I find this especially with sweetspot workouts (and threshold to an extent).
There’s a massive difference between a 1hr level 7 sweetspot and a 2hr level 7 sweetspot - e.g., Redondo is PL 7.3 and is 5x 10 mins @ 93-95% in a 1hr workout, 30 seconds recovery between intervals, (and 95% is pretty close to threshold anyway - there’s workouts in the Threshold bracket with intervals at 95%). Geiger +4 is a 2hr PL 7.2, 6x 12 mins rolling from 88-94%, with 4 minute recoveries.
I.e., one is a fairly traditional sweetspot workout and the other is a really quite tough high SS/low threshold - basically an hour knocking on the door of threshold with a few backpedals. Kind of surprised that people can do both equally which is what the PL implies.
I am nearly 50 and moving from MV to LV and adding endurance/tempo rides has been a revelation. I haven’t tried all the different plans, but tried polarized base, general build and just starting rolling road race specialty. I see how 3 intense days a week can be too much. Why not just replace one with an endurance/tempo ride? Or replace with shorter versions (I have noticed some 1:15 weekday workouts rather than 1 hour).
I wonder if PL are getting influenced by the fact that most people probably stick to clusters. So people that are doing 2 hr SS are not the same ones doing 1 he SS (and other zones as well).
I look at 1 hr workouts in the library for all my current PL and take a big gulp usually.
I’m not sure why you feel that way. It’s always handled scaling back work super well for me. Either from me selecting alternates or simply stating I struggled because a workout was too intense or I am too fatigued from training load.
I guess it depends on what your expectations are. My running assumption is not to trust myself 100% of the time and not to trust AT 100% of the time. I’m using it for guidance. Not gospel. And it helps keep me in check or get back on track when I make mistakes.
@cyclhist I think one way to hack it is to do no more than two hard workouts per week. Make all the other days easy endurance or rest days. (Actually make sure you get 1, if not 2 rest days per week.)
The other strategy for older cyclists is to insert more easy weeks than TR will give you. (Though I’d barely call you older. )
I have a friend who follows a pretty simple plan. Two weeks on, one week easy. During her “on” weeks she’ll do a workout with an interval set like 4x8min. Her other workout seems to be threshold like 2x20min or 3x15 on hills. All of her other rides are easy endurance and every third week is a half volume easy week with maybe one interval set for the whole week (like 2x20 sweet spot). Her big weeks are 10-12 hours. Her easy weeks are 5-6 hours. She’s getting podiums every time she races.
We don’t get fast unless we rest and super-compensate. Most of us are not apt to rest enough and thus we leave gains on the table or stagnate.
I’m 39, only been riding bikes since 33 years old. Ride 10 hours per week with no issue. I follow a lot of retired acquaintances who ride double what I do at 60 years old. I’d say age isn’t your issue.
Obviously everybody’s different but I’d say one trick is to build up to it if you’re having difficulty from get go. Replace one hard ride with an endurance ride. In no time you’ll be able to complete LV and add a long weekend ride on top.
AT doesnt deal with recovery. The work for me at 61 is too much in the plans when I follow a plan from November to end point in June of the next year. Sure I can put in endurance days onto a low volume plan but AT only adjusts ramp rate. It doesnt push me back to do lower Pls on the main intensity days. I swap out extra intensity with endurance but I can still reach a point where an extra week of endurance riding is more beneficial then pushing PLs. AT does nothing for this but keeps pushing the build.
I’m assuming you mean Workout Level rather than Progression Level.
I’ve just done McAdie+4 - https://www.trainerroad.com/app/career/bobw/rides/133092271-mcadie-4 and I struggled - I needed to take a three minute break at the end of the third set and then in the very last under I needed another 30 second break. Answered the survey with “I struggled” then got the Struggle survey and responded with “Intensity” and AT dropped the WLs of my next threshold and high SS workouts by about 1.1.
Why did I struggle? Basically the recovery intervals were too short for me, five minutes long and I’d have been fine and would have rated the workout “Very Hard”
I’m far enough out from my main event that I’m happy to let AT control thing for the moment.
AT will regress progression levels and also slow progression rate based on feedback. I’ve experienced both. It uses user feedback to adjust the progression rates - either through struggling to finish a workout as prescribed or through continual re-scheduling of workouts such that the progression level degrade.
Unless you give it feedback though that it is progressing too much, it will keep trying to go along with the original plan.
Great example. I’ve had similar experiences. I’m pretty sure it has dropped my PL after a struggle, but I could be wrong on that. Most recently when I was getting overloaded I dropped the interval intensities and answered in the survey I was too fatigued. It kept my PLs the same, but scheduled me a bunch of lower workout level sessions after. It was perfect, and in my particular case I ended up back on track and grew a ton - even though it was lower than the initially assumed ramp rate.
But I wasnt failing workouts. I understand AT will adjust when I cant do a workout. That isnt the issue. It is fatigue. AT just adjusts ramp rate as I am not failing. I continue to do them but at some point I know I cant do the next workout. So to go do a threshold workout when I know I am tired and not going to be able to finish the workout…makes no sense. I know I need a break. This is what I am referring to. So when I know the fatigue has built up ie increasing morning HR, general tiredness etc… I add some easier rides and push all the workouts back. I wont wait for AT to tell me I did too hard of a workout as I failed. I can still fail a workout but that isnt what I am getting at.
On the same front I know I cant handle multiple months of 3:1 work recovery ratios. I will hit a point where 2:1 works better. There is no easy way to deal with this at this point in feedback to AT. Lots of messing around to work an extra recovery week into a plan once it is set up. It is still a pain to do it in the planning stage as well
There is nothing wrong with doing a workout you know is too hard and just scaling it back to what you are comfortable doing. You get a struggle survey that asks what is up and you tell it you are too fatigued or it is too intense. That’s the point. I’ve done this exact thing and it worked beautifully. The other option is do what you’ve done and just select easier workouts. Nothing wrong there either, just that the system doesn’t have that “hard stop” feedback like if you significantly undershoot what was prescribed. So IME it takes more adjustment on my part.
There is - you skip workouts or you select alternates that are much easier. I do it all the time. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t swapping something for some reason or another. And I’m progressing extremely well compared to any other point except when I first joined trainer road almost 10 years ago.
You clearly have a great sense of yourself - why not use that to your advantage? It isn’t an all or nothing with AT - the best part about it is you can constantly change things up and the system is just fine with making updated suggestions based on that. You can literally drop a workout in however you want and ignore what AT is giving you. It still factors in what you did for future stuff…
Lots of good comments here. I’m 55 and been back on the bike for about 6 years after a 30 year hiatus post racing in college and grad school.
I think LV works well if you are really only going to ride 3 days a week. Then you get 4 days of rest. But a lot of people do LV so they can add their groups rides and that ends up being 4/5 hard days!
MV is great if you swap the Sunday SS for the endurance ride. And if tired skip Wednesday. MV as shown can be a lot of older.
AI and the new plans help a lot with this. But will be great when we can pick the number of intense days desired and the plan builds around that.
I understand all this. I do everything you talk about. My point is not about what I do to modify AT.
My point is AT and TR dont deal with recovery in the plans… It doesnt lay out a well designed plan with adequate recovery. for a number of users.
AT keeps putting out the same workouts without recovery and an increasing ramp rate.
Go look at SSBII. There is no recovery until you are done. That is 5 weeks.
That is all my point is. No reasonable recovery factored in the current design. I want a plan that lets me plot the recovery into it without having to mangle a schedule.
I would like to be able to adequately account for outdoor rides on LV plans for sure.
LV ramps up the intensity, which is fine and I actually respond pretty well to it, but if I stick to my normal pattern I’m riding 4-5 hours on the weekends and coupled with the 3-3.5 of intensity during the week, it can be a bit more than I can handle by mid-week.
By the time I get to the end of the longest block of “on” days I have which are Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues. due to scheduling reasons, by Tuesday I’m pretty well knackered and trying to do a threshold workout can be a bit much, particularly if I ride at a Tempo pace both days on the weekend. If I don’t do that Tues. ride to rest, I would more than likely miss that day.
Maybe there’s an easy way to make everything work out in the Plan Builder, but I haven’t discovered it yet. Then again, I’m not shy about picking an alternate at similar PL, but eventually the lack of rest catches up to me.
I’m sorry, I just don’t see it the same way. The base plan has 5 weeks. Nothing is stopping anyone from building in recovery weeks how you want with plan builder or just moving weeks once you get started. And if something comes up that you need a week you just simply can not do the workouts.
It seems like you want it super customized to you without putting in a lot of work to customize it. That would be awesome. That’s a pretty high bar to reach. Maybe someday.
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meme for all us 40 and well overs 
