Hey guys, I’m hoping to get some opinion or advice from folks who are a bit more experienced than I am. Like the title says, I’m thinking about going from three days of hard intervals to two for the rest of the season. It’s not necessarily because I find it too taxing, but because I would like to fit a weekly local crit into the schedule. I’m usually riding around 8 to 10 hours a week, and it consists of three days of hard intervals (1.5h) , and two endurance rides; one during the week (1.5h) and one on the weekend (3.5 ~ 4h).
The thinking is that, if I reduce the interval days from three to two, I would sub in that day with a crit race. So the number of riding days wouldn’t change, as it’s still really 3 hard days, except that one of those hard days is not structured. I know some folks have had success with a “Masters’ Plan,” so I’m curious about what peoples’ experience are with that. Also what do folks think of dropping the one hard session for a crit, and what I should expect in terms of fitness ? Would I continue to gain steadily or simply plateau ? Hopefully not decrease.
For context, I’m am 38 (will be 39 next month), with an aiFTP of 293, but a TrainerRoad ramp test of 273 as of a couple of months ago. This is my second year of training consistently with structure, but 1st time with this amount of volume. Lastly, taking the commute to and from the crit into account, those days would roughly be around 75km days.
I’ve done this and overall fitness-wise it was great! Continued to get stronger. But TR AI seems to have a hard time analyzing outside rides right now so I’m guessing that will negatively impact your training plan similarly within TR.
I am going to do the same thing in July/August. Hoping TR fixes the AI by then.
I’d expect the crit to replace that third hard workout pretty well. You’ll probably gain race-specific fitness, handling skills, and high-end efforts while keeping overall training stress similar. As long as recovery is good, I wouldn’t worry about losing fitness.
I’d go for whatever is going to keep you happy on your bike!
I’ve seen cases where athletes get faster during racing seasons, and others where their FTP drops slightly. In those cases, though, they’re building racing skills and probably having a lot of fun, so I wouldn’t focus too much on FTP during this period.
Two hard workouts a week is still a really good amount of stimulus!
From the TR AI plan perspective, would it be good to add the crits into the plan as Group or Solo rides with appropriate TSS and let the plan adapt accordingly? With those added, would AI cut down on the other hard workouts?
This is what my summer/fall looks like. I’m typically a two day hard workouts a week person (use to be three, switched to two a couple years ago) and just add the crit/xc/cx race as part of the program and consider them training races. Since I work four 10 hour days I get a bonus day and that is Monday. Races usually on Wednesday night.
Monday is usually a hard day (vo2 typically) plus two-three hours of endurance, Tuesday off/recovery, Wednesday race right now it’s either a crit or local xc race, Thurs endurance, Friday sometimes off or light spin, Saturday hard intervals plus endurance, Sunday typically endurance.
@Saddlesaur I imagine the algorithm will adapt future workouts accordingly depending on the ride you add in. I think it’ll adapt again when the actual ride is done since there maybe a disparity in effort of a between what was planned and what actually happened.
@DMC My future schedule is looking to be pretty similar, though I’ll likely be riding 5 day instead of 6.
@eddie I do have a quick question about modifying the plan. At the beginning of September, I’ll be doing a gran fondo; with that as a target event, my current three interval days plan has me doing Vo2 Max, Sweet Spot, and Threshold for those sessions. When I change it to two interval days, they become Threshold and Vo2 Max. Since the crit efforts will likely be closer to VO2 max, would it be beneficial to swap those sessions for Sweet Spot? (I’m not aware of a way to do this without manually doing it session by session.) On the other hand, would it be easier to just keep my plan as is, and simply skip the Vo2 Max sessions for the crit races?
That’s always the case, even when sticking to and executing only the plan’s workouts, isn’t it? I figure it takes in all activities up to now, then adapts the plan going forward based on that and the user’s inputs, including scheduled events and Solo and Group rides. IDK, but that seemed the way it worked for me when I skipped a couple of weeks of plan workouts and did nothing but unstructured outdoor rides. The plan kept adapting and predicting a new AI FTP after each. I think that’s the beauty of it. I just do what I want, and the plan adapts and gives guidance at to what I should to in the future. Red light Green light is OK, but it isn’t forward looking taking into consideration what’s expected in the future.
If you click on a planned workout in your calendar and then click the edit pencil icon at the bottom, you can change the training zone to whatever you’d like.
@eddie Ah yes, this is helpful, though would I be able to do this with the entire plan from the get go, instead of doing it session by session after the plan has been generated?
Also, in your opinion, are VO2 sessions generally more useful for a fondo type of event, or sweet spot? My original assumption was that sweet spot might be better, which was why was thinking about switching out the VO2 sessions. If not I can just leave them, and my new plan would look like: threshold, Vo2, crit. Basically two-ish Vo2 sessions a week + the structured threshold workout.
Ha, pretty much. Just trying to figure out what type of sessions are most useful for the target event so I can keep them structured, all the while maintaining some wiggle room for racing.
Currently I’m on a custom plan, with Balanced training approach with 3 interval days. I just finished an A event last weekend, and now I’m on a recovery week. Starting next week the plan has me back on the build phase heading towards a Fondo in early September.
I was curious about changing my plan to a Master’s Plan so I’d lose one structured riding day for a weekly race day. When I experimented with that, the plan has me doing Vo2 Max and Threshold workouts in the up coming Build Phase. Since crits tend to have lots of VO2 efforts, I was curious about if it’s useful to swap the planned VO2 max sessions to a sweet spot instead.
In the Speciality Phase. the plan does away with VO2 sessions and workouts are threshold and sweet spot.
Yeah, I think doing Sweet Spot and Threshold could be a good idea if you’re targeting a fondo in September.
I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to pick which two workouts of the three you’re able to hang onto, but if you go that route, let me know, and I can try to help you get things set up how you’d like.
Ah thanks, good to have a confirmation about the sweet spot sessions. Ironically, this does make me wonder if it makes sense to actually keep my plan as is (Threshold, vo2 max, and sweet spot) but just skip the vo2 max for the races, and let the plan adapt; that is, Unless you think the workouts assigned will be better optimized in a master’s plan given the circumstances.
For what it’s worth, there’s a big benefit going from one hard structured ride to two in a week. There’s not much benefit going from 2 to 3. You might do even better going down to 2 interval workouts, or 1 interval workout and your racing during race weeks. You’re relatively low volume yet, so you can get away with doing the 3 (depending on the intervals you’re doing), but as you grow volume, you’re going to want to drop to 2 interval sets for sure.
For a fondo you want to be focusing on SST, long tempo, and endurance riding as the event approaches. (2 months out at the latest). The time for the VO2 work is early season for you, to get your FTP up so you can ride at an average % of a higher number. But getting FTP gains right before an ultra-distance event usually doesn’t help much because your TTE is going to be very low.
While crit racing, I’d do SST + racing, or threshold + racing. Let the race be your high end intensity, especially if your goal race is a fondo. Good luck!
