I was one of the people who ran into a “burnout”. First time one year ago (trying for two months), second time last November (trying for one month only, polarized base plan).
I forgot what the issue was last year, but this year it was this: Hard days felt easy, easy days afterwards felt too hard because I wasn’t recovered enough. If pushing through easy days, I couldn’t manage the next hard day. If I left out the easy days, the hard days where much too easy (I even started switching for “breakthrough” workouts). AT didn’t want to settle down properly in my case. I probably answered some questionnare incorrectly.
But I figured it was because of missing “base”: Never did much endurance sports in my life and my body simply wasn’t used to the stress. Compared to colleagues I noticed that I could not afford two hard days in a row. Also my nutrition wasn’t good enough.
So I switched to some kind own “polarized plan” (1-2 HIT/week, lots of easy rides, make sure I am sufficiently recovered). The results are showing - I am hitting PRs all the time, and it’s fun.
But I will come back to TR in some months: I do like the product, I like the gamification aspect of it and it will probably help me to adjust the ramp.