I missed 3 structured workouts with TSS in around 80. Instead of these rides with the nicer weather finally here I did a short fairly intense (for me) ride. About an hour fifteen, TSS 137 followed by my longest ride to date. Which was a good pace at a TSS of 275. Due to these changes I saw the FTP prediction drop from 239-250 to 239-240. This can’t be right can it? How would you explain this change in prediction? I feel I’ve been robbed of watts here!! Haha.
Huge fan of the platform and the pod. Keep up the great work!!
Without seeing a shared Training Calendar (can change in your profile) its a bit hard to say. BUT… knee jerk 1st thoughts and also often TR response over the years as I’m sure you are aware from Podcasts…
IS… that unstructured work, while it can be fast… can be hard… definitely tiring and can add up TSS… BUT, it doesn’t have the same impact as structured & progressive interval work. So by skipping 3 workouts that were solid gainers, workouts that advanced your progression of time/watts/intensity… to continue gaining over the next few weeks… you reduced those gains and halted(or regressed) the Workout progression levels. They were replaced with good maintenance and fun rides . Think if that 1st workout was 5x 6min threshold intervals, the 3rd workout skipped maybe was 7minute, and in a couple weeks you are going to be at 9minute. That Thresh day progression might now be regressed maybe to 5min the next time on the Trainer…?! eek. (if just looking at a basic interval duration progression)
This is the common affect when people go off of plan often in the spring/summer and start doing group rides and adventuring etc.
I like to call it a ‘Reverse Base’ plan lol… workout hard in the winter/spring to raise FTP high… then do base rides with some spice sprinkled in for maintenance. Do the same thing with trail runs… work on speed/strength in the winter indoors… then once outside focus on long easy endurance.
EDIT: OH- one more thing, that is a very high TSS for one ride looking at my 3.5hr zone2 ride the other day (TSS:122). Another thing is that the intervals were skipped, but a high TSS was incurred… possibly then getting the next weeks workouts ‘downgraded’ due to fatigue calculations by AI, further setting back progression levels/power.
I wonder what would happen if you associate those outside rides to the TR outside workouts planned (even though they don’t follow the structure of the workouts of course)
This is 100% my experience too. And it happen even though I can do a really good job matching my outside ride performance to the recommend structure, intensity and TSS. I have come to the conclusion that TR is really great at modeling performance and structuring plans for indoor riding. By comparison, the outdoor riding data is simply too noisy and the model never gets a good enough correlation between expected and observed performance. The downside is that it sees this noise as an actual decrease in capability. I love trainer road indoors because it does an incredibly good job at setting my zones once its dialed in. But it has limited to no utility with setting zones for outdoor riding. I am planning to simply cancel my TR membership from May to October and start it up again in November. I will likely let the AI detect my FTP and then manually set it according to feel until I it feels right.
And don’t tell me that I should just do my training indoors. I live in Wisconsin where we can’t ride meaningfully outside for four months. I train to ride outside. If staff wanna look at my profile it is bobsmail.
For me there is about a 20 watt difference between my TR account and my Garmin connect (258 on Garmin). At this point I’m not really looking at the TR figure as a true FTP but I have to give credit where credit is due as far as providing me with workouts that are always a challenge and have me feeling like I’m always progressing it’s spot on. That being said I really have a hard time believing that a 3 hour hard ride is going to make me a weaker rider.
