From my perspective there is an interesting dynamic on this site related to plan adherence. Some people think not complying 100% with each interval to the watt is failure and totally negates the benefit of the plan and session (no it doesn’t.). Others wonder why they aren’t making progress with an irregular schedule and 60% or less adherence. I think there is a healthy middle ground where people mostly adhere to plans that are at a volume level they can handle and still get in the things they love about cycling. What is the point of training if you don’t incorporate what you love?
Maybe avoid those hills if it is a z1 / recovery ride. If its a z2 / aerobic ride, go up the hill, just don’t go crazy. In z2 rides I try to maximize my endurance zone riding, but hitting some tempo up to vo2 or smashing the occasional hill is not a big deal as long as I can get back into z2. If smashing the hill results in me not being able to hold z2 and drift down to z1 then I don’t smash the hill. But if you want to smash that hill, go for it. It doesn’t totally negate the purpose of that ride unless its an active recovery session.
My big picture view is that any structured plan needs to include something of what gives you joy from cycling, and that varies person to person. Most of us are not paid to do this and if we eliminate the things we enjoy than it ruins the hobby. Some people need to group ride / social / competitive aspect. Include it in your plan somehow. Maybe it won’t be a totally optimal plan, but getting 90% is better that 50% or 0%. if its riding certain hills or trying to PR them, maybe once a month or every other week have a fun ride where you get to do that and put it in your plan. Maybe that means doing your 300+TSS weekend ride once or twice a month instead of every weekend, but doing a 200 TSS ride most weekends so you can recover and hit the intervals during the week.
My experience is a bit different. My best season was built on 100% riding outdoors and loosely following the Strava premium plans from Carmichael Training Systems. And that somewhat continued after adopting TrainerRoad, my biggest gains always involved training blocks with some outside riding. It is all a bit hazy and open to interpretation, so I’m simplifying things down to highest FTP attained.
Yes and I got caught up in that myself. More important to focus on consistency, volume, and then balancing hard/med/easy riding and progressions. IMHO.
There are plans designed with this in mind, and coaches that encourage this, and how much this matters is also personal. Those weekend rides? It is possible to do structure and still enjoy a group ride.
I’m not that strong, so on flat rides I usually drop off the faster groups and do long tempo / sweet spot pulls for other riders. After a regroup I might join the fast group and work threshold for awhile. On climbs, well, I’m a bigger lower W/kg rider and its my chance to target high torque / low cadence work and will catch up on descents or a regroup.
I’d still go with your first hunch that he’s strange! I’m all for doing group rides that align well with your plan, but if you’re going to do completely your own thing and spend 60 miles yoyoing off the front solo then I’m not sure what the point of joining the group is…
I think it depends on the group dynamic, really. It’s a pretty common thing in the group I ride with- people will head off the front doing efforts, and then loop back around to meet the people at the back doing z2/recovery rides, grab a coffee and head home together. I’ve always liked it because I still get the social element and a little extra volume towards the end, but if it was just a case of riding away from the group the whole time I’d probably agree with your sentiment.
It’s a curious thing about our group rides and wondered if similar things happen to others. I’m much bigger than my riding friends who are all slow twitch lightweight climbers whereas I hate the hills but love the flatlands towards our coast with the rough narrow lanes between the fields and the crosswinds. However when I go at a hard pace on this terrain all I hear behind me is “knock one off” whereas on the hills it is unheard of for the climbers to slow down as they have to have their fun and wait for the slower ones at the top. It appears that even in group rides it is my job to get them to those hills sheltered from the wind. Grump over
Maybe just a pensioner thing! There was a ride I used to do with a fabulously grumpy pensioner that we all used to call “Goldilocks” because he seemed to think the ride should go at exactly the pace that he wanted to go and wouldn’t hesitate to complain if it was either too fast or too slow. The trick was to find the “Goldilocks zone” where it was slow enough that he could hang on at the back (it was a nice group, we didn’t leave people behind) but hard enough that he didn’t have enough breath/energy to complain loudly enough for anybody to hear him.
Thanks for this thread!
I was really thinking about this!
As a recreatiinal rider i use trainerroad now for Winter Training.
But in the Summer i want to ride outdoor and just keep my Form (or ftp) over the Summer.
Biking is an outdoorsport for me
Last couple years I have detuned my race focus and been riding more for fun. Interestingly though, while I very much enjoy the long 3-5 hour road and mountain bike rides, I also enjoy the heck out of structured training. There is a nice feeling to being strong in the saddle and completing a 2 x 45 threshold or 9 x 3 VO2 type workout with some zippy legs.
Structure doesn’t mean your ass is welded to the trainer in your pain cave. There is no reason to not incorporate structure outside and incorporate specific intervals into longer rides if desired.
What I have found is the trainer road LV programs offer a nice foundation for the weekday ride. They are almost all some variation of VO2 Tuesday, Z2 Wednesday and Threshold Thursday. Add in more Z2 for Friday and then go do whatever you like Saturday and Sunday. I add in a couple days of weight workouts during the week for overall fitness purposes.
For me, that type of “plan” adds enough structure to help me stay at a reasonably high level of w/kg “fitness” with a good TTE at threshold, but also makes things much more fun compared to being locked into a specific structure 7 days a week.
I do think it’s good to have some structure. If you are in it for fun, you probably define fun as going reasonably fast and not getting dropped by mates of similar ability. If you define fun as winning races, then you likely should be all in on a full structure plan, 7 days a week and all the rest that goes with being a “serious” racer.
FWIW… I’ve done the serious race structure thing for many seasons. For me that extra effort is good for about 0.5 w/kg over a semi-structure program as described above. Obviously everyone will be different. After many decades of racing and training it takes about 4-6 months of full on structure and weight management to go from riding fit to racing fit. A few of us locally have hit on sort of a 2 and 2 or 2 and 3 year plan. We go really hard for a couple years racing, then take a little break, then repeat. It requires a long term view but seems to prevent burnout. YMMV
TL;DR You can have lots of fun and incorporate some structure which should make things even more fun.
We had one guy who we all really like who, after heart arrhythmia problems got himself a drop handle barred E-bike so he could still come with us. Problem was he destroyed us on the hills and the false flats. We sorted though by making sure whenever we were on the flats we ALWAYS cycled above the cut off speed of his motor. All he was doing was doing then was peddling a very heavy bike.
If you have a powermeter or even without one, you can just do your workouts outdoors. I do pretty much everything outdoors, I just can’t my routes based on what is needed for intervals, best of both worlds, get faster and riding outside
Yes thats what we do and I’ve no problem with that. It just appears to be one rule for the climbers and another for the larger more powerful riders who, on some roads like to let rip every now and again
I need some help coming up with a solution to this very question. Starting with the time change in a couple of weeks, I’m going to be doing weekday rides on the trainer using TR, then weekend rides outside as the weather allows. Stats:
I do two centuries per year, one in July and one 4 weeks later in August.
I generally ride ~6 days per week total, taking Fridays as a regular off day. My current TSS is 600-700 per week.
November until the time changes in Spring I will be riding Mon-Thurs on trainer, Sat-Sun outdoors as possible
In Spring, I will be on trainer Mon and Wed nights with Tues, Thurs outdoors typically riding 25-30 miles at just under Sweetspot. Saturdays will be progressively longer days still just under Sweetspot until I hit the first Century in July and plateauing until the end of August, when we begin to ease up. Sundays are usually 25-30 miles at Endurance-Tempo pace.
Total time on bike weekly is 10-12 hours in warmer weather, it usually drops to 7-8 hours per week in winter.
I’m looking at using the planner with my two major events as an A and B events, doing the Gran Fondo Plan with Sweetspot, Build, and Specialty. I really want to add the structured training, but I’m not sure how to work it in. My outdoor rides are part of a small group and it would be really hard to meet consistent numbers. We’re usually at Sweetspot for me on the total average power, but it’s not consistent. The only time I exceed sweetspot is on the few hills we have, which are short and not very steep (think overpasses). Should I go with the low volume and hope I can meet the demands, or should I go with the medium volume and substitute outdoor rides for workouts? Any help would be appreciated!
As someone who is not currently racing but who has ambitions of doing it one day, I’ve been doing the following:
I try to ride a minimum of six hours per week minimum during the summer (averaging around 7-8)
Follow the low volume plan, making sure I am fittest/most rested before these workouts (especially the longer ones).
The other rides are club rides, solo recovery rides, adventure rides (160km+ with friends etc…) and the occasional threshold ride on my local loop.
This way I make sure I can adhere to the plan but still spend half my time “having fun”. I do all my TR rides in the summer outdoors, it’s definitely slightly less efficient and painful than ERG mode on the trainer, but it keeps me consistent and is more enjoyable. Like the TR guys/gals always say consistency is key. I am much less likely to skip a workout if I can do it outside so when the weather permits that’s what i do. I can still challenge myself if I’m feeling up to it (attack on the group ride, go for a KOM, etc…) but can also stop and smell the flowers and use the extra mileage for fun and recovery. Who cares if some of it is junk miles, its fun!
When winter comes (I live in Canada)
Stick to the low volume (3-4 hours a week)
Throw in some Zwift Racing if I’m feeling up to it
Do some spin classes with the wife (pre covid)
take time for some other activity (Strength training or winter sport) or just ride 3-4 hours a week and not beat myself up over it (I mean is that really so bad in the offseason if I’m not racing.
The overall time on the bike during the winter goes down but I find this keeps my riding as fun and productive as possible.
I thought I’d piggyback on this thread since my question is very much related. Feel free to let me know otherwise.
Like some on here, I don’t race but just want to get faster. I jumped on TR back in April of this year and went through the entire low volume “program” (SSBLV1, SSBLV2, GBLV, Specialty CRR). Loved it and I saw a noticeable gain in my overall fitness. Afterwards, I jumped back on SSBLV2 to maintain that level of fitness. I just finished that block and now I’m trying to ponder my next move.
Before TR, rode only on Saturdays or Sundays. Rides were usually 40-50 miles with ~4000ft of elevation gain. Efforts ranged anywhere from easy Z2 to laying down hard/fast efforts on climbs. Even with the low volume TR plans however, I find it difficult to fit in these types of rides.
Since I started TR, I scheduled my workouts to be done on Mon/Wed/Fri, leaving the weekend open. I’m usually too tired to go out on Saturday after the Friday workouts (the long and strenuous workout of the week) to do those types of rides. If I go out on Sunday, I need to take it easy enough to be fresh enough for the Monday workout (usually something VO2 max related).
In short, what can I do to fit in long and hard weekend rides and maintain my current level of fitness?
The only thing I can think of is getting back on SSBLV2 or one of the LV build plans, but cut out 1 out of the 3 workouts (so total 2 workouts per week). Workouts would be done on Tues/Thu. The question is which one can be cut out? From listening to the podcast before, I should definitely keep the VO2 max workout. I know volume is key to building fitness, but what about maintaining fitness? Are 2 workouts enough?
Keep Tuesday which is the VO2 session. The main difference between the remaining weekday and weekend ride is duration - 60 v 90 min. If you can do the longer one then go for it. If only have an hour then the shorter one.
FWIW, I think the tue+thurs workoutsFrom SSBLV2 work very well for what you are suggesting and adding weekday structure. If time permits, adding Additional Z2 on wed and Friday is a bonus.
My scheduled workouts are mon/wed/fri, with Wednesday being the long tough one.
Last week I did them almost as scheduled. Thursday was rest day before I hit a relatively easy 80tss vo2 workout on the Friday, before doing a zwift race (in better weather this would be my half decent outdoor ride) on the Saturday.
The two days back to back destroyed my legs. I couldn’t even manage a recovery ride on the Sunday. Hopefully I’m repaired enough to execute my workout tonight but I guess we’ll see.
There’s a big part of me that suspects no matter what the marketing blurb insists, trainerroad plans just don’t fit in with a helluva lot of regular, non-racing cyclists. I’ll get shot down for saying that but no matter.
and will catch up on descents or a regroup.
Sounds like a lovely group