Modifying plans for ultraendurance, seems to override 'safety' margin

Training
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I rejoined TR recently and asked it to build me a Gran Fondo plan for a 400 km, very hilly, gravel and lane, non stop event at the end of May. Really just so I could gauge the workload AIFTP would give me and to see whether I would be able to manage the event based on the system analysing my history.

Sure enough it was soon apparent I didnt have the capcity to do the event as it warned me that anything more than about 4 hrs a week was too much stress. I figured this was probably true and long gone are my days of big distances and fun events.

So I settled on the plan it gave me and just thought Id chuck in some volume if I had the time. Not a huge amount and all pretty steady z2, some lower z3 stuff. I had really ruled out any more ultra stuff anyway.

Today I thought Id have a look through the plan as was feeling good coming off the first 3 weeks and into recovery week (so clearly my brain has done a huge 180 and thought maybe the event was doable) . The plan was still giving me just 3.45 hrs a week. Right up to my event. No VO2 max anywhere. Weird i thought, so I had a play and increased my availability on the 4 days its allowing me to train, to the max available on each day. 5 hrs in most cases. Massively jumping the volume and TSS

Apparently that is acceptable. No warning anywhere that this would be too much volume.

Am I to assume that AIFTP will kick in early enough to stop me burning out if I leave these settings in?

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Hi Jo

What are the TR recommended settings as you run through Plan Builder?

Over the last six weeks, how much riding have you done, TR and non-TR?

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Hey, thanks for the reply. I haven’t re-run plan builder as i didn’t want to restart my base phase, again. Over the last year it feels like all I’ve done is base (long story).

When I initially ran it, I ran it to get better at group rides and the recommended settings were 3 days per week I think, but I changed to a Gran Fondo masters plan (gives me a bit of wiggle room to add an additional hard day if I need to although I do recover best on 2 hard days x week and the rest Z2-low Z3) and then it was 4 sessions totally 3.45 hours a week. IIRC anyway.

Over the last 6 weeks I haven’t done a huge amount - before Christmas I was coming off being personally coached by a brilliant lady. Unfortunately I just couldn’t afford the coaching, and that in itself was stressing me out and I had several weeks of feeling awful which was, as it turned out, all mental and related to paying for coaching I couldn’t afford, couldn’t justify, and, if I am brutally honest, felt ridiculous. It’s not like I am a pro, or even a good amateur really. Structured training has shown me one thing, I am so painfully average. :rofl:

So the last 6 weeks have been
9th December 404 TSS of me just finding my feet again on my own. One relatively hilly group MTB ride, the rest pootling about taking it easy. Standard strength work. Felt good. On the whole, historically, 400 ish TSS a week is my comfortable level around work etc. Any more than that I have to have help/make significant sacrifices with home life/work life

16th coming into Christmas I was super busy at work but did some Z2 stuff, some upper z3/sweetspot tempo intervals, bit of Z2 on the Sunday. Only 223 TSS total and wasn’t feeling great toward the end of the week.

Monday 23rd I got sick and by Christmas Day I was mostly in bed. Felt awful all week. Did a super short gentle ride on the Sunday. TSS 28

Rejoined TR for W/C 30th - Total TSS 333 including strengthwork, of which 220 was TR workouts (planned was 147 TSS I think). Felt surprisingly good considering coming back from flu, but it was all pretty low key stuff. TR had put my FTP down by 2.7% and reset all my PL so the workouts were easier than expected which was a nice way to come back.

Monday 6th I was feeling great actually. Extended a TR endurance ride with more endurance work. Crashed at the end, hard on the tarmac and proper smashed myself up. But although I was very bruised, it luckily didn’t affect training too much. Couldn’t do any technical MTB descending (still can’t get knee pads on) but other than the hard ride two days later, on the whole I’ve been able to pedal fine. Felt really good that week once over the initial inflammation and did 472 total TSS which was an extended TR workout outside staying in endurance zone, my planned group ride which was a toughie, TR intervals on turbo, TR endurance on the turbo, then a super steady z1-z2 few hours with a friend. Felt really good coming out of this week - I had time to accommodate the extra miles and thus recovery because of some work leave.

Last week was a more standard TSS week with TR stuff mostly outside. I lost a session because of technology issues inside. Had one relatively tough group ride (159 TSS for that ride) - Total TSS 430 for the week (TR, other riding and strength) with 176 from TR. Finished the week feeling fine.

Haven’t trained on the few red days it’s given me. Have only done endurance work on the yellow days.

I don’t plan to jump my training up to the 17 hours it has allowed me to plan next week by the way, that would be almost double TSS! I was just fascinated that, when I set up the plan to do a 400 km brute of an event in May, it said I wasn’t capable of more than 3.45 hrs a week, but now it’s letting me put huge days in the calendar? I definitely do need to increase my volume a bit from the currently prescribed TR and have been doing so by my own addition of Z2, but surely that is what TR is supposed to do? Give me the optimal training volume for my event?

Should I rerun plan builder now? Or just put in what I can actually manage timewise each week and see what it gives me? Am I to assume if that volume is too much, it will just modify it down?

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So you tell TR what time you have been training, and what time you have free for training plus other stuff. It then recommends workouts. In Plan Builder it will recommend frequency, length and intensity of workouts which you can choose to override.

This post from Zach might help understand the philosophy:

If you edit your plan to increase time available, Plan Builder should then warn you that you’re exceeding capacity.

I think you must be changing workouts in your calendar directly if you’re getting no warning?

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Given your riding history and experience working with a paid coach, hopefully you can see faults in a 3.45 hr training week for a 400 km event. Obviously, if you are doing 300-400 TSS weeks, you’re plenty capable of regular 8-10 hr weeks training in the saddle.

TR AI software has a lot of benefits, but clearly issues as well. You seem experienced enough to know that what it is proposing is woefully insufficient for the race you are hoping to complete.

AI can only do so much to detect someone’s experience or overall durability and it really doesn’t seem that geared towards high volume or really long events. Or, it just has different methodologies for training than what many other coaches or athletes may find works best.

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Thanks JoeX

All I did was change the time available to train in the drop downs for Base2 and put it on max just to see what it would do. So my first two weeks back after recovery week now looks like this :grimacing:

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Obviously I am not going to jump up to this kind of volume, I will alter the drop downs back a little - I will lift upper body weights Monday with a steady z2 hr, Do a 3 hr hard group ride Wednesday and leg weights, a Z2 hour, maybe hour and a half Thursday, short hard intervals on Saturday with upper body weights but may extend the intervals if I have time, and then 3-4 hr endurance Z2/low Z3 ride Sunday the first week. I’l change the drop downs to allow for this. But this is also still quite a lot over the existing plan.

I guess I wont know how the system will react until I start pushing it and seeing what happens. I just thought it was interesting that plan builder had such a huff when I asked it to add more volume at the start, but once the plan is running, you can basically alter away all you like. :man_shrugging:

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Indeed - one of its benefits - and also is that it will assess whatever work you actually do and recommend easing up or rest through red light green light if it still looks like too much. And if you ramp up quicker than it recommends without ill effect it should learn.

Sounds like you have a good sense of what you can handle :+1:

Myself, I’m going to edit the plan after four weeks and see if the recommendations change, and indeed if I achieved the volume I thought I could handle and recover from.

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Thanks Trix8806

I do have experience of endurance stuff, and yes, I agree, I am aware that 3.45 hrs is not enough. It’s not even enough to keep up on most of the group rides I’d like to go on. Pootling along at Z2 does nothing to prepare you for threshold climbs on repeat hour after hour after hour.

I have done structured training over the past year, both with TR and with assistance of both a top level rider, and a paid coach and, you know what, I am less fit now than I was before I started the structured stuff. Although 2024 was a bad year in terms of other stuff and that definitely didn’t help.

I swear it was so much easier when I just used to go out, smash myself about, try and go long and hilly until I was absolutely done for, have rest days when I was knackered, and repeat. Now I’m like, “oh, I feel a bit tired, I best be careful” which seems to be all the time. Sometimes I think burnout is just mental worry about being tired, rather than ACTUALLY being tired :rofl:

But I was also younger then, so who knows. Which is why I am hoping TR will help me find the absolute max volume I can manage before I fail to recover.

Maybe TR is right though, perhaps all I am able to manage now is a few hours a week. I am a master at frying myself.

I guess I’ll find out next week!

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Hey there,

I checked in with the rest of the team on this. Did you happen to adjust your plan in the app instead of on the web?

I ask because at the moment, the app won’t give you a recommendation or warning for your volume/intensity changes (unlike on the web). To see recommendations/warnings, you’ll have to edit your plan on the web.

This is something we are planning to change in the future, but for now, I think that may be the reason you’ve seen such a big jump in volume here.

Let me know if that was the case or if you’d like a hand getting your plan sorted out!

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Hey Zack,

I did indeed change it in the app, not the web. So that explains it! Thanks!

I’ll probably just stick in my honest likely time availability each week and see what the plan does.

However, you can sort my plan out if you wish, it would be interesting to see what you would recommend for me to be ready for a 400 km endurance event at the end of May with a mix of poorly surfaced lanes and some gravel, and 8300 meters (not ft!) of elevation - cut off will be around 27 hrs. Or whether, in fact, you don’t think it is doable at all.

I won’t be offended, I am not sure it’s doable either :rofl:

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Got it – that explains it indeed! Apologies for the confusion there.

For now, all I’ve done was click on the “Restore” button in the Plan Builder setup options, which brought things back to the originally recommended volume for you.

This support article goes over how to “officially” edit your volume if you’d like the instructions.

As for whether it’s doable… I’ve personally not dabbled much in the ultraendurance world, so you may be more qualified to answer that question than I am! :laughing:

I will say, however, that I generally believe that once one is capable of riding for a few hours, they can ride for as long as they can will themselves to as long as they pace appropriately and stay on top of their nutrition/hydration… I’m sure you know that those long rides like that are more about the mental side of things than the physical.

I think given your experience, if you want to do the event, I’d say go for it! Having the desire to do the event in the first place is probably the most important part of it all, in my opinion. I think even on Low Volume, you can build up sufficient fitness to get through it. You’ll have a great framework to go off of for your intervals and you can also sub in some longer rides, which I agree would help you out in prepping for a long event like this.

We’re working on improving Plan Builder so that it assesses and recommends changes to your volume automatically as you train and progress… But in lieu of that for now, you could use the “Change Plan Volume” feature I linked at the top of this post in the support article, which essentially acts as a button you can push from time to time to see if Plan Builder has any updated volume recommendations based on your recent riding.

Here are a couple of more TR articles that may be helpful for you:

Hope that helps – let me know if you have any other questions!

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Would it be TINAT you are targeting perchance?

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Well yes. Either as an organiser pre-ride or as part of the event. It’s gonna be savage. I haven’t done any audaxing since last summer though, and that was only one, and then I got gastroenteritis (probably from all the cow poo I rode through on the off road section back to Tewkesbury). I promised I was going to do one in November, couldn’t fit it in - too stressed and burnt out. Same in December. January I was recovering from flu…the excuses go on. When I was audaxing all the time a 200 km just felt like a short ride. Now an easy 200 km feels (mentally) like an epic.

I probably just need to pull my finger out and get on with it tbh. I can’t work out whether genuinely I don’t have it in me any more, or whether I am just letting myself get mollycoddled by worrying about ‘ramping up too much TSS’ etc etc.

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Thanks Zack

TR definitely needs to look into the longer endurance stuff. The majority of cyclists I know like to do these super long events, and yet the training plans don’t have any real allowance for the kind of volume and prep they require. Back last year when I was training for a 24 hr MTB race I felt woefully unprepared right up until I pro rider told me to get out and get in some proper long rides asap. I was glad I did, I don’t think I would have got through it otherwise. I kind of knew I needed those big rides and big volume, but was hoping that the ‘low volume approach’ would see me through.

I don’t believe for a minute low volume works for an average person trying to do big things. You have to know how to really hurt yourself. And it is too easy to forget how to handle the pain, so you need regular reminders.

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I agree, you have to get on with it at some stage. The sooner the better. Whether you still have it, is in your head. We all feel a bit rubbish at it, when we have been away from Audax a while. After the pandemic many of us took a while to find our feet again. You’ve got time to get ready for TINAT but time is of the essence.

Try at least to book yourself on a 200 in March and 300 in April to gauge where you’re at, and relearn what you don’t realise you’ve forgotten. Is there an Easter Arrow team you can join, to get a 400 under your belt with a team around you?

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Training also for a 400km event at the end of June and taking advice from some of the good stuff here in TR forum by adding some long Z2 ride to my plan + some “race simulation” close to the event (4 and 8 weeks before respectively).
Plan builder will give you the strength for the climbs and the long Z2 ride endurance.
Have a look at the Audax treads here in the forum.

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Thanks, that was a proverbial kick up the arse I needed I think :rofl:

I’m going to finish this recovery week properly (i.e. not ride hard this weekend) and then will start building volume. I’ll be able to knock out a 200 km in February I think and that will at least give me an idea of whether I actually want to do this, or I just think I do. If I’m halfway through a ‘normal’ 200 and thinking “now I remember why I stopped audaxing” then that will make the decision easy. It’s far to easy to romanticise audax, especially when you have friends still very involved in the scene. Much harder to romanticise when everything is hurting, you’ve nearly been hit off, again, the roads are freezing and you still have another 70 km until the end.

I won’t do another 400 km before TINAT. I do agree I need a lot more time on the bike, including big days, but a 400 km adds too much sleep deprivation that really messes me up. I don’t mind for an ‘A’ event, but otherwise, sleep deprivation is a big no for me and I definitely don’t feel I need to ride the full distance. If I can settle into a 200 km as being a grand day out again, then a 400 km should be doable, even a brute like the TINAT, pending me not having lost a lot of speed. Not that I have ever been fast, but certainly I don’t want to find myself full value on a 200 km.

It’s a good suggestion re: the Easter Arrow, however, I’m grumpy when tired and cold and thus long audax is absolutely a solo affair. Even without that, the logistics of the Easter Arrow are a nightmare if doing a linear route. It’s a great event, and I have fond memories of doing it, but I definitely wouldn’t want to repeat it.

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You could always do two back to back 200km days. You get the distance in the legs, over a couple of days, without the sleep deprivation

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This is a cracking idea, thank you :blush: