How to manage an 8-hour cycling plan when TR drastically cuts volume on a Triathlon calendar?

Training
1

Hi everyone,

I am a 36-year-old architect from Vietnam, returning to structured training after a 4-year complete hiatus. My goal is to rebuild my fitness back to my previous baseline (PRs: 2km swim in 41m, 90km bike in 2h45, 21km in 1h38, 42km in 3h36). I am currently using TrainerRoad to plan and track all three disciplines (Swim, Bike, Run).

To give you a clear picture of my current physical condition: 4 years ago, I stopped training completely due to personal reasons, and my weight shot up from 72kg to 88kg. I have been back at it for about 7 weeks now (entering week 8), and my weight has successfully dropped to around 80–80.5kg. My weekly training budget is around 12–13 hours, with 8 hours allocated specifically for cycling. I sync all my data via a Coros watch.

However, I am running into a major issue with the calendar logic. Whenever I complete the scheduled Swim and Run volume from the previous week, the system automatically cuts my cycling volume for the following week down to only about 4 hours, and forces all rides into low-level Endurance sessions. The algorithm seems to assume that completing the other two disciplines automatically equals overtraining.

Since I am currently using TrainerRoad primarily to aggregate my schedule and track my overall progress, but want to maintain a consistent 8-hour cycling volume, I would love to get your experience on the following:

  1. How should I distribute and prioritize my cycling workout profiles (Sweet Spot, Threshold, VO2 Max, Endurance) within that 8-hour budget?

  2. What Progression Levels should I target or manually set to challenge myself properly without breaking the overall plan?

  3. How do you manually adjust, set up workouts, or override the TrainerRoad calendar to stop the system from cutting down scheduled hours?

Thank you for your advice.

2

I’ve just taken a look at your TR calendar, and there are a few things that I might be able to help with. Are you okay with me sharing some of your training details here in this thread?

JoeX 3

Welcome to the forums, check out the triathlon 2026 thread :slight_smile:

0h to 13h per week will be more stimulus than you can benefit from imho, ramp up more slowly and you could see better gains and greater consistency

It’s fatigue being indicated rather than overtraining. It’s automatic by default but you can switch back to the original workout in the calendar, or turn of automatic changes in Settings. If you swim and bike at consistent times, and successfully complete your bike workouts then the red days turn to yellow and then nothing.

It’s also an indication that you are ramping up faster than you need to.

4

Everything is completely okay. I’m very satisfied. Sincerely, thank you very much. :smiley:

5

It’s fatigue being indicated rather than overtraining. It’s automatic by default but you can switch back to the original workout in the calendar, or turn of automatic changes in Settings. If you swim and bike at consistent times, and successfully complete your bike workouts then the red days turn to yellow and then nothing.

It’s also an indication that you are ramping up faster than you need to=> So that’s how it is. Then I just need to focus on completing the workouts in my own plan. As for my cycling sessions, what kind of workouts should I focus on during this new phase? Thank you very much. :smiley: