This is my calendar for everything except the last week. It’s filled with long rides with long recovery intervals. I ‘don’t like’ long recovery intervals, whether I should like them or not. Kabati is back, along with McGregor. I’m thinking I should pick another plan for a higher zone. Maybe that will work better for what I think I need, what I’ve told myself I work the best with.
Are you using a carpet drying fan and blowing it directly at your torso and face? I am a pretty heavy sweater, and with the exception of needing a halo for my forehead, I barely drip at all on the bike thanks to my Lasko carpet fan. But, I do have to wear clear glasses due to the amount of wind hitting my contacts.
Don’t think of it as being “bad” or “out of shape” – that’s just how fitness progressions work in our plans (and in many other coaching/training companies’ plans as well).
Even pro riders don’t smash themselves to bits day after day – most of their riding is really easy!
If you don’t like the long, low-intensity periods found in the High Volume plans, I’d recommend looking into Low or Mid Volume plans. The workouts are typically shorter (~1hr in duration), which results in sessions without as much low-intensity built in.
The longer you ride, the more low-intensity there will be since we as humans simply cannot maintain high intensities for hour after hour, day after day. It wouldn’t be sustainable, and we see a lot of cases here where athletes try to do this, but quickly burn out mentally and/or physically.
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I would be inclined to use Train Now instead. And if you dont like the look of any of the offered workouts, choose a suitable one from the thousand or so listed workouts.
Or you can use plan builder to create your plan, or do a speciality plan.
I chose the cyclo x plan because it has more spicy intervals, and no long boring endurance rides 
Dude… We’ve kind of all ran you around in circles explaining why the recovery intervals are there. And its not a bunch of ill informed yahoos. These are people with double or triple your w/kg giving you advice… 20 minutes of down time split into two periods, within 45 minutes of riding at 88% is not an excessive amount of recovery… And if you feel like you don’t need it, then let us know how you feel in four weeks after just riding 1x45min @ 88% every single day… The fundamentals work for a reason, and are pretty well established at this point.
I DO have one of those Lasko fans, and 5 Vornado fans, and the 2 builtin to the bike, and a ceiling fan, and air conditioner. I sweat like a, well, like a cold glass of water on a humid day. I have so many fans, I’m surprised that my cheeks aren’t flapping in the wind like a basset hound with the window rolled down. AND someone said I should add at least one fan blowing on my back, possibly two! I think anymore fans, and I’ll have ear drum damage, and have my own Wind Tunnel! (Someone else suggested riding with long sleeves and no fans for a while to ‘reset my body’ to not sweating so much. Sure, I see that working 
My doc says I’m fine, and that his wife sweats a heck of a lot more than what I’ve described 
(I heard they are currently separated))
And possibly that is what I was going through. I was avoiding riding for a while, but then getting tossed into the grinder with 2 two hour rides. I debated on starting this thread, and figured that I can’t get help if I don’t ask. Still evaluating what to do. I guess I was getting crispy over all of it. I feel like I started a circus. Apologies to all…
I was doing Train Now and also exploring the workouts at Zwift. I felt like I had to do more, and thought of signing up for a ‘plan’ with TR. I like to think I can abuse myself for 60 to 90 minutes, sweat like a ‘pig’, and do it again the next day. The issue, at the time was the long intervals of nothing. I thought I was poking a hornets nest asking what to do, but I was sure that other people could be having similar issues. Well, not so much, but at least I found out a lot of features that I, and some others, didn’t know.
But I like thinking outside of the box, but that sometimes doesn’t work too well. I wasn’t trying to offend people. Yeah, I sweat a lot. Yeah, recovery intervals bore the heck out of me, and the REALLY LONG ONES make me rethink my life choices, and we shouldn’t go there… Yeah, I see the TdF riders spinning on their trainers post race, and think ‘Wow’, but, whatever. I ALWAYS question my physician. ‘Do I really need that drug?’ ‘What is this test going to show?’ 'Is there a better way to get to the answer you are looking for?" ‘Is this the time I start looking for second, and third opinions?’ ‘Do I really need 20+ minutes of recovery in a workout?’ Nothing personal…
I’ve switched, temporarily, to my weight machine, and trying to push my stretching routine more into the areas they initially told me to avoid. I’m feeling like Psoas is mad, and it might as well be too.
I felt I had an issue. I was having some difficulties following the workouts. I was asking if there was a better way ‘for me’ to deal with the issues I perceived I was having. The long recoveries weren’t fitting into the time my wife imagined I would need to commit to the task. I’m sorry of that irked some people. I learned things about TR that I didn’t know, and likely would never know. I learned that people that don’t sweat much still think people that do are gross. (KIDDING!!!) I think I need to stop The Plan. I think I need to keep riding the way I was. I think that when I get to a point where things are not so ‘end of fire hose’, I can revisit The Plan, and probably choose a different plan. I also wonder if I have a form of ‘long Covid’. (Try saying that to some people. But I KEEP testing negative, even when my doc said he was sure I defiantly had it, I KEPT testing negative 
)
I’m just frustrated. Just keep smiling…
With that, I’m out. RIDE ON!! Sweat like to one can smell it.
It’s official, I’ll likely be off the bike for a while. Foot, and hip. Might do more treadmill work, and light bike work for a bit. Dang, I kind of knew this was likely coming, and was feeling anxious about ‘wasting time’. Now I will be pacing the cage waiting until I can get back on it.
Ride on, if you can…
Ooof….sorry to hear this. Best wishes for a fast recovery!
I couldn’t feel more trolled on the forum if i tried. This thread… 
I admit I wondered a few times.
Me trolling? I hope people don’t think that. It wasn’t my intent. I’ve just never been on an ‘official’ training plan before, and it seems so wasteful of time. I tried to delete this thread, but couldn’t. I’ve learned a lot, and learned that I need to be more patient and perhaps trust in the process more. Or should have gone with my first instinct: Bail on the plan, and potentially TR.
Thanks for people and their comments. Thank you.
I’ve only ridden once this past week. I was trying to deal with my foot and hip issues while I rode the plan. Faced with doctors telling me ‘You can’t do that’, I have cancelled the plan and intend on doing much more endurance riding. Ironic that I objected to them in the plan, and I’m basically sentenced to do them for the near future. Life can be funny.
Riding is what I do. It’s my ‘jam’, apparently. My wife brags about the riding I do. Riding kept me sane through the pandemic. But I should have realized that I shouldn’t have done the plan. I shouldn’t have started this thread. I shouldn’t have increased my riding with the plan when I could tell I was having issues. I have grown to use riding to escape, and depend on it too much. I used endorphins to not deal with foot problems a decade ago, and was trying to use them to avoid the pain now. I was frustrated that I couldn’t get to that level again.
Troll? If that’s the verdict, everybody needs to get their hits in. I’ve beaten on trolls in the past. It is fun sometimes. Not very productive, but anyway. I hope this doesn’t take long, but I have been avoiding it for quite a while. I did my first bit of intensive stretching yesterday, and boy are things pissed off…
So, yes, the back issue was that I suck at stretching and post ride care. It just keeps adding up. Eventually the endorphins won’t cover for it, and Aleve and Tylenol won’t either. Cheers…
Maybe I should title this ‘Stupid guy addicted to endorphins realizes the tab comes due and you can’t escape it anymore’.
Because I realized I was that far behind the eight ball. My wife, masters in biomechanics, just said this morning that my hip and knee issues could be because the hip replacement surgery changed the setup of my leg and the assorted muscles. I have had psoas muscle issues before, and this is on a higher level, so there could be some truth/logic in her observation, and if true, then what. My musculature had some 60 years to get used to those angles and now that is thrown out the window and everything has changed to varying degrees. I have to say it makes sense. The only thing to think then is What’s next? What do I, CAN I do next? Stop riding? More surgery? More PT? I was doing pilates floor work last night and hit the wall: Everything on that side is so angry. That was after doing a non ERG 15 minutes on Tempus Fugit. I averaged 145 watts. I’m an endorphin junky. I need my fix… 
I went through withdrawal before. 
@Deleteme Pardon me if some of this comment sounds crass, as I don’t mean it that way.
You started this thread talking about how much you dislike and (seemingly) don’t want to do some of the longer recovery intervals that TR bakes into their sessions, BUT given all the physical/health related posts you’ve been making of late, it seems to me that they are EXACTLY what you need included in your plan.
Boredom aside, (IMO) the last thing you (or anyone) battling physical limitations should do is include LESS rest (easy) intervals in your training. They might be boring to you while doing them, but in the long run, they’ll likely keep you healthier. If you continue to push your hip (or anything else) past it’s physical limits because you aren’t including easier/recovery intervals (or rest in general), you could be in for a serious world of hurt.
This may not be an apples to apple comparison and I don’t know how far out you are from that hip surgery you’ve been speaking of, but my father in-law recently had hip replacement surgery. He then proceeded to push his limits with his PT so he could get back to “normal life” quicker and ended up having to have the replacement surgery again after dislocating the same hip three weeks out from his previous surgery.
I’m sure everyone here understands the “boredom” of long recovery intervals, but physical/health related symptoms aside, they can be a necessary evil of any interval training program. My session this morning, Parker, included 2x13m rests at 41% over the 90m session and to be honest (mentally) I was bored stiff by minute 9 of each one (and my a$$ hurt like h3ll, and all I wanted was to up the power so I could stand up 
), but after a LONG week of intervals (i’m currently on SSB MV1) and work/life stress on top of it, (physically) it’s EXACTLY what my legs needed this morning so I didn’t blow apart during the last intervals of the session, turn down the intensity OR stop altogether and rate the session “all out”. 
So at the end of it all, I hope you recover well and hope you heed some of the advice given to you throughout this thread and know the the workouts themselves WILL get harder and the rest intervals WILL get shorter, but don’t overlook the importance of them!
Good luck to you in whatever you choose to do!
That was drilled into my head over and over by my wife, and my surgeon. So much that I feel it made me NOT do stretches and other things that I did pre-surgery.
The night of the surgery, after walking a couple floors of the hospital before they would let me go, (I would have spent the night if I had issues doing that) and ‘feeling fine’ (Monty Python reference) I spent the rest of the night and half the morning in incredible pain. The pain that would not abate with the strong narcotics they sent me home with. The very last thing I would ever have wanted to do was dislocate that hip. The fear of pain was strong in this one.
So I started riding, and stopped stretching that area. No yoga, no stretching. So now everything is tight and angry.
Yes, you are right, I needed those boring routines a hell of a lot more zone 1/zone 2 than anything higher. I am paying for that now. I have good days where everything seems to work well, I can stretch and get relief, and other days where I wake up in pain, and it just hangs around ALL DAY. Yeah, walking is tough, standing is touch, getting on the bike is tough.
I was so stupid to start riding hard charging like pre-surgery. I was so stupid to not do stretching and yoga, to tolerance, after getting clearance to do so, but the pain stretching was pretty intense at the time, and I just kept seeing that night/morning if intense pain, and backed off. I loaded my muscles, and they punished me for it. I had a hard day today. I stretched yesterday, and felt pretty good, but woke up rough. I’ll have to take it a day at a time, and try to not be so stupid.