I just signed up and have a 14 hour event in March and a 24 hour MTB race in June. The longest training ride is 90 minutes and about 6 hours per week of riding. I have never trained before but I see the value of riding less and doing proper training. I thought there would be one long ride per week
Will the plan adjust?
As far as I’m aware, as you progress in your training it will gradually add volume. One note… Be sure to set the maximum time you have available for your long endurance rides as it won’t surpass your set time available.
I didn’t see this setting during the setup process
There is also a “volume check” option you can run and see what the system thinks you can handle.
I would probably do a long ride once a month or so personally, even if it’s not perfect training wise it’s good to get used to more time on the bike, fueling and pacing for these longer efforts.
Riding less is usually not recommended but do you have any riding history? If not you’ve got to start lower.
Still, you have to drill through the TR settings and tell it you are available to ride more if you want to ride more.
Usually two long rides per week around 4 hours each. I have done multiple 12 hour plus rides too.
When I change the plan length it gives me an error and says it’s too much. Is there a way to proactively set the time available so that it builds to it? If I change my Sunday ride from 2 hours to 4 hours. It just changes the rides from 2 to 4 hours. No build up to 4 hours.
You can go into the settings and tell TR that you are up for four hour rides. If you didn’t feed the system a ride history, it’s going to take time to adjust to you.
I don’t think it would be a problem to maintain your current weekly volume with extra easy endurance riding as long as you don’t get fatigued and then cannot complete a TR workout.
Best of luck with your events!
It will add volume, to a point. I’ve been doing long weeks for over a year and the most a TR plan ever gives me when I make a plan and set it to aggressive is about 11 hours. I have to basically take that template and adjust it myself. It always warns me that it could be too much, even though it has seen me doing it many times. So yeah, it’s a little flexible but it won’t ever tell you to do actual volume volume.
And I wonder about that too. Like…is this for a “time crunched athlete” ? (I hate that term) or is it that you will actually be slower if you ride more? Which is scary!
Joe
Appropriately structured and built up to more volume is better. You will of course eventually run into diminishing returns but if you can ride more it’s better.
Hey @Rick_Thibert ! Welcome to the Forum and TR 
!!
As others have mentioned, I would start with what the plan is recommending you based on your training history and ramp up to move volume over time without overdoing it off the bat and having to back off because of fatigue.
I took a look at your training plan, and what you have, I think is great. Here is a link to how to use the Check Volume feature [click]. I would recommend using it at the end of your phases before starting your next block.
You can edit your weekly schedule following these steps: How to Edit Your Training Plan Schedule
There you can set your preferred time caps for workouts (e.g., you can set your endurance weekend rides to cap at 4 hours), whether you want them to be Indoors, Outdoors, etc…
I also see you’ll be training mostly outdoors with a Garmin, so I’ll leave some additional info on how to send your workout to your Garmin computer and then how to tackle your Solo Rides:
Lastly, I wanted to mention our Fatigue Detection system, just in case! It monitors your training to help prevent long-term fatigue and unproductive workouts.
Let me know if you have any questions!
I am confused by this. If I set my Sunday ride at 4 hours. It gives me a 4 hour ride, regardless of if I’ve built up. Is that TR saying I’m good, or would it adapt beforehand, but the future adaptation isn’t showing yet?
Best of luck. TrainerRoad Road is superb at getting you most of the way there.
There are plenty of threads about incorporating longer rides. I would personally suggest doing a monthly ride of 2 hours, then 3 then 4, or faster increase if you can handle it. It gets you used to sitting on your bike for hours, getting used to nutrition for hours etc.
This is my concern, I did do 4 hour rides every week and a 12 to 16 hour ride every 8 weeks or so.
Oh I see, my mistake. I read it as that you had just started.
There could be value taking some of those very long rides and breaking them into smaller chunks with more structure, but I personally wouldn’t reduce overall volume if you are already handling it and enjoy the longer stuff. More volume is almost always better as long as you have gradually built up to it and you are able to recover adequately. And more volume doesn’t necessarily have to be more hours, training volume is ultimately a function of time and intensity. Or just call it training stress instead of volume for folks who think that volume is simply hours. Once you start pushing big hours, the amount of intensity typically is going down as a percentage of training time (while overall stress is trending up).
I’m a fairly high volume guy during the season and will work my way up to 20+ hours and 1000+ TSS per week, but do so gradually. My long rides (not counting races) max out at 7-8 hours, I just don’t want to ride my bike much longer than that. And I personally feel anything over 5-6 probably isn’t helping too much physiologically, but it’s still important to practice fueling and the mental side of pushing on the bike for that long.
Sorry, I can’t really help with how to use the TR planning tools to incorporate longer rides like that. I’d be very surprised if the system would ever prescribe a 10+ hour ride. In the past, it just didn’t seem to want to prescribe anything much longer than 3-4 hours and was more focused on time-crunched athletes. But I think they have made some improvements to the system and probably do longer stuff than that, I just haven’t had the desire to dig into what is possible. I find TR to be a very effective tool to prescribe my 2 weekly interval/intensity workouts, but then I mange all the endurance work on top of that myself outside of TR. I use intervals.icu to help manage my overall progression, it’s as simple as loading up more and more work/TSS as the season progresses and making sure my recovery is solid and I’m not digging a hole. Some of that is just trial and error over many years, but the tools help by showing/warning where I might be getting into the red zone.
Hey @LacticacidMCB
Looks like you are setting these as Solo Rides. In that case, whatever duration you set will remain. These are unstructured rides that come with instructions on how to tackle them, allowing you to easily incorporate them into your training plan.
Info on article I linked on my reply to OP:
When you open those rides, you’ll have training guidance on how to approach that ride based on the difficulty that the plan calls for.
If a Group or Solo Ride happens to fall on a Red or Yellow Day, they’ll adapt accordingly. Hard Rides will adapt to be Easy Rides, and any ride will adapt to a Rest Day.
Note: If you set them to 4 hours but don’t complete the 4 hours, that’s ok. For these unstructured Solo Rides, the ride file will get matched, and then any future changes to the plan will be applied if needed.
Should I pick another ride type? Endurance and then switch it to solo day of? I updated in a plan well in the future to 4 hours, outdoor trainer road, and it still shows 4 hours every week.
I don’t understand these questions “Should I pick another ride type? Endurance and then switch it to solo day of?”
I do see the new plan for the future now with the Outside 4-hour rides As you start completing the plan, they should adapt as well as the other workouts, so what you are seeing now it’s not fixed.
