I am wondering how I could use Trainerroad best to prepare for multi-day ultra endurance events. To race such events competitive you usually ride through the first night for 36h straight (500-600km), then sleep 3-4h. The next days you repeat the cycle of riding 16-20h and resting 3-4hs until you reach the finish line (usually after around 3-10 days depending on the event).
I have already completed events like the Transcontinental Race (w/ 33y, 77kg, 4,1w/kg) and know training principles quite well. I usually trained with a reverse polarized approach. VO2max + Z2 ride indoor in winter where the weather wouldnt allow for longer rides and high volume, to increase VO2max / raw enginge size and then slowly progress to more SwSp and long back-to-back rides for musculare endurace / efficiency / fatigue resistance as the weather improves and the event comes closer.
I now want to use Trainerroad with all the cool new AI features to optimize my training, but struggle a bit to make it work. I can’t map these multi-day ultra events as an A-Event and I also find that the plans do not really match the nature of those multi-day ultras. I have also played a bit with the AI and when choosing a custom plan the predicted FTP is lower than when I manually put in my usualy training sessions.
I would be very interested in some help with this also. I’m not as well-versed in structured training as you are, but that’s why I’m here and these are the kind of events I want to train for.
Interested in this thread as I have something similar planned for this year.
Returned to TR after a lot of off/on with it in the past, since being made redundant and no longer working from home my training has gone to sh!t and was hoping TR would be able to help
Have a 360 miler in May (not going to happen) and a 5 days of backpacking across Norway in my calender (as a 5 day stage race) , I don’t really get the feeling that TR has adjusted the plans to account for the durations or repeating of days
I use TR for this but generally just hit the 2-3 interval sessions a week and then tack on the endurance that I need. I was excited for dynamic endurance but it’s been just suggesting an hour most days. Then I ride 3-6 and the ftp estimate goes down.
I made the suggestion when TRAI was released that dynamic endurance should include a minimum bound and then let the model work intervals around those.
One of the recent pod titles suggests extra endurance isn’t how you get faster and killing your fitness so just assume this product still isn’t going to focus on ultra endurance style events.
Input your race as a multi-day stage race for a discipline that will prioritize longer efforts and not short ones (gran fondo or climbing road race).
It’s not going to build your z2 time out that far for you (max is 5hrs), so you have to do that yourself.
In my experience all fitness translates if you do enough volume though. If FTP goes up 10%, your “all-day” low-mid z2 pace will also increase by around that amount. The exception is if you’re skipping lots of 3-5+ hr rides and only doing intense workouts.
Do the TR workouts as prescribed, and add as much z2 volume as you can recover from and you’ll end up in a pretty good spot.
You can set your goal race to a Stage Race if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the race options. I don’t know if it is really going to do much with that info besides the fact that you have a very long race back to back. oh cute. lol I have a similar problem with my 243mi race this summer, definitely doesn’t try to increase my volume much, caps my long at 5hrs also, the rides are fairly locked in time midweek. (can manually add time here and there to them when you have time)
BUT - you can pretty easily customize your plan by dropping in scheduled rides into your schedule. You can make them recurring and set the time/effort/etc. This will then help guide the hard workouts based on the workload you are doing in total and also give you some indication of yellow/red fatigue warning days. NOW - most likely unless you have been pretty consistent in long training days and high TSS for months/years… those long endurance days are going to make the AI throw fit… LOL
So you will get workout progression through your planned hard workouts as you want - then guide it along with your desire for long rides.
