Endurance vs. Easy: Does TR Treat Them Differently?

Training
1

Why does TR consistently prescribe Endurance workouts at the very top of Zone 2? As FTP increases, the wattage range that qualifies as Zone 2/Endurance becomes increasingly large. For example: 200W FTP: Zone 2 is approximately 110–150W, a 40W range, whereas 320W FTP: Zone 2 is approximately 175–240W, a 65W range. My question is why TR routinely leans so heavily toward the upper end of that range, seldom, if ever, prescribing workouts near the lower end. I train 12–15 hours per week, and at that volume, I need genuinely easy days to recover from hard efforts and prepare for subsequent hard days. However, I have to manually override TR’s recommendations to make that happen.

When building a plan, TR distinguishes between Easy, Hard, and Endurance days, but in practice, I often see little difference between my Easy and Endurance workouts other than the duration which I set. Shouldn’t that distinction be reflected in the intensity as well?

For another example, next week is scheduled as a recovery week, yet every single training day has prescribed work at an IF of 70-73. Remove the worm up/cooldown and they’re basically sustained at 73–75%. I can certainly sustain this intensity for hours, and my heart rate remains comfortably within my aerobic Zone 2 range. But that doesn’t mean the effort is without physical cost, particularly when accumulated over multiple days and weeks. Ironically, TR’s own description for James, which I have during my recovery week, says rides at this intensity “can take a surprising toll on even very fit athletes.”

I’m not suggesting that training near 74% FTP is inherently inappropriate or unproductive. It’s actually my favorite intensity for putting in work, and I know it builds aerobic fitness. My question is why that intensity appears to be the default even when the stated purpose of the workout or training week is recovery.

It seems to me that there’s a meaningful difference between an Endurance workout intended to maximize aerobic adaptations and an easy Endurance workout intended to maintain aerobic activity while minimizing fatigue. Both can fall within Zone 2, but they don’t necessarily impose the same recovery demands.

Is there a training rationale for consistently prescribing Endurance work at 74% FTP, even during intended recovery periods? And does TR account for the cumulative fatigue associated with riding at higher volumes?

I’m curious whether others have noticed the same pattern?

2

The rationale is whatever power output the AI has determined leads to high probabilities of better outcomes for you, within the guardrails of fatigue management.

The zones are not primary factors in that, I wouldn’t worry about them or the percentage of FTP. Look at instead as, am I feeling fresh on the morning of the workout? Do I think holding 180W or whatever for 2hrs or whenever is reasonably achievable?

3

I think TR’s underlying plans are focused and built towards time crunched athletes (3-8 hours a week) and don’t scale appropriately for athletes putting in longer hours. I think you need to take responsibility for your own training and make the adjustments in intensity needed to make sure you are fresh enough for your hard interval days.

4

I tend to agree. During the second half of summer, during a huge build phase at 15-20 hour/week it struggled even more so.

5

I understand the idea of trusting the AI to prescribe the appropriate intensity, but I think that misses the distinction I’m trying to make. My concern isn’t whether I can complete the prescribed workout. I can and regularly ride at 75% for hours. The question is whether that intensity is appropriate for the intended purpose of the day, particularly when it’s designated as Easy or part of a recovery week. I can’t remember that last time I saw a workout with an IF under 64.Being capable of completing a workout doesn’t necessarily mean it’s producing the desired training effect or allowing adequate recovery for subsequent hard efforts. If TR’s AI is accounting for those distinctions, I’d genuinely like to understand how, particularly when Easy and Endurance days seem to receive nearly identical intensity prescriptions.

6

Have you modified (or considered modifying) the training approach for Endurance?

That might stop it ramping up to 0.75IF as rapidly.

7

If there were a clear way to distinguish easy, hard, and endurance, as it does on the plan builder, then I would want to adjust the easy. But again, it seems to treat easy and endurance as the same thing. I want my endurance rides, especially my long endurance rides, to be solid 65-74% training. I want my easy rides to fall in the 56-65%.

8

Yes. The AI has found that riding at 74% is more beneficial than riding at other intensities and so it prescribes workouts at that % of FTP. Sure, you could ride easier or harder but that will guarantee a less optimal outcome to your training.

The system is not looking at zones at all, just at what exact power target gets you the best gains possible while optimizing recovery time, volume and rest.

9

The AI was trained on years worth of data from riders who were following TrainerRoad plans which prescribed 74% for endurance rides not because it’s better in all cases but because it’s better for time crunched athletes.

That doesn’t mean that 74% is actually better. It just means that it appeared the most in the data of the riders who made gains which of course it did because it probably appeared in everyone’s data. It’s a correlation vs causation type of thing.

10

TR has professional athletes and coaches that use the platform so there is plenty of training data not from their plans. Also all the outdoor rides that people do.

It should be clear that 74% is optimal, if it was not then the AI would be assigning 75% or 80% for example as endurance riding but it does not.

11

Your belief in the AI and what TR has feed us is admirable, I just don’t share that blind belief.

TR has said that most of it’s users are time crunched athletes, doing something like 3-8 hours. Are they applying what works for the time crunched athlete to a 10-12 hour athlete, how about 12 plus hours? My experience leads me to believe that their segregation of the data and analysis may be less than ideal.

It certainly isn’t “clear” to me that TR’s plans are “optimal.” I would be weary of any plan or coach saying that their training plan is optimal. Given individual variation in athlete types and responses to training, it is a pretty far stretch to think somehow TR has created an online AI training plan that is optimal for every athlete, or any athlete. Their plans work, I am not saying that they are bad. But let’s be real. TR hasn’t created the worlds best training plans. The best athletes in the world are not getting their plans from TR.

12

It’s fine that you don’t believe the TR AI, but if you’re going to evaluate it try to do so on a raw watts basis.

My recommended workouts all point to longer intervals at 194W with little breaks. I’m fresh back to training so this is hitting me around 130-136 bpm and I feel fine doing it, like I could hold it a long time.

So I think that’s going to be a good workout.

TR thinks I’ll find that moderate and I’ll be fresh two days later. We’ll see if that’s true and I hit the next workout fresh or not, before I decide if it’s giving me good workouts or not.

My current AIFTP is 209 so that’s 90 mins of mostly 0.9 IF or sweet spot if I cared about that paradigm. But 194W doesn’t scare me, it sounds like a solid but doable session. When fit I’d race a half iron for 2.5-2.75hrs at that pace.

“Easy days vs hard days” is a simple concept that helps cyclists who go hard every time they get on the bike. Physiology is that even easy exercise interferes with recovery, so the important bit is whether you are recovered or not, not wether you faffed around easy spinning for an hour in between.

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I agree that the ultimate measure is whether we’re recovering and adapting appropriately, and I certainly agree that even easy exercise imposes some physiological cost. But I think we’re discussing two slightly different things. My concern isn’t whether I can complete a workout or even recover sufficiently to complete the next one. It’s whether the prescribed intensity is optimal for the intended purpose of that particular day. There’s a meaningful difference in accumulated fatigue between riding 90 minutes at 55–60% FTP and riding 90 minutes at 74%, even if both feel relatively easy and neither prevents me from completing my next hard workout. At a higher volume per week, I’m trying to accumulate aerobic volume while managing the fatigue that comes with it. Easy days aren’t necessarily intended to accelerate recovery compared with complete rest. They’re intended to allow additional aerobic work without substantially compromising recovery from harder sessions. I agree that traditional zones aren’t perfect, but the physiological cost of exercise still increases with intensity, regardless of whether we use zones to describe it. What I’m trying to understand is why TR seems to prescribe nearly identical relative intensities for Easy and Endurance days, including during recovery weeks, when those days presumably serve different purposes. If the AI is making those distinctions and determining that 74% FTP is optimal even for recovery, that’s exactly what I’d like to challenge and better understand, as this is not how the best cyclists in the world train and as other have mentioned, is likely ideal for cyclist training lower volume.

14

That’s a pretty definitive claim. Training adaptations aren’t so precise that we can confidently say 74% FTP produces best result, much less that any deviation guarantees a worse outcome. There are too many variables involved, including individual physiology, training history, accumulated fatigue, and recovery. TR has zero input on one’s recover. If TR’s AI could consistently identify and prescribe the optimal training stimulus for every athlete, ever time, then everyone following its plan would eventually reach their physiological potential. Clearly, we can’t assume that’s happening. There’s a big difference between trusting a training model and assuming it’s infallible.

15

It clearly isn’t a blanket TR approach - I’ve just looked at my upcoming Endurance days and the IF’s are .63, .64, .61, and then for my “De-load” week they are .68, .7, .67, .67.

16

I get a similar thing, but instead of .7IF workouts. Every endurance workout is .55-.57

This week is a deload and I have the most uninspiring selection of 90min rides like standing and Little park. :yawning_face:

17

As with anything we seem to keep re-learning over and over and over again that people are different. Who knew! For some, just trusting the AI doesn’t seem to work although I have also seen a lot of evidence on here of people saying its not working for them but also not really following what they are given. Not saying that’s you at all, just an observation.

For me my optimal results come from set it, forget it, and follow it down to the slightest detail. It really works for me.

Disagree about TR having zero input about recovery though. That is what the RPE surveys are for and why, if you rate harder than expected, the AI interprets that as fatigue and down-adjusts your future training to give you a chance to recover before resuming harder training.

I am in the same boat as you though, 100% of my endurance workouts are up in the top of my endurance range. I love it though. TR just loves giving me James: just a straight 85min at 74%.

18

I second literally everything you just wrote. I’m the type to set it and forget it and its really worked out for me. All of my endurance/recovery rides are .68-.73. I always manually switch down my Wednesday ride though and make it no greater than .60. I only do that so I can watch a show and pedal without feeling much of anything.

19

I wonder how many people are rating endurance or easy rides at high zone2 as Moderate at times?

Are the people getting fed .5-.69 IF easy days the ones reporting ‘moderate’ occasionally? I don’t think i have ever said moderate to an Easy/Endurance day… guessing that would adjust things for endurance rides over time? Are the .75 IF group always saying easy to RPE? How many folks that see more .55-.65 IF the moderate/hard responders?

I almost never have used Moderate …Easy or Hard…occasionally Very Hard.

Yes a 3-5hr ride can be tough… but at the end of the day i’d say ‘it was easy’ IDK - hard to rate something like that. Like a bit of sand in your shoe - annoying but i wouldn’t say it hurts bad…lol

20

I think the point of my original post may be getting a little lost in the discussion. Even the strongest, most highly trained professional cyclists recognize the value of training across the full Endurance range, generally considered 55–75% of FTP. In fact, I’d argue that the more highly trained an athlete becomes, the more important those genuinely easy days can be. I can’t speak for others, but unless the volume were exceptionally high, I’d always rate workouts in that range as Easy.

My understanding of TR’s RPE ratings is that Easy means you could repeat the workout without much difficulty. Moderate means you could complete another set of intervals, Hard means you could complete another set but it would require significant focus, and Very Hard means you couldn’t complete another set.