I tried to self coach for a month, here's what I learned

Training
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I started back with TR yesterday after a month of self coaching, here’s what I learned.

A bit of history, I’ve been riding bikes since I was a kid, in college I rode to class every day and took my bike to local mtb trails on the weekends. I graduated, got married, got fat, and after my first son was born in March of 2020 I got into gravel riding, which eventually turned to racing and then structured training which started with TR in January of 2023.

At the time, I was roughly 80kg with a FTP of 244, I peaked just in April of this year with a FTP of 282 (just before an A race in May).

Since that race (my best finish ever with a 7th place on a 60 mile gravel course in North Texas), I’ve been expirementing with other apps such as join, zwift, and just recently combined intervals.icu with what I’ve learned here at TR to self coach for a month.

Side note, my ftp dropped into the 260s after a round of covid in early August so my self training lasted from mid August to mid September.

My plan
3 weeks on 1 week off
10-12 hours a week
Mon - 2 hour endurance
Tues - 1 hour Threshold/30 minute Weights
Wed - 2 hour endurance
Thurs 1 hour VO2/30 minute Weights
Friday 1.5 hour endurance
Saturday - “Free Ride” - Typically a spicy group ride, or a 3+ hour gravel ride at mid-high endurance power.

I turned up the TSS on the VO2/Threshold intervals each week by adding time in zone to add to progressive overload, my endurance rides largely stayed the same.

My FTP bounced back quickly from 265 up to 278. A solid jump in just 4 weeks but also with room for error in testing, etc…

This was a fun expiriment, but ultimately with 3 boys (a 4yo and 6mo twins), a 40-50 hour/wk job, and leadership commitments at church, I quickly saw the value in having TR do all the leg work for me and returned to the platform.

The updside to self coaching, zwift is fun, and I reconnected with some old virtual riding buddies I hadn’t talked to in a while. The little KOMs and Springt here in there keep the indoor riding interesting.

The downside. Flexibility. If a kid didn’t sleep, or got sick, work ran long, etc etc… having to pull up a computer and download a new workout to zwift, then load zwift on the apple tv and get my ride fired up added an additional amount of time that is not required with TR. If something like that pops up with TR, you hit the train now button for the amount of time you have available and you’re off.

So while I enjoyed it, I quickly learned that the extra amount of time needed to sit down and evaluate my training and set up a plan and calendar for each week is something I just don’t have time for at this stage of life.

Side note, intervals.icu is a really cool tool, and makes self coaching and self training really easy. I highly recommend it for anyone, even if you use it along side TR it’s cool to have to keep track of progress.

So after a summer of alternate training platforms and self coaching, I’ve returned home to TR, I don’t think there’s anyone better in the business right now at helping “Time Crunched” athlets get and stay fit, which is what they claim to be best at…

I will be finishing out the season with a race an 85 mile gravel race in the Texas HIll Country in 2 weeks followed with Big Sugar 100 in Bentonville in October. Hopefully the results continue to be personal bests.

Cheers.

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Thank you for sharing @TexanDad :slight_smile:

Glad we could help be part of making your life easier in the middle of what sounds, like a very busy life to keep making you faster!!

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Thanks for taking the time to share all of this @TexanDad! This is all really useful information. :raised_hands:

We’re happy to have you back, and we’ll always be there to manage things when more important things are taking up your time. :grin:

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For structured workouts, I typically use TR.

For less structured rides like endurance, hill repeats, etc, I’ll use Zwift or indieVelo.

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My hot take from “self-coaching” for the last few months - keep your workouts simple and flexible so you don’t need to spend time creating workouts in tools. You should be able to track of a 4x4, 4x8, 3x20, 4x15, 3x30, etc. workouts in your head. Don’t stress over making the intervals perfect, +/- a few seconds won’t change the outcome, and neither will (usually) taking a longer rest.

Loads of benefits from using TR or a coach, but you also don’t need to complicate your approach to get good results.

ETA: To complement above - I used TR over winter, and once I got bored of staring at the TR interface I decided to do the longer workouts via Zwift (climbs/etc). Didn’t bother to re-create a single in Zwift. The ones assigned were simple enough (O/Us, SS/Threshold blocks, VO2) to keep in my head as I went along.

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I am not commenting on your plan, but brother good job on timing with such a job and family. Give me some advice, I have a newborn an cycling looks so distant :smiling_face:Do you even sleep?

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TrainNow (+ push to Wahoo for outside workout) cant be beat for busy people. Pick a couple days per week for a theshold/vo2 session and the rest of the available time do Z2. You’ll be flying. And the massive workout library always keeps you on your toes

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How’s indiVelo doing? I might try it this winter. Zwfit + gym + TR (maybe) it’s quite expensive at the end of the month.

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I have used in probably less than 10 times. I don’t usually do structured workouts on it. I have done a few group endurance rides where there are like a dozen people which is fine as I just need a couple people to chase.

I’m currently training for my last race of the year. And I still have a coach. After that race I my return to “self coaching” using TR and either Zwift or IndieVelo.

Zwift obviously has the clear benefit of such a huge number of events. With IndieVelo you can create private events I believe and add bots. I haven’t tested it out but I do believe the bots have some variable efforts. And for me I do better if I have somebody to chase otherwise I end up noodling around.

IndieVelo has a lot of potential. And there are a bunch of different race events. Not as many as Zwift but they keep adding to them.

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Good to know. Zwift is CAD 24.99 + taxes, and my reason to use is the same as yours. I need someone to chase. A group ride, a race, etc. Just riding by myself I can’t keep the motivation. It’ll be for about twice a week. The rest of my rides are fatbike and cross-sports.

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mywhoosh might give you that for free

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4am alarm clocks, 2 hour road rides on my gravel bike in the dark, 2 hour endurance rides in the garage at 430am… 4-7am are Dad’s hours. My wife doesn’t work so that helps as well.

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I’m the same. In the past, depending on what I’m training for, my coach has given me some workouts on Zwift that are just

“ride around. when somebody passes you jump on their wheel and hang on for 4 minutes. Then chill for a few minutes. Keep doing that for an hour”

or

“Find a hilly section and when you hit a hill go low cadence and power up it”

With Zwift it indieVelo I need some sort of loose structure unless it’s just a recovery ride then I can noodle.

I’d definitely like to support indieVelo. But Zwift with the volume of users is always a draw. Especially with the numerous group rides or races throughout every day.

Last winter with some bad weather days it was easy to find a 2-3 Zwift endurance group ride where I could just work to keep up with the group.

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Totally agree!

Structured training with progressive overload is not difficult. It only seems difficult after you are exposed to something like TR and you read too much on the internet. You get to think that riding at 103% for 2.5 minutes actually means something special.

I’m not knocking TR. A lot of what indoor training programs provide is mental stimulation. Boring unbroken intervals work just the same except they are less stimulating.

Really, you only need to train below threshold, above threshold, and at threshold. I gather that one could write a very successful plan based on RPE and a three zone or even two zone model.

KM, in one of his podcasts talked about doing the basics. He said one could build a basic season out of blocks of Endurance (base), Tempo, Threshold, and VO2 (in that order). With just the basics there, you’d get to 98% of your potential fitness. The rest is fine tuning.

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It doesn’t run on my poor laptop. I tried.

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+1. Though the tough part is when to implement those pieces to peak on one specific day.

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This is a very good point. When I was doing more races as having a bunch throughout the summer it was so nice having a coach to handle how best to make that work.

I’ll add to having a coach has taught me how important recovery is and she almost always know when I need extra recovery

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I love my TR for the way it works out my intervals for me.

I get the idea that it’s possible to work it out for yourself.

But I wouldn’t have the motivation to work out whether I should be doing an interval for 3 minutes at 250 or 4 minutes at 240 etc.

And I definitely think that if I was finding a self calculated interval particularly hard, I’d be cutting it short prematurely, whereas if TR has a blue bar then I need to be completing it.

Maybe that says more about me and my motivation!

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The point is that you generally don’t need to plan an individual workout to that level of detail. A workout really doesn’t need to be so complicated that you can’t keep it in your head. The hardest ones to me are O/Us, 30/30s, etc. where you need to keep a mental count, but use of a lap button is generally sufficient.

At a high level:

  • Z1/Z2 rides really require no structured workout, just ride at your desired pace until you’re tired of it or run out of time.
  • Z3/SS/Threshold - work on increasing length and amount of time in zone (+ O/Us).
  • VO2 - shorter intervals and 15-20m total time, rest as needed.

I wouldn’t recommend this approach to a beginner, but if you’ve been training for a while and know your body, then you’ll get the same benefits as long as you keep riding. TR absolutely has a time and place, and it is definitely easier than doing some of this work yourself, though I find TR also requires some active input. If you require consistent accountability, TR or a coach may fill that purpose.

A personalized coach is well outside of this discussion. There the benefits go far beyond any individual workout design, assuming you’ve a half-decent coach anyway.

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30/30’s aren’t that hard to count :sweat_smile: hit lap and at 6minutes you’ve done 6 x30/30 etc

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