I just started back up from about a 2.5 month break from the bike - I was building a deck!
Over the time off, I occasionally checked in with TR to see what it was predicting my fading FTP to be. It was about 230 in mid August before my break and then this week it predicted me at 155. I figure it isn’t that low, but I just went with it and then built a plan (Increasing FTP, 3 workouts/week).
Now the odd part and the reason for this post…
I would have thought after a few months off it would have started me slow, but instead it increased most of my workout times and (my guess) to make up for a lower FTP it has me doing high workout levels - see below:
Just curious if this is normal or a fluke that happened when it built my plan.
All that, I’m happy to jump in and get to it, but I was very surprised by the plan.
Your calender looks like mine, but I have a more reasonably set AiFTP, which makes the scheduled workouts a bit more daunting.
Given that you allready are doing 10+ level workouts I would manually increase your FTP. No way to get you to progress through the block if your starting at max.
I’m coming back from my off season, which was 9 days without rides with power, but I really hope that is not enough to derail things. More likely it’s the fact that I went two months without structured TR workouts, but if you belive their marketing that shouldn’t be a problem either.
It’s true that you might have to do without the AiFTP detection this block, but your allready out of productive workouts so it’s not really an alternative to just keep going. Maybe you can get support to give you an extra AiFTP detection?
I’ve been off the bike for under 3 weeks, and ai detected ftp had a 20w drop yesterday, but says I’ll get 30w back in 28 days. I notice that workouts are getting longer durations in week 2 of the block to get tss up apparently.
I actually wouldn’t want to try the same “very hard” vo2 workout from before my time off, so ratcheting things down makes sense. It seems optimistic I’ll ratchet right back up.
I don’t know if this is a new issue and to what extent it relates to the outside workout bug, but to me it seems that regardless of how reasonable the FTP reduction is the Ai wants to get it all back in the first block. If the reduction has been substantial that means you get a bunch of workouts with verry high levels.
This might, like OPs case, mean that you very quickly run out of workouts, or, like my case, you just get a bunch of too hard workouts right of the bat.
I just had a similar experience. Was mostly off for 2 months for health reasons. FTP drops more then made sense to me but I just went along with it. The time on the workouts would often go to odd times so I would adjust them to what I was preferring to do. One month later I had a big bump in FTP so now 8 watts below what my FTP was before the time off. I think it went too low with my time off and not even certain it has me at the right FTP currently. It is definitely a different reaction then I have experienced previously.
Since this thread is about getting back into training after a break, I thought I’d share my situation and ask for some advice.
I’m about to get back into cycling and TrainerRoad after quite a long break. Since my daughter was born, I’ve barely ridden and haven’t trained consistently for a long time, so my current fitness is well below where it used to be.
My goal is to get back to enjoying long outdoor rides with a reasonable amount of climbing. I’m in no rush to regain my previous fitness or reach a specific FTP; I’d rather build a solid foundation and progress gradually.
For those who have been in a similar situation, what kind of plan would you recommend to start with? Would a Base plan be the best option? And when it comes to harder workouts, should I trust TrainerRoad’s prescriptions from the beginning, or take a more conservative approach when returning?
I’d really appreciate your experiences and advice. Thanks!
Especially with being off for “quite a long break” I would say that building a solid base is very important. You even said you “want to build a solid foundation” so that should be right where you get it.
If you’re coming back from a long break, the AI requires several workouts with power and preferably HR to establish greater confidence in the FTP value it provides. If the FTP drop seems very low, then harder workout alternates and/or ‘low-effort’ survey responses would result in greater ramp rate of upcoming sessions and an increase in FTP. The converse is true for FTPs that seem too high after a break.
If you don’t want such a fast ramp rate during your plan you can simply select a more conservative training approach as well as employing the master’s option if you want a less intense training week.
Once you have a few weeks of power based training and truthful surveys the AIFTP should be pretty dialled.
I’m taking a similar approach to my training right now. Also stealing from Joel Friels High Performance Cyclist and it’s the preparing to train phase. Build up your time with easy workouts, can be split to two workouts per day, don’t have to be cycling.
Just plug in endurance rides to your calendar and you can let TR program what workout you do. I’d start with 30 minutes, work up to 45, hour, 1:15, 1:30 etc. Throw in a tempo workout every two weeks.
You aren’t trying to push any intensity, just getting your aerobic system and body back into volume and training.
Can easily do this with TR but requires a tiny bit more work on your end vs doing one of their plans. I feel like the plans immediately start with SST and Threshold and it’s gonna put fatigue into your body too early.
After reading your comments, I’m thinking of starting with Traditional Base Low Volume I and letting TrainerRoad manage the progression.
I’d rather have a structured training plan from the beginning, even if some workouts turn out to be a bit challenging, than just improvise Zone 2 rides without a clear direction. That’s actually why I want to use TrainerRoad as my coach: I don’t want to constantly think about what workout to do or how to structure my progression.
After such a long period without consistent training, I think the sensible approach is to rebuild my endurance and gradually get my body used to training again, without rushing into intensity.
I have one question: would doing a Ramp Test at the beginning help TrainerRoad establish a more accurate FTP and therefore prescribe better workouts? I understand that it might not be enough to prevent the initial workouts from being too easy or conservative, since the AI also needs actual training data to assess my fitness.
Does this sound like a sensible approach for returning after such a long break?
I am not sure how a Ramp test is handled these days, but yeah definitely worth a go , give ya a good short sharp hard hitting workout as well. I forget, will it let you set your FTP these days when you first startup again? I know for me when I restarted this fall, it wouldn’t start the AI stuff fully unless I accepted their FTP (that was too low)… so I just upped the target watts a bit for the week or so before it updated again.
Since you rated that workout EASY, definitely skews things for the TR workout selector.
I think if I was in your shoes I would just chose workouts manually for a week or two. in the low/middle of the sweetspot progression level like 3-4.0 and adjust power target until it feels about right. Or if you can just manually bump up FTP to what is more likely your FTP.
