Irrelevant what they’re going to serve you up because, as they say quite a bit on the podcast, which the OP said they listen to, you should sub the group ride for that workout. I know, not everybody listens to the podcast, etc. etc. But if you listen and follow the advice on the podcast, I think you should be able to avoid many of the problems the OP had.
And whether this person would have been a successful athlete had he been successful? Sure. I think TR knows enough that most/all successful athletes will do some level of self-coaching. Athletes who burn out because they went on HV plans, or didn’t recover appropriately, or did a LV plan and a bunch of group rides, are unlikely to be successful. It’s not like they’re keeping all this a secret.
C’mon…that isn’t the case here. the OP admits he was getting ill or injured. Not once, but 4 times!
What had actually happened during last year is simple: I had never been so ill or injured ever and each time I peaked I either became ill or got injured.
Not only that, coming back from each illness or injury the sessions were just off and way to hard.
My garmin told me to rest today, instead I did a TR workout and actually crushed it with extra 2 hours endurance. So if I eventually burn out should I blame TR?
Yea I noticed that in his post also. I was trying to keep my comment a bit more general than specific to one person.
That said…I dunno. Endurance training is a nebulous thing. Looking back, I THINK(note…definitely do not know), the last few years I’ve dug myself into similar holes…though probably not as deep.
With me…I’ve never know what’s going on. I get blazing fast(for me), then flame out late summer, losing the ability to hit workouts. I still never really get tired or fatigued…I just get slow.
This is actually a really good point. When I signed up for TR pre-AT, it was my first experience wit structured training and it kicked my butt. (Palisade? Seriously?) I failed a bunch of workouts and it wasn’t long before I realized I needed to make adjustments, before I started to self-coach, I guess. I didn’t overtrain or suffer real burnout, but I realized pretty quick that 1) I ride my bike because it’s fun, 2) I was training so I could tilt the balance towards fun, away from pain, and 3) getting crushed on the trainer wasn’t helping me with 1 or 2!
I keep my subscription for access to the workout library and, actually, for the easy rides! I’m a heavy rider who lives on top of a hill. It’s basically impossible for me to do a z2 ride outside! I no longer need TR to have the structure I need for my modest definition of success.
Anyway, I’m still sort of stumped by people who blame everything on TR when their experience in the many, many hours off the bike is telling them to not work so hard on the bike. Especially if you’ve heard/read what the TR team says everywhere besides their sign-up page.
You’re probably right. But surely you’d agree that with the absence of that “feeling” of being tired, mitigating effort/time/intensity on the bike is awfully difficult to do without either specific directions, or a wealth of experience.
Agreed, there will always be tolerances and variables but luckily for me, so far AI FTP has been pretty accurate. 3 weeks ago, it calculated 224 for me and 2 days ago, I did an 1 hour all out effort outdoors, on a 2.4 km flat road with roundabouts on each end and my NP was 218 and I felt I still had some left in the tank. I should have paid closer attention to my avg. power during the ride, but that was on my Roam’s page 2.
I don’t know about a “wealth” of experience, but certainly experience (as well as some trial and error) is part of it.
I’ll even concede that in some cases, the inclination is to double-down and do more work.
That said, when you claim to have years of experience with structured training but then do not adhere to prescribed plan and then repeat the process 4 times, the plan is not the problem and the athlete has the necessary experience to understand what is going on.
I suppose this depends on what the rest of your week looks like and also how hard the group ride was.
My week typically has me doing a long Z2 ride on Sunday and being completely off the bike on Monday.
So if I showed up to a group ride Monday and it was anything more than Z1 pace, then I’d just skip my Tuesday workout. There’s not a chance I’m replacing my rest day with a hard group ride and then continuing through the week as if nothing changed.
People need to understand that if your plan has 2-3 days of intensity per week and you ADD another day of intensity via a group ride or similar, then you need to remove one of the scheduled days of intensity.
In this case, I’d probably just assign the Monday group ride to my Tuesday workout in the calendar view.
But it would have been the right workout at the right time if I hadn’t added in the extra ride. I take ownership of that by moving things around in a way that best fits my schedule.
I kind of get that some people might want that step automated, but I don’t. By taking ownership of my decision to add a ride, I get to pick what works best. Maybe that extra ride wasn’t that hard, so I want to keep the Vo2 back-to-back. Maybe I have a B race the next weekend and want the rest day. Maybe my legs are shot, I don’t have my kid that night, and extra endurance outside makes sense, and I’ll see how I feel about doing the vo2 a day or two late. And on and on.
Automatically picking an alternative for me would take all that away. But if thinking through those options isn’t appealing to some, I guess that is what it is.
Also: Have you ever actually tried to follow Garmin’s recommendations on when you need rest? I’d never get a workout in if I paid any attention to it.
There is no magic software can measure training load and tell you what is best for that athlete. One can use the Performance Manager chart and look at CTL, ATL, TSB, ramp rate and all that stuff but it’s still on the coach or coach athlete to figure out what is too much.
TR doesn’t have any magic fairy dust in this department especially if you throw in running, swimming, lifting, non-workout rides without a power meter, job stress, and life stress.
This seems to be one of the classic mistakes. You don’t need to do hard workouts all summer. You need some periodization. Even for a non-racer, it should be:
time off from last season
general conditioning
base
build maintain all summer while you do group rides and events or races
maybe take a mid summer break and do a mini build leading into the end of summer.
I wonder how many users actually put all their weekly group rides and throw downs with their friends as races on the TR calendar?
Of course, TR is not in the business of telling people not to train so when someone is plateaued from riding in July and signs up to get faster, they are going to start training even if they sort of missed the window for that current season. TR is never going to say: rest up, start a build plan, and hey don’t do anymore group rides and events and we’ll make you faster by October.
