’ve ridden 3 days since with some gym sessions, making today 10 days without an actual recovery day.
