That’s about right, although my commute was in addition to my MV plan workouts, not LV. Now I am doing MV+, where I took a standard MV plan, raised the intensity of most workout and added Z2 workouts on the weekends and, when necessary during the week. Other than that, you are correct. I really try hard to stay very slow and consistent, and not push.
I wonder if the TR will talk about it in their podcast…
You left out the single biggest problem. In some peoples mind, foot size correlates with the size of other anatomy. Therefore, a huge number of people are totally committed to overestimating their shoe size No matter what the consequences.
You mean like someones getting disappointed?
Sorry, let’s not go there, I just had to make sure everybody gets your brilliant comment 
He’s not wrong. Look at it like lifting weights. You wouldn’t do one muscle group 5xs a week. You’d go nowhere. Now we are working on aerobic not anaerobic but similar principles. Either way your still putting stress on the muscles in the legs and no matter how ready your aerobic system is if the legs can’t follow you’re sunk and digging yourself a hole.
Some thoughts from Friel:
Most age-group athletes who train far less than 20 hours weekly have many years of improvement ahead of them depending on the effects of their aging curves. The older you get the fewer mistakes you can make in training if you want to keep the growth curve rising steadily. They must avoid injury, illness and other breakdowns that interrupt training. This is the biggest challenge for self-coached athletes there is. It’s a rare athlete who will limit himself. Most are intent on doing all that is possible. Hard workouts abound.
I believe that the key to success in sport is not simply hard workouts but, more importantly, training consistency — practicing your sport day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Uninterrupted. Athletes who focus on excessively hard workouts on the premise that this will quickly produce exceptional performance eventually find themselves overtrained, burned out, injured or sick. There is nothing that produces race results like years of consistent training. This is not to say there is no place for hard workouts. There is. It’s just a matter of how hard and how often.
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Pre-TR I did 6hrs/wk…so more a MV than LV and I hit 4.6wkg with the same FTP I have currently (tested and confirmed in a TT race). But…that was hugely over-weighted on the anaerobic side; it was 100% intensity.
My 2020 average was 7hr/wk; however that was not constant. I did have some BIG LIT blocks in there as well as a LV sprint block. I peaked at 4.6wkg via 1hr TTE (ok, it was only 57min or something like that).
Looking at the “Bell Curve” thread, I’d be a 5.4wkg/domestic pro rider in my 20’s. Look out KG! 
May I should be on the pod confirming that lots of LIT works. 
because its significantly easier to build and plan workouts on the platform than staring at a blank google calendar. You can see planned tss/hrrs, build custom workouts, and peruse the catalog or even one of the stock plans for inspiration.
its been said several times already. TrainerRoad is much more than off the shelf training plans. I have several custom workouts that I can easily drag and drop into the calendar, and launch from my phone or laptop… It just WORKS
I agree re psychological resilience, as part of my Uni days I tested elite triathletes. We were looking at lactate threshold and the impacts of cadence. The one thing that stood out to me was not so much the physiology (though of course impressive) … it was the ability to push through pain and do it repeatedly. We see it time and again in elite athletes. Is that trainable ? to a level yes, and I think that is one of TR goals… however for some of us, we will not be able to push through a session or training block. I think It is very hard to devise an online plan for everyone that takes into account both physical and psychological abilities.
Bringing Amber on board illuminated a really important perspective / blind spot that was previously dark. I’d like to see that expanded to older riders, outright beginners, returning riders, etc. This is a small aside not meant to derail, but one of the things I twitch whenever I hear said on the podcast is: “You don’t need to ride long in training to ride long on an event day.” Okay, sure, maybe an experienced cyclist who is just looking to grow their FTP before their big event can show up and ride 70% for 6 hours, but a beginner who has never ridden for more than 90 minutes is going to collapse into a broken mess after their back and neck and arms give out in 3.5 hours.
I guess my point is: The better and better you become, the easier it is to forget what it’s like to be truly new, and the different impacts it has. I haven’t felt DOMS in a decade the way I did the first few weeks I was learning to run. I couldn’t even move for days after a 20 minute walkjog, for instance. It’s important to remember things like that.
I’ve been thinking about this too. Maybe redefine what a “successful” athlete. Sure, there’s a certain fascination with the 40 year old who takes up cycling and gains 120W in six months, and I’m sure that’s good marketing material for TR. But I really would like to hear from some of the folks who aren’t .01% freaks of Nature who’ve added 10-20 watts year-over-year and what their strategies were.
Got a link to that?
To the uninitiated TP gives you graph salads. And it is not obvious what information is actionable.
I hope that once TR has active logic that alters future workouts on the basis of past workout performance gives you e. g. a weekly synopsis a coach might: It looks like you are a bit fatigued, I suggest to replace a +1 workout with a -1 variant and add some Z2 instead.
I don’t think it is fair to call it a half-effort. I think our expectations have grown. The initial product was exactly what you said: a huge workout library, a few training plans and a training workout “player”. The next big addition was the calendar upgrade, then came Plan Builder as a (mostly) static workout plan generator. TR was missing the in-depth analysis features of TP.
The whole discussion here shows that our expectations have grown, e. g. we don’t want the version of Plan Builder we got, we want the next one or two logical steps beyond — it needs to be dynamic enough to accommodate (business or private) trips and illness. Other limitations came to light where users expect automated solutions to their problem. E. g. TR should learn dynamically whether a user’s FTP (as in reference-power-level-for-workouts) is 72 %, 74 % or 77 % of maximum aerobic power. With a static product, I think it is perfectly acceptable to say “User, you need to take charge of your training and learn for yourself where you fall and adjust your FTP accordingly.”
@ambermalika (or Coach Amber as I’d like to call her) is this rare unicorn of a pro who performed at the highest levels, but is super smart and knowledgable on the subject — and has a talent for science communication. She can go toe-to-toe with Coach Chad on the science-y bits and combine theory with her practical experience. Hiring her was a great decision on TR’s part, and it shows that TR’s leadership was aware of many of the issues we have brought up already. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the podcast has a more diverse cast than previously, the only constant being the moderator @Jonathan. They have also added two more podcasts under the TR umbrella. Some episodes of The Successful Athlete’s Podcast are sublime.
Yeah, this is such a good point. What people get out of sports is so different. My wife is a perfect example: when we lived in Canada, we had access to a free gym. The two of us would meet with a friend, work out and have dinner together. Perfect — for me. For her it was super boring. I don’t think she ever started sweating. After the birth of our daughter, she had back pain and I gently, yet firmly pushed her to pick up some form of sports like yoga. Initially, she was very reluctant and thought it was a waste of money. Fast-forward two years and she is a veritable gym rat. She goes three times a week, usually takes 2–3 classes and then comes home. Spending time with friends is as much part of the equation as getting a break (from parenting and yours, truly) and exercising.
We often don’t know what makes sports attractive to beginners, and we should not assume that what we find pleasant they will find pleasant. Having everyone wait for you at the top of a climb can put a lot of pressure on you, for example.
It’s about the 4th down but I’ll paste it here:
People are very bad at being objective about their own training. If three days of SST is good, four is better, so why not five or six. 10h is also not actually high volume. Most SST is actually FTP. It’s a fucking mess and I deal with TR fallout daily. When you have a threshold workout that’s 3x12min with an >30% failure rate, there are bigger problems. DJ lobbed a softball here just looking at intensity distribution and frequency, when he could have actually made a more constructive, comprehensive, and correct critique.
Death to the ramp test.
I’m so picking you for my team!! 
I’ve been lurking on this thread for a while and not wanting to weigh in on the enormous number of opinions going 'round, but I did see this comment and think, “But you can do that.”
On the TR calendar, click on a day in question and, at the bottom of the popup, there is the option to “Add Annotation”. This then lets you put in a title, dates and notes. You can even colour code for the same type of annotation (i.e. sick is red, work trip is blue, etc.) so you can quickly see what’s what. See the support post here: https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016099051-Add-and-Edit-Annotations-
There’s one issue solved!
That’s so cool. Thanks, learnt something today. I tend not to use the web interface unless I have to. I have a strong dislike for web apps, and prefer native apps. Seems I am missing out.
Although I’d still say that all the functionality should be available in the app.
Haha! Yeah, the app doesn’t allow you to do it smoothly, but it can be done. Similar procedure. Click on the date in the app and “Add Event.” It then sends you to your TR calendar on whatever mobile browser you use…from there, same thing - click “Add Annotation” and voila!
I’m using the iOS beta. One feature I have lost is in-app analysis of my workouts and entering notes. Ugh. Nevertheless, I’m glad it is possible, which means all the necessary plumbing exists already.