I’m a mid-60’s road and now gravel racer with decades of experience. I said goodbye to my coach and have been using TrainerRoad for a couple of years. What I’ve been noticing is my inability to respond to extreme jumps, breakaways and intense short climbs during critical moments in a race. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Adaptive Training is heavily FTP-centric and optimized around steady-state power development, not real-world race dynamics.
TrainerRoad’s training logic is built on a “sweet-spot and threshold” foundation. It’s superb at building aerobic base and FTP, helping time-crunched riders improve efficiently and automating progressions without overtraining. I do however feel it deliberately avoids prescribing too much anaerobic or neuromuscular work because their algorithms assume the average user lacks the recovery capacity of an elite. Their algorithms assume the average user lacks the recovery capacity of an elite and prioritize long-term consistency and safety over high-risk intensity. Their goal is “steady FTP gains,” not necessarily race-specific explosiveness.
I now believe that my inability to keep up with those quick explosive jumps or intense sharp climbs during critical moments in a race…”the make or break moments” were due to the fact that I was not anaerobically prepared for my events. For masters racing, especially in 60+, I now believe that success rarely comes from pure FTP, everyone’s FTP is roughly similar. Races are decided by who can respond to repeated surges, who can recover quickly between anaerobic spikes and who can produce a few seconds of big power late in the race.
Presently I’m reevaluating my upcoming 2026 season plan and would appreciate some comments.
What sort of plan are you using in TR? My feeling is that whether, or not, a person has VO2 Max workouts on their schedule depends highly on which plan you pick. If you feel you need more short bursts in your training, maybe pick a Criterium plan. Also, you can always replace a prescribed workout with one that you feel better suits your needs/desires, and TR will adapt your other workouts accordingly. You could also work on those efforts on your outside rides and, again, TR will adjust accordingly.
Yes, this has to be a result of what plans you are using. If it something that I don’t lack during my racing season it’s anaerobic workouts, to the point of considering tweaking my plan to shift the focus more towards the areas that I’m limited on.
Hi OliverT, I am also a mid 60’s Masters racer and I completely agree with your assessment "[quote=“OliverTwist, post:1, topic:106366”]
Races are decided by who can respond to repeated surges, who can recover quickly between anaerobic spikes and who can produce a few seconds of big power late in the race.
[/quote]
I’m in a Build Phase at the moment and my TR Plan has had me doing a VO2 workout each week - this is about to change to one Anaerobic workout a week. I have changed my other “Hard Day” to a Zwift Race. I was doing this as well as 2 hard days but decided I should follow the recommendations.
From my perspective it’s totally correct to assume that if you are not doing some type of extreme “balls to the wall” training sets then what makes you think a TrainerRoad race plan that doesn’t include that will prepare you for at race day when you need that gear. A heavily FTP centric TrainerRoad Rolling Race or Climbing Race training plan is in no way providing a robust enough anaerobic that mimics extreme race efforts. It took a couple of season’s using their plans to finally figure this out and feel like I’ve wasted my time.
Also, if we have to “Tweak” our plan by overriding it and thrown in an alternate anaerobic day then what good is their Rolling Race plan. That’s actually their job to do that and the plan is fundamentally flawed.
But the Rolling Road Race plan isn’t heavily FTP centric. It has one anaerobic and two VO2Max workouts per week. In addition one of the VO2Max workouts is typically short efforts with neuromuscular bursts/sprints.
The anaerobic workouts are simply not robust enough i.e. duration and intense. The problem is that riders who have no experience working at these levels will start to complain that they simply can’t do them…basically doing the opposite of what I’m suggesting should be done.
There is simply not the correct amount and not intense enough. These super intense anaerobic training sessions however can throw your program off because of the high risk of becoming overtrained and run down. I don’t believe the AI detection is robust enough to accurately determine fatigue levels because of the various types of riders all at different levels of experience. You need to be totally fresh and recovered on the days you are doing them. Each rider is different, age, experience, ability to adapt to extreme efforts and with so many different factors I believe the programmed training plans may not be able to keep up to all the variables.
The Ai can never fully know how fresh you are though and no Ai model or training package out there will.
Even a face to face coach wont know how your feeling pre workout unless you tell them, and then you are back to your inputs deciding what kind of workout is being done which is something you have complained about here as you want TR to decide for you.
It sounds like you are using the wrong tool for your level given you no longer care about FTP (As you’re all the same anyway) which is the primary metric everything here is based around.
After over a year of noticing this, I am not sure why you’re still using it?
That’s my point. I’m of the belief that TR is a very good program because I love the simplicity of the interface and it ticks all the boxes however for more refined levels of training for racing it could be better. I’m not some super elite cycling snob aiming to discredit TR I just wish they were able to provide a more advanced level to help me reach my goals.
We’d be happy to guide you through TR to help you get a plan in place that will help you reach your goals. Just reach out!
I think everything we discussed in your previous two posts, shown above by @AldridgePrior, is relevant here.
Your issues with trusting FTP detection, keeping your FTP updated and accurate, and following the plan are all directly tied to the difficulty of your workouts we prescribe in every zone.
As others have already mentioned, we have many plans that focus on VO2 Max and Anaerobic workouts. Here are some examples:
Rolling Road Race - 2 VO2 & 1 Anaerobic
Criterium - 1 VO2 & 2 Anaerobic
Short Track XC - 2 VO2 & 1 Anaerobic
XCO - 2 VO2 & 1 Anaerobic
CX- 2 VO2 & 1 Anaerobic
We won’t ever offer plans with more high-intensity work than that. If anyone else is recommending that to you, I’d proceed with caution and consider checking their resume of long-term success with other athletes.
Also, there’s no shortage of brutal Anaerobic workouts. Sort them by IF in our library and take a look. You just need to utilize the app properly and be consistent with your work, and you’ll get workouts that challenge you.
If you consistently do the hard workouts, you’ll progress.
Reach out if you’d like to chat about this more! Again, with everything we’ve recently discussed, I think we should be able to get you in a place where you’re able to see the results you’re looking for. You might just have to give some of our feedback a shot to see!
When I read this I thought - This guy needs weight lifting. I doubt any level of anaerobic workout on the trainer can counteract the decline of one’s fast twitch muscle fibers. Forces during pedalling are just to low.
I’m past 60 myself and and have experienced this first person.
I am very confused, 1x/week of anaerobic work is generally enough to move the needle and like you said have a significant impact on your body in terms of fatigue. But it sounds like you want more of them? But then say that will have a high risk of overtraining you and running you down?
I would hope that rating them appropriately would quickly lead to the tr “ai” adjusting them to an appropriate level of intensity, do you have any examples of recent workouts and how they felt to you?
Or if you don’t trust tr to choose the right sessions you could replace the 1x/week anaerobic workout with one you consider appropriate and go about it that way.
Races are decided by who can respond to repeated surges,
Anerobic workouts can only prepare you mentally, Anaerobic capacity is primarily driven by muscles mass and the ability to recruit as many fibres as possible, see Tomaslvarsson’s post
who can recover quickly between anaerobic spikes
recovery from anaerobic efforts is purely aerobic, improving your FTP will improve recovery time. Especially the type of FTP improvements brought about through volume of low intensity work
and who can produce a few seconds of big power late in the race.
As TomasIvarsson said this is primarily driven by muscle mass, but doing sprints on the bike or trainer is good for adding specificity to the muscle recruitment and also form/technique.
