They discussed this in the podcast extensively a few times, but I canāt remember which ones. Basically A races should be absolute top priority and they suggest putting in only one or two in the year and if there are two they should be at least six weeks apart. The idea is that for an A race you start preparing to peak for it 6 weeks before the actual race. So in this paradigm its basically physically impossible to have very many A races. In your case, maybe pick a 100mi and a 12hr one as A since they are the highest impact and would require the most recovery after, then the other 50mi TTs as B. That way the plan builder logic will try to have you peak for the 100mi and 12hr events. My logic is that itās easier to repeat the 50mi TTs if youāre unhappy with the result. Anyway, in a situation where you were racing for some season-long competition every week, I think the right approach in plan builder would be to label every week a B race, since you cannot possibly peak for each one.
Thanks, helpful. It will be interesting to see how Adaptive Training handles weekly mid-week club 10s and racing at the weekend.
Yes that clarifies. I was thinking BBAR was a race in itself, which would indeed make it your A race. It would be like how Kona would be a triathleteās A race and they would put a couple of the qualifier races as Bs on their schedule. Or in the case of world cup mountain biking, the world championship would be the A race and there would be a handful of B races chosen in the world cup circuit to test the legs and aim for some wins throughout the season.
I think what @NilsJohan said makes more sense now that I understand the structure of your season.
I could do with some clarification on this question, please.
I asked about the situation with AT, where I do NOT use Plan Builder, but choose TR plans myself and add in my A, B and C races into my programme/Calendar.
Will AT recognise that I have races planned and adapt to them even though I did not use Plan Builder to insert them?
(The earlier answer from @BCrossen said āPlan Builder does thisā but I am asking about using my choice of Plans and adding my Races into my Calendar.)
Thanks
The short answer is no. AT for now and likely for quite some time isnāt particularly prepping you for races. AT is ensuring your training is appropriate and progressing you in the ābestā manner relative to your training. What youāre referring to is a training plan to peak you towards a race event and/or season. Plan Builder is for this very thing. It will adjust training based on your races. If you just ad hoc training plans then YOU are the only one that understands the progression towards the races, TR the system and AT does not.
OK, so even if I am using the TR training plansā¦ eg sustained power and 40kTT, you are saying AT will ignore races. Is that what you are referring to by āAd-hocā?
Think of it his way. AT is for training and Plan Builder is for racing/peaking/structure. Since youāve taken the automated role of Plan Builder out of the equation, you become Plan Builder. AT will still make adjustments to maximize your training, just not specifically relative to racing. Which is fine, thatās not the goal of AT per se.
OK, thanks. That helps. My experience with Plan builder when it first came out, in a complex TT season, with multiple long races to complete, was it did not handle the sorts of races I was doing. So I have tended to ignore it. I may revist it. For a different thread I think.
Just to further clarify, Plan Builder handles the macro elements. It creates the framework and plan that will lead you to your events using a broad scope. AT handles the micro elements of the plan, essentially adjusting things at a narrower scope. To use an analogy, Plan Builder creates the frame of the house, and AT is the interior decorator making the best use of the space confined by the house.
AT looks at the goals of that plan, reads your workout performance, and adjusts the workouts of Plan Builder to be effective and relative to your abilities while meeting the goals of the plan you selected. AT is the micro cycle handling the day to day and week to week progressions while keeping the week to week and month to month goals set by Plan Builder in mind.
If youāre not using Plan Builder, adding A, B, and C races to your calendar basically wonāt do anything to the plan as far as I know. You have to use PB to make it update the plan when you input those.
About the progression levels, do they reset after a new Ramp Test? And does the AT start recommending workouts based on those progression levels?
Yes, I believe so.
Iāve been through a SSB part of a plan and my Sweetspot progression level was at 10 but dropped to 6.5 after a threshold change.
Earlier in the beta my levels were reset to the default level of 4 after an FTP increase but that changed later on. How the change is calculated I donāt know, it would be interesting to know whether the size of the FTP change influences how much the progression levels change. And yes, future workouts change according to reflect your current progression levels whatever they are.
I canāt help thinking that at the point youāre knocking out level 9 / 10 Sweetspot / Threshold sessions youāre probably due an FTP test anyway.
Maybe. It plays to my strengths at any threshold Iāve had over the years and after the SSHV base weeks its essentially all TR knows Iāve done. I doesnāt yet take into account the crits and group rides Iāve done as well in the last few weeks! At any realistic FTP setting Iād be pretty confident of hitting the higher level sweetspot workouts. Not so much VO2 or above.
FWIW I did a level 10 SS workout at the new FTP setting successfully before moving to a recovery week this week. Next week is onto a build which will stress other systems which currently appear untouched.
Iām not sure how it views decay over time of other systems. Obviously the ML system isnāt aware of the above threshold rides and races Iāve done so I wouldnāt expect that to be reflected in those areas but doing the high proportion of sweetspot workouts in the HV plan the resolutely for a while kept my endurance levels low as there arenāt any significant endurance workouts in the HVSS plan.
I would think that it would be unusual for anybody who has higher levels in the tempo/SS areas to have a low endurance level as well but maybe that will take time for the ML system to build an overall picture.
They do decay automatically, and youāre rightā¦ very unlikely youād have high level in those two but not endurance. I wonder if eventually theyāll take that into account and decay Endurance more slowly when youāre not doing those sessions, but are doing a lot of Tempo / Sweetspot.
Edit - Unrelated, does anyone know how to move around my workouts and still keep them āin planā? I need to (at minimum) swap two of my workouts around this week (ideally replace with slightly harder) and I donāt want TR to consider them outside of the plan for adaptation purposes.
That would be logical and I hope is part of the system,
I donāt know for sure but I think that even if moved they will remain part of the plan. At the very least they will be reflected in future progression levels even if manually added and presumably influence future suggested adaptions.
From what I understand, they do not fully reset, but they will adjust based on the ramp test outcome to keep the progression more linear and manageable. Here is Nate talking about specifically what youāre asking about, time-stamped from the initial podcast.
I believe this experience of a new ramp test resetting everything to 4 was a bug. This was mentioned above in the thread a couple of times, and TR had said that it was not supposed to reset you to level 4 on everything. This had also occurred with manual FTP adjustment, and it is mentioned in the OP as a bug that was fixed. Perhaps there is some logic in the system that if it doesnāt know you levels because the data isnāt clear it puts you at 4 across the board?
Correct, decay in progression levels was one of the things mentioned in the initial podcast as well. If you take time off or do not touch on a system, the levels decay. Iāve noticed this decay personally because Iāve done outdoor workouts on Wahoo that havenāt been classified (specifically Endurance and Sweet Spot/Threshold sessions) so it sees those workouts as not having been done.
For example, my Endurance level says 4.6, but every Sunday for the last four weeks, Iāve done an outdoor endurance workout of 3-4 hours. Last week, I did Town Hill outdoors (4 hrs of 60-75% FTP), which is a 7.0 Endurance workout. But because of the Wahoo bug, it thinks Iāve not used that energy system and has shown a steady decay over time.
Also, @Textuality I believe moving them doesnāt screw things up. It should still classify what was a success and what was a failure and adjust progression. If it didnāt, then Train Now wouldnāt also adjust levels, I would think. The progression is tied to the workout, not the day of the week, essentially.
As I said, it was much earlier on in the beta process which was soon addressed. Iāve had levels appropriately set since after an FTP change.
It wont be the end of the world if I donāt get progression stuff anyway I guess as itās a ārestā week, just one with particularly high volume.
Gotcha. I got added to the beta as I entered a recovery week (only two plan workouts for AT prior to recovery week), and my experience was that my progression levels remained mostly the same and I had no new adaptations throughout that week. As soon as I did the ramp test, it made some more defined progression level shifts. I really canāt wait for that FTP prediction part of AT to be ready. Iād like to not do a ramp test next week. 
Iām not sure Iām going to bother with my FTP test. Iām coming to the end of a fairly severe calorie deficit period and I still have some headroom in my levels so Iām thinking I might put the adaptations to work for increases rather than the decreases I got in the last stage of my plan!