I mainly ride fixed gear and race criteriums with such bikes. Been cycling for a bit more than 3 years now but more on the commuter side of cycling, as I wrote just before I only started training for cycling a month ago. I used to run a lot before however, so not a total newbie regarding cardio.
I know we’re still far from peak seasonal races but I have a few questions regarding training planning and optimization.
I’m currently on a base plan low volume. I currently have much more free time so I could do more volume, but switching to a mid volume would bump up to 5 trainings a week instead of the current 3 where I would like to aim for 4 trainings per week.
Question is should I just add an endurance ride in addition to the base plan, or switch to a personalized plan ? Phase 2 of base plan low volume is supposed to start next week.
How does TR takes into consideration the strength training we do on the side ? I’ve been strength training regularly for 3-4 years now so i’m actually more advanced in this field than cycling. I’m recording those sessions with a Coros watch, and it syncs with TR and Strava no problem.
I was wondering if TR considers that every strength session is a fullbody one ? And how it impacts training stress on the TR app / calendar ?
I’m asking because I have a push/pull/legl/upper/leg split and I feel like TR is often giving me yellow days after strength sessions but I do 4-5 of them per week so I don’t know what to do. As I said I don’t feel particularly fatigued by these as I’m really well used to this type of effort now. Double days is more or less the default in my planning unless I really have an intense session.
When peak season approaches, how should I go about Development phase and Specialty phase ?
I can see that each is 8 weeks per bloc, so should I just do these two back to back 16 weeks before an A event for example ? Assuming an A event is around June, that would mean keeping with the base plan until February more or less ?
When I have endurance rides that are supposed to be 1h30 long or more, I prefer to do them outside if the weather allows it.
However I don’t have a power meter in my cranks nor my pedals and I can’t really afford one right now, so I’m doing zone 2 endurance rides with just the HR monitor from my watch, I guess it’s not optimal but is this okay to do this while I get myself a power meter in the long term ?
It seems to me like plan builder would be a good solution for the majority of your questions. It’ll build out a plan leading up to your A race taking you through base, build and specialty, with a taper into your race. Add as much easy endurance as you can, but make it truly easy.
As far as I know, strength training is taken into account for red light, green light, but you may have to input your splits manually. At the end of the day if you’re lifting 6 days a week and riding 4, something will have to give and if your main sport if lifting, it’ll be the cycling. TR will get to you know your abilities better over time.
These are my thoughts. Others might give you slightly different advice, but there’s many roads that lead to Rome as they say.
If you schedule a race the plan builder will add the phases when needed. Then 2 weeks before the race you will go into a taper phase. This phase allows for recovery while keeping your top end at its peak.
When strength training was released, the TR advice was to only count sets taken to near failure. So, if you’re doing 3 sets of X but only 1 of those to failure, you may be logging 3 sets, which makes TR think you’re taking on more stress than you are.
As others have said, you can use plan builder to build out the best plan for you. I wouldn’t worry too much about using HR only for your endurance rides. It’s more important to maintain consistency and not go so hard on your easy days that you can’t give your all on your hard days.
I also think that Plan Builder would be a good option here. You could either insert a placeholder event at a time where you know you’re going to be racing and then change it once you know when at least one of your races will be, or put in a longer goal-based plan for now and then add races as you get that info. In that case, once you add an event to your calendar, we’ll ask if you want to switch your plan from goal-based to event-based.
We do consider strength training when estimating fatigue levels. If you’re getting a lot of fatigue warnings, you might want to try to organize your schedule in a way that leaves enough time between hard workouts for recovery, especially since those double-days will likely prompt yellow/red days on your calendar.
As @jsiegrist said, TrainerRoad will get to know what you’re capable of over time, and if you’re able to do all that strength work and still keep up with your bike workouts, it will recognize that and ease up on the warnings over time.
Regarding outside workouts, we do give you the option to switch them from power-based to RPE-based. Once you switch them to outside (simply right-click the workout in your calendar and select “do workout outside”), you can click on the workout and select RPE Based to get a description of the workout from an RPE perspective. If you have a GPS head unit, you can also follow along on that when you’re out on your ride.
If you know your HR zones well, @TrekCentury’s advice of riding in your Z2 HR zone could be an option as well. Just make sure that you’re keeping your zones updated and accurate throughout the season!
