I’ve been playing around with masters plan vs non-masters plan. And while reducing 3 intensity sessions to 2 makes a lot of sense. I’m surprised to see the 30min (harder) endurance ride that’s prescribed on weds (after hard intervals on tuesday)
Can anyone shed some light on what that’s targeting? In the few years where I’ve either had coaches, read training material, or tried out other apps, I rarely see 30min endurance sessions.
Would it make sense to extend this to 1.5hrs at lower intensity? Or even remove it for a recovery ride after tuesday intervals. And just add 30min to weekend endurance rides at lower intensity?
Maybe there are some benefits to this where I’m not seeing, so I want to see what other people think before changing this workout every week.
Can’t speak for the for TR or the AI program but as a coach I might add these in to build consistency and routine with training. If an athlete only trained 3 times a week and we are building to 5-6 times a week, this would be a good place to start.
Other thoughts…
People may not have 90 minutes and prefer to just “do something.” Personally I feel better when I do something consistently than a bunch of complete rest days separating.
On that note… it did this to me too. Which was odd because considering it looks at training history I never had anything like that and it drastically cut my weekly TSS and volume. I just manually put the time was available and it adjusted.
Currently I don’t use plan builder because it gives me a lot of these exotic workouts I just don’t like doing. I am hoping one day you can prioritize custom and favorite workouts and let plan builder do its thing.
weird thing is that I’ve added 2hrs every week day to train (not all 5 days, but 2hrs a session is totally fine), and 4hrs a day on weekends into plan builder, yet it still gave me a 30min session. It’s almost not worth getting dressed, and the higher intensity (70% of FTP) endurance workout is a bit of a surprise too. Maybe they’re trying to get some tempo work in.
And I agree, I think it’s probably better to have a short Wednesday workout rather than a day off. Especially when i’m only doing two intensity sessions a week.
I’ve definitely had to select alternate workouts for most days to find a simple version of workouts. There’s a lot of mini power increase/decrease in TR workouts that I don’t think is necessary. Maybe it’s to keep people interested.
I wish workouts are just along the lines of “ride at FTP(insert power) for 15min”, instead of making most FTP workouts look like over/unders.
That’s why I modify as needed. I ride ~20 hours a week. I ignore these little mid week rides. I also swap out workouts I just don’t like or want to do.
The main purpose of those rides is to keep your training consistent without building up too much fatigue. They’ll still be getting you on the bike, but they’re meant to be more of a maintenance/recovery ride.
If you have more/less time for those rides or you want to do them at lower intensities, Workout Alternates would be a great tool to use.
Mine had some weird 30m sessions in there and was
Way below my past CTL.
I just upped the load from normal and increased the days till it looked closer to what I had.
After starting the plan it quickly made adaptations after each ride completion increasing weekly TSS. Almost a week in and it already looks pretty darn close to what I was doing before in hours in the saddle and weekly TSS.
I usually replace that 30 min. session with a 1:30 interval. My recovery is fine. I wonder if TR will recognize this and will not recommend a masters plan next time.
