My input - 7 months app use

[Chop_Stick]

When I told PlanBuilder I could ride for more than 90 minutes outside on a Sunday it told me I was at risk of overtraining . Like the OP, I’ve found what PlanBuilder produces for Ultra type events very strange, having been a subscriber a few years ago before Adaptive Training and the much hyped AI, I’ve now given it ago on a couple of occasions and have scratched my head at some of the plans it’s produced. I don’t get the ‘ammend the plan, overide the AI , add your own Z2’ comments, as the marketing hype suggests that the mighty AI will produce the optimal plan for you, if you constantly have to choose alternates and add your own volume, which then means you’re determining things such as ramp rate, so effectively self-coaching to a degree, why pay (and TR is one of the most expensive apps out there) for an app to produce a plan.

Coupled with AI FTP over-estimating my FTP and a constant recommendation of sweetspot at 94%, I’ve gone a different route and decided TR isn’t for me. I feel some of the comments in this thread are a bit harsh towards the OP and those that agree with him, this theme of volume has constantly come up on the forum since the new Plan Builder was launched. Are all those people who have had issues with it wrong? Or maybe given the feedback which customers are providing, this is something that could be looked at, I’ve had a look at other plans which I have since I decided I’d had enough and every single one has longer endurance rides than what TR was prescribing. Each to there own, and if it works for people then great, but like having a bad race, sometimes you learn more from what doesn’t work and then make improvements which yield greater results in the future.

[BillyWaldman]

cool. Seems like there’s confusion on what it can and can’t do, or assumptions that it can do x and it does or doesnt’. Sounds like it needs be clarified more a bit on the front end. I’ll give it a try one day when I need something new.

[kelseyh]

@Chop_Stick

I feel some of the comments in this thread are a bit harsh towards the OP and those that agree with him, this theme of volume has constantly come up on the forum since the new Plan Builder was launched.

FWIW (I’m not sure if I was one of the ones who was too harsh - that wasn’t my intent), I actually am one of the people that would love to see a dedicated plan toward ultra distance events where volume and long rides are better prioritized. I was more just intending to point out that Plan Builder will give you long Z2 if you tell it you have the time for it and admittedly also ignore the overtraining risk warning you were talking about. I think that when you’re having to work outside the scope of the current plan offerings, which ultra distance events really are outside the current scope IMO, you do have to be comfortable with not just blindly following the AI and knowing when to adjust, and that’s not for everyone. Hence why I think it’s an opportunity for expanding the scope of Plan Builder, but you can make the current version of Plan Builder give you more volume if you tell it you have the time for it.

[eddie]

You mentioned that TrainerRoad isn’t for you, and that’s totally cool. We respect that!

I’d like to clear a few things up for other athletes, though..

Our training philosophy does not support the need for ultra-long rides while training for ultras. What our training plans are based upon is providing the stimulus to your body, which promotes adaptations that will serve you well on race day. We think that endurance rides past a certain duration aren’t actually more beneficial for most of us, and can actually be counterproductive.

A good example of this in the real world is the recent shift in training philosophy for ultramarathons. Those at the front of the races nowadays are no longer just going out into the mountains and running all day, every day, racking up as much mileage and vert as possible, assuming that they need to train in the same way that they race to be properly conditioned for the demands of a 100-mile event. They’re now doing lots of structured work, speed intervals, strides, etc., because they know that’s the best way to increase their raw speed, which is what equates to fast race times.

Of course, they will go out and do one or two really long runs a few weeks out from their race to help condition their muscles for the full distance, but that’s not a part of normal training throughout the year. It’s just too taxing. As a matter of fact, many athletes are replacing some of those really long runs with more specific sessions of focused, steep downhill running to get the same muscular effect with less risk of injury and fatigue.

I know we’re talking bikes here, but I believe that the same principles apply. Training with really long rides all the time just isn’t super necessary for everyone.

We do support and often recommend athletes getting one or two longer endurance rides prior to a long-distance event, and we do provide the option for all of our athletes to change the duration of their workouts. You can set your hard interval workouts to be as long as two hours, and your endurance rides as long as five. We do prompt athletes to work their way up to that much volume, though, as we feel that providing long-duration workouts to unprepared athletes is one of the top ways to burn them out.

In your case, you must not have had the training history for us to endorse the changes to your plan that you were making, but you likely could have easily gotten there over the span of a few weeks by following the plan and ramping your training stress in a sustainable way.

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@SSaldanha, the same goes for your situation. I’m confident that you could get a plan in place and work towards the training volume you’re looking for with TrainerRoad’s guidance. I think there is just some confusion as to how to get there, which I’ll make sure to share with the rest of the team.

Again, we have our own philosophy as to what is actually ideal for training in terms of what we’re seeing from our athletes, but you still have the ability to make your own decisions. I know of a good handful of athletes who use TR and train 20+ hours a week. You aren’t capped at low volume with TR; we just want to help our athletes get to their goals sustainably.

[Twowkg]

Preparing for any event is more than just blindly optimizing a single metric like fitness.

Sure, there are no unique physiological adaptations that happen while doing a long ride that cannot be replicated doing shorter more intense efforts.

However neglecting a huge part of overall performance is not going to peak you for race day (or whatever you are training for). You don’t need to do long ride(s) during training but it will help you prepare to perform at your best. Practicing pacing, fueling, mental toughness etc is all part of making an athletes faster overall.

Fueling alone is massive, you can’t run get away with a lot of poor practices when you are only riding for a couple hours at a time. Try doing those same things when it’s a 10hr gravel race and let me know how it goes.

[wintysingh]

This, 100%

I’d been a longtime TR user. I had attempted my first double last fall basing it on a TrainerRoad plan plus my own attempts to do long rides, but I DNF’d that ride. I don’t attribute that solely on TR but I did feel like the plan wasn’t adequate for the demands of a double century. When I saw what others did to train who weren’t using TR, it certainly felt like my training wasn’t the same. I was definitely not well prepared for the nuances of the course, the nutrition strategy, the mental strength, core strength and more that TR doesn’t address.

I signed up with a human coach shortly after that DNF and attempted another double about six months later. My training was much more well-rounded and holistic. I finished that attempt, and finished it stronger than I thought I would. It highlighted that there isn’t a 1:1 replacement for good human coaching yet, cost-aside.

[nebur86]

Then again… I prepared for 100km and 150km events in april by doing mostly indoor training in the winter and bad weather following a mid volume TR plan. No rides were longer than 1h30.
Only in the last month (march) when the weather got better, i did this;

• If weather was good enough, do a long ride on sunday, when TR normally prescribed 1h30 endurance indoor. This could be 2h, 3h, 4h… and just low z2 pace. I didnt really need it as training for the distance, mostly to figure out how many carbs/hour i need and how my stomach reacted.
• If weather was bad just 1h30 indoor.

During the events I had no issues at all, 150km agr took me 6 hours and I still had most of my power on the Cauberg that I did have at the start. It was maybe 15 watts off my 3 minute best power.. and that with a TR plan that consisted of:

3x 1h intensive, 1x 1h easy endurance, 1h30 normal endurance.

It can work. Not everybody needs tons of miles to prepare for a long event. In my experience the main difference between doing 1h30 endurance or 6h with intervals (Amstel Gold has hills…) is just..nutrition and your ass and back hurting from being in an uncomfortable position

[TooManyDogs]

@nebur86

and your ass and back hurting from being in an uncomfortable position

That can be something that can only be found out on long rides. For me, for long rides it’s typically around 4 hours where I might start having pain in back, neck, feet etc. Especially under 3 hours my body seems more adaptable.

[KonaSS]

This is a weird hill for TR to die on. Agree that you don’t need to train to your distance to complete a distance, but most coaches agree that longer rides (perhaps up to 75%) of time or distance (until you get to crazy long) are a valuable part of training. In fact Eddie just said this in his reply. Yet they don’t put it in their programming and just say the user should probably put these in…..

[spinnnout]

@Twowkg

optimizing a single metric like fitness.

This is why I use TR and this is what I want TR to focus on. I’m behind the philosophy shared by @eddie

Everything you’ve said is true but I take accountability for the other aspects. I’m sure peripheral products like the podcast touch on some of the aspects of long events from time to time but I’m uneasy about the core product trying to cover all aspects.

[spinnnout]

@KonaSS

This is a weird hill for TR to die on. Agree that you don’t need to train to your distance to complete a distance, but most coaches agree that longer rides (perhaps up to 75%) of time or distance (until you get to crazy long) are a valuable part of training. In fact Eddie just said this in his reply. Yet they don’t put it in their programming and just say the user should probably put these in…..

From memory, from the podcast many years ago, compliance fell off a cliff when longer rides were the default in some plans. Overall, more people benefit from the shorter rides and being compliant. It is overall better for those that feel they need it, to add it.

How the app is now, it is super easy for those that feel they need this, to add it.

[nebur86]

can even add z1/z2 to the end or warmup of intense workouts.

This is how an app like KNWU fondo (dutch cyclists union) works. Most of the “intensive” workouts there are not too dissimilar from TR except the fact they have +30 min z2 added to the start and +30min z2 at the end. Join is also similar. THey just add a ton of z2 to make the volume and have the intensity in the middle.

[wintysingh]

Respectfully, I think this is part of the problem with TR’s marketing. The reality, if you read enough on this forum, is that many people feel that they need longer rides – and in fact, this is established practice by professional coaches. While many will say “just TR was fine for me so what’s your problem,” you see many anecdotes of people who feel that just the TR plan is not enough – especially those who are doing more challenging or outlier-type events. And, how to transition from a TR indoor-driven plan to an outdoor actual event is not obvious. These aspects aren’t included in any of the branding or marketing (which has become more bold over the past year) – just that TR and TR AI will make you faster. Maybe this type of training is all that’s needed for the top of the bell curve of users, but it can’t be everything to everyone. Unfortunately, many of us learn this afterwards.

Sure, we then should do our own adjustments but besides the podcast and the forum, you’re back to your own devices to figure it out. I suspect many people sign up for training apps because they don’t want to have to figure things out on their own.

TR is a great product, no doubt. I was on it for 4-ish years. But, it’s not comprehensive coaching and shouldn’t be sold as a replacement for that. You’re getting what you pay for.

[dougall30]

This season I started using ChatGPT as more of the brains behind my training. I have a big fondo coming up in September with a lot of climbing and wanted to factor that into my training. I inputted my A event into TR and used their plan as my basic structure, then inputted the profile and demands of my A event into ChatGPT and asked it for feedback. I’ve been working with it ever since. Typically I’ll share a screen grab of my workouts from TR or Garmin, as well as my fatigue, form and fitness from intervals.ca and ask it for recommendations or modifications to my plan. I let TR take care of the AI adaptations to the workouts in my plan and follow them unless I have a good reason not to. The biggest advantage of using a chatbot for feedback is that it’ll give reasons for its recommendations, something that I don’t get from TR. I tend to follow recommendations more when I know the reason for them. I can’t be the only one doing this, right? To bring it back to the OP, that might be a way to incorporate a second opinion into his training plan and allow for unexpected changes.

[OreoCookie]

@KonaSS

This is a weird hill for TR to die on.

I don’t think this is a “hill they want to die on”, but I have heard over and over again that certain changes to the training plans have led to lower compliance and consistency, which, in turn, led to lower performance.

Nowadays TR is more than flexible enough so that you can customize the default settings while retaining most of the automation. In the past when I had to pad my MV plans to make them MV+, that took quite a bit of work. Even now with my unusual training schedule (I spend 6–7 hours per week commuting, doing mostly Z2), it is able to adapt.

If you want to include e. g. skills sessions, group rides or longer rides, that’s very easy to do. You can e. g. schedule a regular solo ride as part of your training plan. However, it is important to separate whether you do certain rides for fitness or for other reasons (e. g. testing out nutrition or pacing strategies, or riding trails on your mountain bike).

Lastly, prior experience matters a lot. I’ve been doing long rides since I was 16ish or so, and I know no matter my fitness level, I can spend 7 hours in the saddle no problem. My longest days were 12ish, including some bad days (think freezing cold rain on top of a mountain with heavy winds while bonking …). If you are lacking that experience, you will have more trouble doing a very long event such as a century.

[spinnnout]

I’ve logged out to look and don’t find the marketing particularly egregious - as an aside, cool to see every new sign up gets to book a video call.

I’m perhaps also blinded by being on here for many years and working with data in my job - much time spent on considering what is being recorded and what you can and can’t do.

I’m not against the software working toward solving edge cases but there is likely to be a trade off - but perhaps it is more user experience/training than backend changes(?). The forum is a small proportion of the user base and I’m sure TR are careful in finding a balance and do look at plan compliance, etc.

Either way, glad I don’t work in marketing, who wants to have a go at summarising the ‘it depends’.

AI Cycling Coaching*

*we’re not responsible for your sore bottom on a long ride

[nebur86]

i think its more for the time crunched athlete still. I see it as way to get a great schedule and intense workouts and just add z2 wherever. But indeed its something you must do yourself and tr doesnt provide in really

[Kendogz161]

This right here is what I do. Normally on Sundays because Monday is always my rest day.

I have TR set as a Solo ride for Sunday of Two hours but if the weather is bad or Saturday’s work beat me up I change it to and indoor ride and TR usually adapt the time.

I just try my best to keep it at an endurance pace maybe going into Tempo on some hills.

[SSaldanha]

But I did tel I had 4 h on saturday and sunday and sheduled 7 plus hours for the A and B events so it should set some 4h or even plus on saturday and sunday rides. Also my historical data in strava shows my usual group rides using those 4h on weekends.

Bottom line I guess the main issue with my example is that TR doesnt have in any plan the volume needed for UMTB races. Hope they do in the future. XCO and XCM plans are not (in my opinion) enough for an ultra MTB race.

[SSaldanha]

@eddie

@SSaldanha, the same goes for your situation. I’m confident that you could get a plan in place and work towards the training volume you’re looking for with TrainerRoad’s guidance. I think there is just some confusion as to how to get there, which I’ll make sure to share with the rest of the team.

I’ve shared my feedback with the support team. My post isnt just to do some criticism. I do find the app a good option for those needing some help in structured training and not wanting a personal trainer in general but for ultra MTB races I felt it like still not there and maybe having a specific plan for UMTB with some larger endurance rides to start with it would feel more like what I hoped. Thats it.