Plenty of food for thought there. Nice post, which I think adds a lot to the discussion.
Your point about ramp test/anaerobic is an interesting one.
My TrainerRoad FTP is indeed based of ramp tests (replaced with AI FTP D earlier this year).
However, I’ve always considered myself to be ‘anaerobically challenged’, and if anything, the ramp test short changes me slightly. I used to get a bigger number using the 8 minute test, but welcomed the slightly easier training from using the ramp test (this was before adaptive training and performance levelsj
My best ramp test bump did indeed come after a LV general build block, which makes sense as it includes more anaerobic workouts than my usual MV sweet spot base/sustained power build.
One other thing which may, or may not, be a factor for me (I bring it up because it’s always confused me) is that my real world outdoor power is about 10% less than my indoor power, which is the opposite of what I see for most other people. I know it’s not a like for like comparison (smart trainer indoors, Quarq outdoors) but I wouldn’t expect that to throw up such a big difference. For example, indoors I can hold 260W for 10 minutes, but outdoors, I’ll be lucky to hold 235W on an all out effort on a 10 minute climb. HR/PE for any given power will be higher outdoors as well, so it’s not psychological.
All I do know is that I start winter at around 220W, finish winter around 245W, then end up right back at 220W by the end of summer. Rinse and repeat for the last 5 years. Maybe at 48 and 4.2 W;KG I shouldn’t be expecting any better, but I still dream about ending summer with a similar FTP as I started it with, (without having to sit indoors on a trainer!j then building from there.
I’m leaning towards keeping one intense indoor session per week (VO2 or anaerobic) which probably isn’t a bad thing for an ageing athlete anyway…
I think the problem with this advice is that (for me at least) you either need to keep all other work apart from the LV plan at a very disciplined Z1-2 riding, and/or you need quite a bit of knowledge and experience of how to play around with the plan.
The LV plans are basically all intensity. I have SST2 LV Base on my calendar at the moment (did some spring and early season racing, doing a bit of a rebuild then targeting some end of season races). It includes a SS, Threshold and VO2 ride each week. If I do that and then add any other significant intensity or even just particularly long Z2 rides (4+ hours) then it’s too much training stress for me. And I have multiple years of riding ~500 hours/year behind me so can handle quite a bit of stress.
So I either need to really keep a lid on all my non-TR riding to keep it Z2 or lower and not too long. Or I need to start swapping out rides. Which requires knowledge/experience but also unfortunately means you start to lose the benefits of AT and PLs. E.g. the Saturday ride on the LV plan is 90 minutes Threshold. I know that ride is a time-crunched alternative to doing the traditional long endurance ride. So if I have time for a 2 hour ride outside I might do some long SS intervals, if I have 3 hours I might do some Tempo, if I have 4+ hours I’ll keep it mostly Z2. But TR “Alternates” feature only offers longer Threshold workouts, and if I manually pick a 3 hour Tempo ride and put it on the plan then even assuming I can find something that I can follow fairly closely outside then the Progression Levels on TR are going to be different to what’s on the plan so AT is likely to start dialling down future workouts.
All of which is a long winded way of saying I am REALLY looking forward to non-TR outside rides being able to update Progression Levels! I fully recognise that a totally unstructured ride with a lot of coasting and not much sustained effort isn’t going to do much if anything for PLs. I am hoping that my semi-structured rides (e.g. maintaining steady Z2 on the flat, pushing Tempo on the hills, minimising coasting time) will show some benefit.
I’m struggling with the same question. I think polarised 6 weeks low volume might be the best plan for now. Though honestly I’m struggling with the high intensity workoutd indoors at the moment due to temperature.
There is some discretion needed from the rider. If their outside rides tend to be the “easy” variety, there’s not much special to do. Add the rides on top of the basic LV plan.
However, If one or more of those outside rides is “hard” in the shape of a spirited group ride with hard efforts, attacks and such, it’s likely best to consider that ride as a replacement for one of the TR LV workouts. This is partly easy when you consider the default LV setup is a hard ride on Saturday. People can just skip the TR workout or they can mark that workout as Outside and then associated their group ride with that upon completion.
I don’t see it as a difficult scenario. Look at the outside ride(s) you want to do, see if they align with the intensity given in the LV plan and either substitute or add as appropriate. I am searching to find a written guide from TR but falling short. I know they have touched on this more than once on the podcast, but am hoping to find a written reference as well.
ETA:
Item #4 of this article touches on the topic with unstructured rides. This touches on LV for the basic idea, but doesn’t specifically mention swaps of the LV workouts.
4. Are Unstructured Rides a Regular Part of Your Week?
For many athletes, unstructured rides are an important part of their week. If you’re an athlete who wants to regularly add unstructured rides into your training week, mid-volume works—with some limitations. High-volume training plans offer very little room, if any at all, for additional training rides and unstructured workouts. On the other hand, Mid-volume provides a bit of opportunity for experienced athletes to add one unstructured workout to their week at their discretion. This might be a group ride, an unstructured trail ride, or a skills ride.
Mid-volume still isn’t ideal for adding a lot of unstructured activities. If you plan on doing more than one unstructured workout per week or are unsure whether you can take on an important unstructured activity in addition to the five structured workouts per week, a low-volume plan is probably a better fit. Low volume training plans maintain the structure and progression of a training plan while allowing plenty of room for additional activities.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that and you would almost surely maintain your performance markers without adding a ton of structure for all the reasons spelled out above.
my solution while using TR was to use time and training load (TSS and CTL) in an attempt to have a controlled increase in week-to-week load throughout the block. Going back to the previous table of workouts, and simplifying:
SSB
Time Moving
TSS
Notes
week1
2:05
179
ramp + 2 outside
week2
6:06
493
2 inside + 2 outside
week3
4:50
320
4 inside
week4
6:52
431
2 inside + 2 outside
week5
7:22
510
3 inside + 1 outside
week6
4:10
183
4 inside
Week2 clearly was a bit over-enthusiastic. But there is a clear progression on time/TSS on week3 thru week5.
Redoing the original table in terms of time and TSS:
SSB
workout1
workout2
workout3
workout4
Time
TSS
week1
TR 0:30 at 37 TSS
Group 1:33 at 110 TSS
Solo 0:38 at 27 TSS
2:05
179
week2
TR 1:05 at 67 TSS
Group 1:47 at 173 TSS
Solo 2:11 at 183 TSS
TR 1:05 at 68 TSS
6:06
493
week3
TR 1:05 at 67 TSS
TR 1:05 at 64 TSS
TR 1:05 at 73 TSS
TR 1:35 at 114 TSS
4:50
320
week4
TR 1:05 at 68 TSS
TR 1:20 at 82 TSS
Solo 1:54 at 123 TSS
Solo 2:35 at 155 TSS
6:52
431
week5
TR 1:30 at 117 TSS
TR 1:05 at 71 TSS
Group 4:19 at 308 TSS
TR 0:30 at 13 TSS
7:22
510
week6
TR 1:00 at 40 TSS
TR 0:30 at 19 TSS
TR 1:05 at 47 TSS
TR 1:35 at 76 TSS
4:10
183
Totals:
Inside (TR): 16 hours and 1023 TSS
Outside: 16.25 hours and 1079 TSS
My simple goal was to replace inside with outside rides, while trying to keep the original plan’s time/TSS progression.
hey Kosmo, curious…what are your main goals as a cyclist? The outdoor riding might actually elevate your performance if getting faster in group rides is one of the goals!
Increasing your riding from 3.5 to 6.5h will surely lead to better cycling performance; just try to keep the junk miles to a minimum (zone 1 coasting and dilly dallying) and you’ll continue to improve.
also, fwiw, take a look around on strava…I’m sure you’ll find some open roads for intervals, which would be great to do outside. I know plenty of athletes from the BOS area that train…might need 30 min to get out of the city though which could be a limiter for you; unsure.
Our Paceline is usually more intense but we had a couple of big hitters half our age doing twice the work that we were doing so it was very enjoyable. I’ll probably match it to an Endurance workout of the same lenghth/IF and whilst it might not have been as much bang for buck in gaining fitness as the scheduled Threshold session I doubt I’ll have lost fitness doing it and it was definitely a boost to my mental fitness
In my previous post I was only talking about people in my team. In Japan you have three racing categories, E1–E3. According to American expats, they roughly correspond to Cat1–Cat3 in terms of abilities. Our team captain has upgraded to E1 = Cat1. Not sure about the second-fastest guy. I have raced only once since the Covid-19 pandemic started.
Looking at who participates in JCBF (= officially sanctioned races), you have a few young, super talented guys in their early 20s, many in their mid-20s to early 30s who are fast and a few older people (= 40+) like me. They have no official Master’s categories here, which sucks.
Pretty much as soon as people have kids, people tend to ride more indoors. At least in Japan, most people do Zwift racing and Zwift workouts. (TR hasn’t localized their workouts, and I know of no Japanese who uses TR, just expats.)
I’d say that I train less than our two other fastest male riders, but can beat one on fitness (except short sprint efforts) and am on par with the other for two hours easy. The first one is our team captain who is more or less my age, the second is a younger guy in his 20s. I can’t say how much of that is due to my innate abilities and how much is due to my training methodology.
The fastest guys in our area are another team we are on friendly terms with. I don’t know their training regimen exactly, I can just take a peak from their Strava accounts. A lot of them still ride a lot indoors, but would often go outdoors at least 2, probably 3 times a week. In addition to indoor training, they also practice things like motor pacing, so they are much more serious than we are. Most of them are in their mid- to late-20s, but they also have someone in their 40s. He’s one of the “heavier” guys, he told me he weighed 75 kg and had an FTP of 350 W. In terms of power, I came close last season (73.5–74.0 kg, 342 W). (I wrote heavier in quotation marks, because most guys here are about 60–65 kg, although one team mate of mine is in Strava’s up to 55 kg category …)
There is also a second data point: I participated in a hill climb TT where we had a combined E1–E3 start at the end of 2019. I was lighter back then (71.5 kg) but also had lower power (311ish W). In terms of times, I finished mid-pack in E1. However, we were overtaken by amateurs in their 50s, there are some crazy strong guys out here in Japan, their physiology is perfect for hill climbs.
However, I’m a total noob when it comes to race craft. That’s why I think I did so well on the hill climb TT: it is mostly about pacing yourself and I know how to pace those long, sustained efforts. I can also hang in crits (did one last year, the first race since the pandemic started), although I specifically did not attempt to be in the mix for the win, because I didn’t want to crash.
In my observation, it isn’t just about training time. To upgrade to E1, you need to race a lot to get the necessary points. Our team captain has more disposable income and a wife who is more understanding of our hobby than mine. They sometimes drove >1.000 km to go racing for one weekend. In his “spare time” he is also a Michelin-starred chef. He also has a coach. This guy is insane in all the best ways. There is no way I could even come close to the investment in time and money. The other superfast guy in our team is indeed in his 20s, and he rides 1–2 days every weekend. Long, interesting rides with friends, but you’d basically have to dedicate the entire day to cycling — not possible for me.
Overall, you are right that if you want to be at the pointy end of races, you need to ride outdoors, too. That’s for multiple reasons, including practicing group riding skills, pacing and cornering. Cornering, for example, is a relative weakness of mine (relative to the other fast guys on the team).
So wondering if trading one of my outdoor workouts each week to structured training via train now. If I do that 60 min structured workout plus 2 outdoor rides per week of 90+ mins each, will I hold gains better? Or is just one structured ride not enough?
Trying to strike the right balance between at least maintaining, if not increasing fitness and enjoying outdoors.
Direct answer: That specific, structured workout you are following in place of just doing an outdoor ride will likely result in a more specific outcome than that ride (ie: you’ll either retain abilities or perhaps even build new abilities to do the type of interval work you do in that workout).
At the risk of providing basic advice, I think returning to brass tacks is helpful:
Are you doing slightly less or substantially less of the work your did to get to your current point? If substantially less, you are not likely to maintain fitness. If slightly less, your are more likely to maintain fitness.
With your minimal interval sessions, are you doing work that drives aerobic adaptations (IE: well-structured Sweet-Spot, Threshold, VO2 intensities)? If no, you are less likely to maintain aerobic fitness. If yes, you are more likely to maintain aerobic fitness.
Are you seeking to maintain anaerobic fitness through making your minimal interval sessions specific to anaerobic work? If no, you are less likely to maintain anaerobic fitness. If yes, you are more likely to maintain anaerobic fitness.
Are you seeking to maintain race-specific fitness through making your minimal interval sessions specific to race-specific work (ie: repeatable high intensity efforts, or something like sustained LT efforts)? If no, you are less likely to maintain race-specific fitness. If yes, you are more likely to maintain race-specific fitness.
Please note the conditional statements in all of this. I know this seems vague or perhaps obvious, and yes, there are variably successful workarounds like low-cadence/high-load/lower intensity to build strength that helps at higher intensities, and sprint work that can boost aerobic capabilities, but the most well-traveled paths to success are more guaranteed bets.
So I say go with your presented approach of subbing out one ride with a workout and see how you do. Don’t put undue pressure on yourself with this sort of decision by understanding that you can change course and your body is amazing at adapting. If you feel it is making you slower, try swapping out more than one ride with workouts.
Regardless, you’ll have a learning that will serve you well moving forward
…is the money shot, IMO. So much of training comes down to experience the knowledge gained through it. There can be largely wide reactions to similar training programs…so sometimes you must gotta jump in and see what happens.
Thanks for the thorough response. I guess it does depend and I won’t know until I try. Just to provide a bit of background. I am currently in my 3rd season of riding and coming off of my first winter of structured training. I followed the low volume plan religiously from about November through most of March.
I went into that winter with an FTP of 258 and left with an FTP of 266. I am guessing a 3% increase is within some type of margin of error, so basically I maintained fitness I’d say? I was hoping to see bigger gains, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, in the summer months I ride unstructured for something like 5-6 (sometimes more) hrs/week (some harder solo rides and others are easier group rides) whereas the low volume plan is only 3.5 hrs/week. I tend to find it harder to do rides beyond the one 90 minute per week indoors and can’t really ride more than 3 days/week due to kids etc.
When I am outside, it’s totally unstructured, but I do go fairly hard at least 1 ride per week. IF of between .8-.95 for 30 mile or so rides for the harder efforts.
I am not training for anything in particular, but generally want to continue getting faster.
Perhaps in my case the volume differential makes up mostly or partially for the reduction in structure. Assuming structured training works much better than unstructured (which I believe), this is the only conclusion I can come up with for why my FTP was relatively unchanged through a winter of structure. Would you agree with this theory?
Dug into your calendar and here is what I am seeing:
In July of 2021 you took a ramp test and scored 241. Your 6 week average TSS at that point was 848.
Between July and October you did mostly unstructured rides (3-4 per week) and your 6 week average TSS declined from 848 to 351 with an average over that time period of 501 TSS.
You adhered to your Sweet Spot Base, General Build, and Rolling Road Race Low Volume Plans with great consistency!
After Base your FTP hadn’t changed after taking a ramp test (not outside what I would expect for your situation).
4 weeks after starting Build and after marking a 3.0 Threshold as Too Intense, you got a Ramp Test result of 246 and rejected that, keeping your FTP at 258, marking a Threshold 2.6 workout as Very Hard (a Threshold 2.6 should not be Very Hard if your FTP is accurately set).
After four more weeks of Build you got to the point where a Threshold 3.6 was marked Very Hard, showing you were improving!
Five weeks later and in the penultimate week of Specialty training, you manually adjusted your FTP to 265.
After your plan finished, you still did 1-3 structured workouts per week with less consistency than when following a plan, but you did more Threshold and Sweet Spot work and added in outside riding, raising your 6 week rolling average TSS from 205 to 268.
On Tuesday May 3 you used AI FTP Detection to set your FTP to 266 and did a Threshold 4.7 workout that week marked as Very Hard (within what I would expect).
The big thing that stands out to me is that you scored a 241 FTP on a Ramp Test when your 6 week average TSS was 848, then you reduced your training volume significantly while on your plan (6 week rolling average of 231 throughout the plan) yet you still raised your FTP!
If you remove from consideration the peak TSS you had in July '21 when you scored 241 and instead look at the three months before you started your plan in October, your average TSS was still significantly higher at 501.
If life constraints weren’t in place and you could dedicate more time to training, I’m confident you’d see a bump in FTP.
Going from 848 to 231 TSS and still managing to raise your FTP is big win, and you should feel proud of the hard work!
Thanks for digging into this Jonathan! This is above and beyond and one of the many reasons why Trainer Road is so awesome. I’ll see how this summer goes and do my best to work in a bit of structure too! It really is amazing when you frame this as more than a 50% reduction in training increases FTP. Should be a marketing plan around scenarios like this. Keep up the good work.
There’s a lot to unpack in that answer. Clearly 848 TSS is way too high, even for most pro riders training - the gains from lower volume were almost certaiy from a reduction in fatigue. I think TR has a lot of work to do on targeting TSS for their plans!
I would use the summer to work on zone 2 time to build your aerobic base, with a weekly fast ride or vo2 workout thrown in (chase hills and strava segments outdoors or do one TR vo2 indoor workout a week). This is particularly relevent given you are almost certianly overtrained (get a cortisol test) and you are right at the 266 watt cap of riders who only focus on intensity and/or overtrain
Im willing to put up a wager to a charity of your choice, Jonathan, that if kosmo follows this plan for the summer (5+ weekly hours of mid-zone 2 rides, preferably a bit more with a weekly 3+ hour ride and one VO2 workout with a rest week every 4th week) he will increase his FTP and make gains across all time periods in his power curve (for those that dont like FTP as a measure) and actually hit RECORD power levels in most zones by the end of the summer.
