IRL outdoor schedule + TR - How to use maximize platform?

Hello,
Looking for advice and thoughts how to best use this platform during outdoor riding season.

Here is a typical outdoor schedule that I experience:

  • Tue - 45 min Crit/Road club race + 90 min for riding there and back
  • Thu - 20-30 min iTT club event + 90 min for riding there and back
  • Sat - 3-4hr Touring with the club

Mon-Friday commute by bike to work that is about 40 minutes per day.

To add to the above I take part in 6-8 races (my B & A races), these 3-4 weeks apart from each other, typically on Saturday.

I have been happy with the progress in this past off-season and have TR to thank for this. I’m really wondering how I can continue to use TR. Matching workouts to my rides makes me really worried that I will miss-match and create a mess with my progress level.

Any thoughts or advice from the community? Thank you

You might want to check out this week’s podcast.

IMHO cycling is supposed to be fun first and training should complement it and make it more fun. On the other hand based on your schedule you might be doing too much work.

So are you having “enough” fun?

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Hey there!

We generally advise choosing a Low Volume plan during your outdoor riding season. This will give you 2-3 “core” training sessions per week that you can plan around.

You can do them as Outside Workouts, so no need to stay indoors if the weather is nice!

In general, we want athletes to have three intensity days per week – anything more than that may be too stressful to handle. If you typically have a race Tuesday and a TT Thursday, that’s already two days – if the touring day gets some intensity, that could be three. If you’re willing, we’d recommend replacing one or two of those sessions with interval workouts if you’d like to keep following a plan.

You could also look into doing TrainNow workouts if you’d prefer to plug those in as you see fit. You’ll be recommended workouts by Adaptive Training based on your recent training history, and you could use those workouts to replace a race/TT/ride as you roll through your outdoor season.

Ultimately, it comes down to balancing your structured training with your races and group rides. Our advice from a coaching standpoint is that it’s worth continuing to do one to three structured workouts throughout the outdoor season – even just one per week can really help maintain (or even progress) your fitness levels!

Hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions about using TR for your outside riding.

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If you are committed to that schedule, I wouldn’t worry about following a TR plan for the time being. You can keep using TR to track your rides and update your FTP, however.

If by “progress level” you are referring to “progression levels”, unless you can commit 100% to a TR program, then don’t worry about it. However, if you are just referring to your overall progression as an athlete, I would suggest your above schedule, combined with some Z2 rides on the days not noted, will be more than enough to allow you to continue to progress.

One other option would be to use the LV plan as Zach mentions and do the workouts on your way to the practice crit / TT’s…obviously this will take a bit out of your legs for your event, though but it would be a great (if tough) training day.

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Thank you so much @ZackeryWeimer ! I appreciate your expert advice and insights.

@webdev511 thanks for your response. Absolutely having fun! I try to follow that 70/30 rule and ensure that I get 75% z1/z2 rides, 10% z5+ and remaining depending on what I’m training for.

@Power13 thanks for your response as well. Correct “progression levels”. Thanks again for your thoughts.

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Just coming back to this thread 5 weeks into IRL. I found you advice very helpful and continue to do exactly what you wrote with my training. Just wanted to loop back and say thanks!

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