As you work on incorporating outside rides, please think through how to âtagâ a structured outside ride NOT done via creating a custom workout and syncâing it a computer as a âfailureâ. For example, today I was supposed to do three hill sets that had multiple 1 minute accelerations within each hill set. I got through the first - barely, and pulled the plug in the 2nd as my leg were shot. How do I rate this so that it provides âgoodâ info for AT? Itâs not a ride that I would rate super hard, but I didnât accomplish the ride goals.
Have to say that the modifications to my Threshold sessions feel like a bit of a triumph this week. The plan would have had me doing Threshold 5.5 which I might have completed (Iâm in a heavy calorie deficit right now), but probably not⌠utterly shattering any confidence I may have built up. Instead, based on my performance / responses I had a 5.0 on Thursday and a 5.1 today which I was able to complete and add a little bit extra on top of.
I may be unusual in this, but Iâd rather go into a session knowing I can complete it, and do extra if Iâm feeling strong that day (for the same reason I do 5/3/1 for weights). Nothing worse than spending all day stressing about a session I donât think Iâll be able to do (not least because Iâll automatically be sabotaging my chances of completion).
Sorry, @BCrossen you may have misunderstood. The BBAR (British Best All Rounder) is a season long UK Time Trialling competition, NOT a separate race. It takes your best times (average speeds) for races over the three qualifying distances (50m, 100m ands 12hrs for men) and ranks you against all others in the country. Cycling Time Trials: BBAR
You seem to be suggesting I have no A race and all the qualifying races are B races, which is not how I would think about it. Those races are definitely A races. There are just multiple ones through the season. So to compete I have A races in all three distances, and may be chasing better times (later A races) later in the season. I hope that clarifies things.
They discussed this in the podcast extensively a few times, but I canât 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 itâs easier to repeat the 50mi TTs if youâre 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.
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 triathleteâs 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 âPlan Builder does thisâ but I am asking about using my choice of Plans and adding my Races into my Calendar.)
The short answer is no. AT for now and likely for quite some time isnât particularly prepping you for races. AT is ensuring your training is appropriate and progressing you in the âbestâ manner relative to your training. What youâre 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 plans⌠eg sustained power and 40kTT, you are saying AT will ignore races. Is that what you are referring to by âAd-hocâ?
Think of it his way. AT is for training and Plan Builder is for racing/peaking/structure. Since youâve 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, thatâs 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 youâre not using Plan Builder, adding A, B, and C races to your calendar basically wonât 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.
Iâve 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 donât 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.
Maybe. It plays to my strengths at any threshold Iâve had over the years and after the SSHV base weeks its essentially all TR knows Iâve done. I doesnât yet take into account the crits and group rides Iâve done as well in the last few weeks! At any realistic FTP setting Iâd 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.
Iâm not sure how it views decay over time of other systems. Obviously the ML system isnât aware of the above threshold rides and races Iâve done so I wouldnât 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 arenât 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 youâre right⌠very unlikely youâd have high level in those two but not endurance. I wonder if eventually theyâll take that into account and decay Endurance more slowly when youâre 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 âin planâ? I need to (at minimum) swap two of my workouts around this week (ideally replace with slightly harder) and I donât 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 donât 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 youâre 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 doesnât know you levels because the data isnât 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. Iâve noticed this decay personally because Iâve done outdoor workouts on Wahoo that havenât 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, Iâve 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 Iâve not used that energy system and has shown a steady decay over time.
Also, @Textuality I believe moving them doesnât screw things up. It should still classify what was a success and what was a failure and adjust progression. If it didnât, then Train Now wouldnât also adjust levels, I would think. The progression is tied to the workout, not the day of the week, essentially.
