Yep, for a person working a full time job I’ve yet to meet a person that wouldn’t be best on 7 hours of endurance and one hour of intensity give or take a bit. Not exciting, not techie, it just works.
I’ve not met you but my hand is raised.
Having tried both intesnity (TR MV base/build) works best for me, however I do have 30yrs of endurance (running / cycling) of history and having reached the point of the slow decline (52 
)
I think it’s very individual as to what works best.
Interesting, I wonder if intensity gets more important as you get older as that’s the thing that goes first. Painful paradox is that’s thing that seems to cause burnout fastest as you get older! I guess you can’t compare someone who has 30 years of endurance training with someone who’s say got 2 years of endurance, plus add in everyone has a different engine, different recovery abilities. That’s why actual coaches aren’t going anywhere anytime soon no matter what adaptive training promises.
Completely agree. (different subject but I’m not fully convinced with AT yet for myself)
But I also think the individual can take alot of repsonsibility for thier training, what works and what doesnt, it’s just a case of making simple changes and seeing / feeling the impact.
Hey! After looking at your plan, I think our Support Staff can help you. It looks like your plan isn’t built around your stage race and you have workouts scheduled on days with A races.
Please check in with support@trainerroad.com so they can take a look.
I’ve never seen a Fascat training program, but I do enjoy their podcasts very much, very chilled vibe. By chance I was listening to their Ask A Fascat #15 podcast yesterday and it does not seem that they advocate endurance on 7-8 hours a week at all.
My takeaway was that their philosophy is like TR - SweetSpot is the way to go unless you don’t have a day job (Frank Overton’s words, not mine) and can do 20+ hours of Z2.
I quote Frank loosely: “as z2 relates to athletes in the real world on 8 to 12 hours a week…athletes are able to build a bigger base if they incorporate SS training into those 8 to 12 hours to get more bang for the buck. Sure you lose out on Fat burning adaptations but very few races play out that way”.
English is not my 1st language so I might miss some bigger context here.
They chat about this about 1h:10m into the podcast.
That may very well be - I will gladly defer to those who have experience with their training plans. My only experience with FC is through the couple of podcasts I’ve listened to.
FC has overly marketed sweet spot and Frank does say contradictory things. In one podcast he talks about doing as much SS as you can through the winter. And then in another he talks about fatigue dependent training:
SS → Tempo → Endurance → Rest (Tues-Friday)
So, I gather, that when he says “as much as you can” he means within the context of the plan that calls for 1 day of SS plus more on the weekend. He doesn’t mean “do sweetspot every day until the wheels fall off”.
It’s an interesting question/discussion that keeps flaring up, remember the Dylan Johnson video and thread with 2,600 replies? Not going to repeat all those arguments but think it is helpful to look at the bigger picture.
At one end of the spectrum there is the small group of pro-cyclists, training 20-30 hours per week with 75-80% at low intensity (zone 2). At the other end of the spectrum is the massive Peloton community, whose members on average complete 19.9 workouts per month, with an estimated average duration of 35.3 minutes, or ~2.7 hours per week of mostly very high intensity (HIIT) workouts.
So where does the Trainerroad community fall on this spectrum? About 90% of Trainerroad users do low or mid volume plans, at first approximation roughly evenly distributed across the two. That leads to an average of 4-5 hours of training per week (not taking into account skipped trainings or other rides) with 3-4 rides per week of ‘high intensity’ (above zone 2). We all take our training very seriously, love the podcasts with (former) pro cyclists, and think we are really nailing it. But lets face it, the average TR user has an FTP of 2.8 W/kg and 95% of users is below 4W/kg (data Nate).
So you are training >6 hours per week, competing in crits and road races, and likely approaching or exceeding 4W/kg? Probably fair to say you have drifted out of the customer segment Trainerroad is targeting. And companies like Peloton, Zwift and Trainerroad are well aware that low intensity workouts have low adherence. That might sound innocent for a user (will of course not happen to me), but from a business perspective it is a serious issue that affects customer satisfaction and ultimately customer retention. So there will be some natural hesitation to promote more low intensity workouts.
Below an attempt to plot the number of high intensity rides in a standard training week as function of total volume. The data points for Peloton, TR average and Competitive/Pro have significant error bars and/or standard deviations.
From what I’ve heard from TR, the plans have evolved based on compliance. Which means the long rides were replaced by shorter rides with more intensity, with possible exceptions being the Triathlon Full Distance and Traditional Base plans.
What your chart fails to capture is the amount of intensity. For example lets look at the Carmichael Training Systems (CTS) 60-minute climb plan on Strava.
- 10 hours total
- Intervals Wednesday: 4x10-min over/unders (each 10-min is 4-min under / 1-min over, repeated twice)
- Intervals Thursday: 4x10-min sweet spot
- Intervals Saturday: 30-min tempo and 40-min tempo
- Breakdown for week2: 40-min threshold; 40-min sweet spot; 70-min tempo; 450-min endurance
Now that is a plan meant to be used to shape fitness for an event, so I’ll call it a 4 week build. Compare that to week2 of pre-AT Sustained Build HV:
or the week6 which is the 2nd week of 2nd block:
It is not just the number of days, it is the number of intervals (and focus).
Keep in mind CTS has been around for over 20 years, currently employs over 50 coaches, and incorporates both science and direct athlete-coach feedback to shape the plans. The plans are based on data, generalized as a template, and what CTS has seen work and produce results.
AT has modified the workouts, however I believe the basic weekly structure is the same.
Clearly some can benefit from the level of stimulus from a TR HV Build plan, but following your story the HV plans are not the TR target. I’m more of a diesel, older, and 6 years training. If I tried the pre-AT TR HV Build plan, I would crash and burn. Heck I crashed and burned on TR MV plan (pre-AT). But in my first year of training I did the CTS/Strava 60-min climb plan with good compliance and great results.
So…my plan got adjusted due to a change I made to an upcoming event in June but basically same level of intensity this week. I nailed my Monday Clouds Rest +6 workout, did too much TSS yesterday (81 instead of 29 from Lazy Mountain +1) but kept it mostly Z2 HR, then felt like I almost maxed out on Kennedy 3.0 threshold today. That’s where I’m at so far for the week.
I think structured intensity becomes more important, but only with proper volume and recovery
So…my plan got adjusted due to a change I made to an upcoming event in June but basically same level of intensity this week. I nailed my Monday Clouds Rest +6 workout, did too much TSS yesterday (81 instead of 29 from Lazy Mountain +1) but kept it mostly Z2 HR, then felt like I almost maxed out on Kennedy 3.0 threshold today. That’s where I’m at so far for the week.
Why do you think the Endurace 1.3 was there?
IMHO this thread is flooded with a lot of (pardon my french) BS. This program this, that coach that, my experiences from a TR plan 4 years ago. You know who you guys are.
Unless you are a 5wk/kg+ rider or a very experienced coach, or a PhD in the topic with multiple successful athletes under your belt you really should keep your opinion about what is ‘better’ a bit more lightly.
I am in no position to judge, but from all the people I know that do fall into the category above, and have been ‘pretty’ successful → They do hard work, 2/3x per week, and add endurance on top
As said a 1000x times, consistency and sufficient intensity gets you faster. Gradual increase in load get’s you faster and mixing up things is sometimes needed to get you over a plateau. There is no need to discuss how one program makes up for the available 6 hours a week vs the other. What matters more is getting a continuous’ minimum effective dose’. TR AI does a perfect job of keeping the load right for most people I guess (i don’t have the numbers).
As @joelc demonstrates, knowing what workouts to be fresh for and how to rate RPE is key 
What’s it like climbing hills at 5W/kg?
Preach.
OP asked for opinions. Dissenting opinions are allowed. One reason some prominent coaches don’t participate here any longer is responses like this one, where unless you are bought in 100% on TrainerRoad, you are likely to be excoriated.
It’s very much possible to be successful using TR. I believe it takes a little bit of knowledge to do so, and TR is not nearly as plug and play as it might lead one to believe. That said, I maintain that it is probably the best value in cycling training for your average cyclist.
Cheers.
This is sort of the point though? Most TR plans do more hard work than this.
Not much more. TR Plans for criteriums & rolling road races:
LV: 3 intense
MV: 3 intense, 1 moderate
HV: 3 intense, 1 moderate
When parsing out work, most coaches I know of would consider TR’s “moderate” days hard. TR files 3x30 sweet spot as “moderate” according to their plans. So you do three intense interval sessions and a long sweet spot session on the weekend, that is way more interval work than any coach I know would prescribe.
Now, if you sub out the weekend SST for 3 hrs Z2, you can be in the ballpark. Even then, though, if I’m doing three interval sets per week, I only try to sustain that for about a month. There are studies out there that show that three interval sessions per week don’t elicit any more gains than two, but they do incur more fatigue.
This is one thing that has always irked me about TR plans - they say science based but I haven’t seen any science or study that says 4-5 intensity days per week is optimal? As you say, there is evidence that 2 is optimal and maybe 3 in the short term for some people.