🎉🎉🎉 Introducing Plan Builder! 🎉🎉🎉

great! but i need a 4-days-a-week schedule… how do i do that?

Hey Bryce, suggest adding to the article that you can not only change volume of an individual phase, but also the type (i.e., which base, build or specialty). That’s a great feature too.

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Typically, the best approach for 4x/ week is to add the Mid-Volume plan and drop the short endurance ride that is scheduled on Wednesday by default. At the moment. you’ll have to go delete these workouts manually after applying Plan Builder to your calendar, but in the future, we want to make it easier to delete workouts during Plan Builder setup.

@Bryce
I had previously asked the above, the response was this was by design and to avoid having two ramp tests too closely placed together…which makes total sense.

Now that I am approaching the point of finishing SSB1 and moving into build that all looks fine, but there is ZERO recovery/rest between finishing the shortened 3week build and doing a ramp test for the next program. It also makes there be a 9 week block between proper recovery weeks. Example: SSB1 recovery week, then 3 weeks of build and straight into 6 weeks of SSB2 (at hopefully a higher FTP).

MIght be something to look a little closer at.

I know the TR guys are working on something for when sickness or travel get in the way of a plan built in plan builder but what does one do for now?

Had a work trip and then got sick causing me to miss 2 straight weeks of my plan. I had just finished a recovery week and was due for another FTP test, but was sick that week so skipped the test and a couple other workouts. Just started back with an EZ ride today instead of the scheduled intervals.

My question is what to do now:

  1. Do I redo plan builder with next week as my new start date?
  2. Do I just manually push my scheduled workouts ahead a couple weeks to allow for me to get going again and start with an FTP test.
  3. Carry on with my workouts next week without doing an FTP test since I’d likely test poorly as I’m still not 100%. I’d just keep my FTP where it was prior to getting sick in this option.

Any other ideas out there?

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Check out this thread for our official recommendation :+1:.

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Just getting back to looking at plan builder again as my time on TR has increased and I can start to see some events on the horizon. The blog post you shared were helpful. My question remains about how to peak for a second A event. Plan builder has me doing a full 2nd build and a 4 week specialty phase. This article suggests that one should get in a full 2nd specialty and make the build shorter.

Picking a low volume plan as I bike commute 4-5 days a week (22 miles rt). Sustained Build and Century are the Build and Specialty phases.

https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005942586-Peaking-for-Multiple-A-Races

So at this point what changes has TR made to the plan builder? Have you resolved the vacation or sick time edit on there… I have just completed the first block and I was sick for the last and a half of the block, and I didn’t complete all the sessions. Has anyone figured out how to get around this if this hasent been resolved yet?

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Plan Builder is a Huge help in building out a season. I am recently injured so I delete my original plan and because of time off plan builder changed things up a bit. Also decided after listening to the podcast I am going with low volume and adding in some long endurance rides. So thanks TR

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I do really like it and it’s only going to get better. I’m also really pleased I’ve had a couple of years to decide on my plans organically as it’s made me research and try and understand the various options.

TR is a resource that just keeps on giving. I love it.

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@Bryce Putting this here as there are so many Plan Builder threads, I am not clear where else to put it. Some Feature Requests.

First, when Plan Builder creates the plan, and you have races or events on the calendar, give us the option to have it include a workout on that day. Example: The Death March is a race I would love to do - even as a training ride. So it was on the calendar. But reality is I am not going to get to do it as such would not help me towards my A race. Having an option that day already dictated would be great.

Same for other events – i have some running events on ride days I would like to have the ride option for either a different time of the day or the next day (instead of a second run). (I also have a C race on a run day and would run the previous day if something is prescribed.)

When adding an event, the Calendar asks if you want to recalculate. Currently it says “Cancel” or “Recalculate”. Might want to change that cancel to “No.” And then have a pop-up remind the user they can recalculate at a later time via however that is done.

Will post more as they come to me.

Most certainly is user error, but is there a way to make it so I can get 4 weekly workouts, for general build and fitness purposes? I can only seem to get either 3 or 5 workouts. What am I missing?

Thanks

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Thanks for that. Glad it wasn’t user error at least. Looking forward to the continuous updates, like all other improvements you keep feeding us!

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Any reason why you’ve removed the ability to add running activities as races? It used to be you could set them as A/B/C races. Now there simply is no option.

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I know plan Builder is being developed and the changes we make in the calendar are not yet being automatically making a recalculation of our plan as they should because there are to many variables and too much to be done. It will take some time to get it all sorted out by the TR team but one thing I’ve done last night should be easily done.

I simply deleted a C race for next weekend and all my C races are in fact group rides (one question here why not having an option named group ride instead of C races) and the plan didn’t change a bit. I’ve hoped it would at least incorporate the training prescribed by the plan that week if I didn’t have selected Sunday for that C race. In fact all weeks of my plan from base up to Speciality I have Sunday either as C or B race but some of those I might have to delete and instead make a TR training that day. It’s not too much work to look at the plan overall and see what is the prescribed training for that day and put it in my calendar but once plan Builder didn’t added that training in the first place on the calendar because I’ve settled a race for that day, when deleting the race it should at this time already put the prescribed training in its place. That’s my thought.

Onother question I’ve got or more kind of a doubt is if I go and set 2 C races (group rides in fact) on Saturday and Sunday before doing plan Builder what will be the logic of plan Builder:
A) put me up on a low volume plan
B) keep me on a medium volume
C) other (if known please tell me)

That’s a concern for me. Right now I’m happy with only one group ride because it’s winter but after March the 1st I really intend to go on group rides on Saturday and Sundays and accordingly to my weekly family and work routine I’ve only got 3 week days to train and that would supposly be adequate to a LV Plan but those are 3 consecutive days Tuesday, wendsday and Thursday and TR logic is never to do 2 consecutive hard trainings to give your body the ability to recover from the previous day.

I’ve looked a lot to LV and MV plans trying to figure in my mind how can I make this perfect week, for me at least, giving the weekend for group rides and making 3 consecutive TR sessions mid week but neither of the plans gives me a good and comfortable option because choosing either one of them I’ll always have to ditch some trainings and in the LV case ditch one intense training and add then a endure ride on wendsday.

So what I’m looking for is that in the future Plan Builder gets more versatile and after inserting C races both Saturday and Sunday, going to select the several options on plan Builder I can exactly say I’ve only got those 3 consecutive days for TR and it picks me 3 trainings that give me all I need to train but without burning out from 3 consecutive hard trainings.

Hope I was clear enough.

This is the thread for feature requests they have going:

It’s general in nature but much smaller than this thread and specifically for new features users would like to see!

We agree with you here and we would like to make this possible in the future :+1:.

Plan Builder will put you on whichever Volume you choose, and will swap out workouts for C races in situations where a C race is present. So for your proposed schedule, if you selected Mid Volume you would have workouts on TuWeTh, and then the SaSu workouts would be swapped for your C Race group ride.

We avoid recommending three hard consecutive training sessions due to the potential for burn out and overtraining. It seems like the best approach will be choosing Mid-Volume and swapping the weekend workouts for group rides as outlined above :+1:.

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How about substituting the workouts for the minus versions manually? Could do it all in one go, or just switch them down right before you do each one.

I understand that logic but is it really the most adequate way of changing a 5 day exclusively TR plan in too a 5 day plan with 3 TR consecutive days + 2 outdoor group rides on the weekend scheduled as C races?

It seems cutting the 2 trainings scheduled on the weekends from the 5 MV trainings too simple and that the remaining 3 trainings don’t consider all the range of zones I’d should be training on.

I know Saturday usually is Threshold and Sunday Tempo and Threshold is repeated on Thursdays but this reduction seems too simple to me. I’d expect some change in the trainings on the 3 mid week trainings covering maybe a wider range of zones once I won’t be doing Threshold twice a week as supposed nor I’ll do tempo the trainer.