I’ve seen other posts from a few years back and it seems trainerroad isn’t setup for someone with some training under their belt.
I am brand new to structured training and trainerroad. I am not new to training though. I was a pretty good runner in the marathon a few years back and didn’t do much last year. I started cycling consistently in November and wanted to try the Zwift trainerroad integration and so far in the first week I haven’t done a single recommended workout the ai has suggested.
Why? They’re too easy. This past Sunday I had completed a 3 hr random ride on Zwift and signed up for trainerroad on Monday. The aggressive plan on the ftp builder sets up max of 6 days with Monday being off. Well I can’t not do anything today so I just load up a recovery ride at a PL 2. The adaptations kick in and suggest removing the first sweet spot workout and replaced with a recovery at PL1.0. I had marked the workout as easy but it’s saying my load is too high.
It’s like the ai doesn’t take into account any of my past workouts and just wants me to start at a PL1 and slowly ramp it up. Ya I’m not doing that. I’m not going to spend 4-8 weeks while the ai slowly sets my difficulty level. I complete a sweet spot PL3.0 and again easy. But the ai wants me to go back to a PL 2 recovery the next day. So I really bump it up and set the next day to breakthrough at a 5.9 and mark it as moderate.
I’m sure I’m getting close to finding where my PL level is but so far the AI isn’t getting it right. When signing up the plan touts setting the difficulty level based on past rides and they know because they have a lot of data but so far I have to hand hold the AI to get it to where I’m at.
Hey, Starting a new training program is like beginning a new relationship; you have to invest time and effort. Initially, nobody knows anything about your abilities, especially if you have experience from other programs. That’s why a test is important – you can choose options like the regular ramp test, or the 20-minute FTP test, or the Coolie Moore test (longer 40-min test). TR has officially stated that you need to complete around 10 workouts to allow the AI to function effectively. If the SS level 5 feels too easy, it could mean that your known FTP is set too low, or perhaps you excel at SS workouts. It is also true that people (mostly) can complete the first 10 workouts with maximum effort. The true results will become clear next month after consistent training. So, keep training and maintain your trust in the process, and the program will reciprocate that trust in you as well!
Yes nobody knows anything except this is what trainer road advertises
Your Personal Coach
Just Sync Your Data, We’ll Handle the Rest
We analyze your training history and build an adaptive plan tailored to your fitness, goals, and training approach.
That’s their marketing. All my past data synced over. The ai detected my ftp which feels right but the workouts start at such an easy level.
My phenotype is tt specialist and it makes sense. I’m good and long steady state work. I’m still new to cycling but I’m not coming from nothing. I don’t know how it is for cycling but say you take a runner who’s used to doing 70mile weeks for the round number of 10miles per day or various intensities. You then start them with a coach who says go run 5 miles at a 10min/mile pace and we’ll see how you do then well up the difficulty a bit if that’s too easy. That’s basically what this feels like.
I’ve just re-signed up to TR , my training has been going extremely well, but I keep getting to a level and it all going horribly wrong and I am hoping that I can use TR as a tool to get through that
The FTP detection when I sign up (new feature … I like) gives me a 10 watt drop with what I was getting from the Zwift Ramp test, I’m ok with that so accepted
If I look at the workouts I was completing with ease at the higher FTP, they have a progression level of 6 or 7, but TR starts with me of @ 1.0, these workouts are going to be supper easy and more indicative of a rest week
So the first thing to do is mark these workouts as easy (or better put truthfully) , on top of that I am using the alternatives feature to add some progression, I’m not going to bump it up to 7 as I don’t want to hit the same problem as when I self coach. I think the alternative is to treat the first two weeks of being on TR as a rest week and hope the AI catches up
Did you make use of the call with the on boarding specialist when you signed up ? Did they give good advice ?
I think you have to ignore the marketing blurb, sales and marketing live in a different reality to the rest of use
I agree though, the fist, new user experience is a bit hollow (?) and could do with improvement, but t is hard with all different levels of people signing up, I feel that I have to look at the long game
but TR AI FTP detection needs 10 TR workouts to set the initial FTP… It really looks like your FTP is way too low…
Most FTP estimations based on random rides are too low, as they somehow expect a max effort while -real- max efforts are very rare.
e.g. my eFTP from intervals.icu is 274, based on a 4x10 sweetspot workout I did outside. But the workout was done as 4x10 @95% of 306. which (after 4 years of TR) felt exactly like that.
So when you haven’t done any sweet spot training and going to a level 5.9, thinking it’s moderate… your FTP is just too low.
I would suggest to bump up your FTP (e.g. when it’s currently set to 250, go to 265 or something like that. then try a threshold or over under workout like Fang Mountain. If that is still easy, bump your FTP another 10 watts.
(threshold workouts are the best benchmarks for your FTP. Within your FTP you can have stronger and weaker zones. Some can do 90% sweet spot all day, and 3 minutes @110 would be killing, for others it’s the other way around. Finding your strengths and weakness (base Power levels) will take time
Just FYI …when you sign up now, it runs AI detection on you previous training as part of the sign up process, you then have to do 10 more workouts (in Zwift or TR) to have it do further ones
Except that in that analogy you’d be a well-trained cyclist getting into running. You need to keep in mind that not all of your fitness transfers.
E. g. one time on a business trip to Zurich, I went on a run after a long-distance flight to avoid sleeping to early. I did a little over 18 km with about 600 m of elevation gain. My cardiovascular system was just fine. But I couldn’t walk normally for 1.5 days afterwards. Point being, what you consider easy might not be very easy on your body. Not all of your fitness transfers from running to cycling and vice versa.
Take a step back and think what a human cycling coach might recommend in that situation: do you think they would throw you in the deep end and see if you can swim? I think a good coach would want you to start slowly, too. Cycling and running are also very different in how you spend your fatigue tokens.
Secondly, if you don’t trust your coach (AI or human), then things are not going to work out well. You will keep on overriding recommendations and your coach won’t really be able to plan anything for you. Having coached and mentored people, in my experience your strong ambition can set you up for quick failure.
If you had experience with cycling, you could override Adaptive Training to some degree. But the issue is that you need to be aware of long-term fatigue (on a 3±month time frame), most athletes can endure much harder training loads for short periods, but then fall apart after 2–4 months.
Rather than second-guessing, I would simply treat the first few months as a learning opportunity:
What does riding at threshold feel like?
How many hard sessions can you handle?
Nutrition and hydration (which is very different from running).
Will I need to augment time on the bike with strength training.
Even if you think you already know these answers (by copying and pasting your experience from running), I’d caution you against that. For example, you can take in a lot more food and liquids while on the bike than when running.
I’m not arguing with your experience, simply explaining why I think this might be happening.
Firstly - are you saying you want to be able to ride 7 days a week and never take a rest day? Most coaches are going to argue against this. Even (or maybe especially) AI ones. You need to rest to recover so you can go harder in the future. It’s very common for new riders to not understand that your easy rides need to be easy and your hard rides need to be hard, so they get stuck in a cycle where their easy rides are too hard and their hard rides are too easy. Runners are guilty of this too.
You did a 3 hour ride on Sunday. Based on previous comments, I’m guessing you had not had a day off before that either. How many days in a row had you ridden? A typical off the shelf plan (not just in TR) is going to have you do a long ride on Sunday and then take the Monday off. You didn’t though, you did a recovery ride. You didn’t mention how long that was, but at PL2, I’m guessing it wasn’t intense. Having said that, you did ride. Now, assuming your next ride was the SS ride and it was on Tuesday, I can see where the AI would assess that you’re not fully rested, so it pushed the SS ride to the next day (or later). The reason for this would be that it thinks you’re still tired from not taking time off after the long Sunday ride. But, you then do a harder or longer ride than recommended on Tuesday, so it pushes your intensity ride out again…and this becomes a never ending battle between the AI telling you you’re not ready for a harder ride and you ignoring it.
I didn’t mention I come from a pretty good running background in marathons. I was a low 2:30 marathoner and understood my body pretty well to how it adapts to different training days on 100+ mile weeks. I understand rest week cycles intensities the whole lot. I wouldn’t go uninjured at those running loads for many marathons not understanding rest, recovery nutrition etc.
In picking up cycling, my aerobic system has come back pretty quickly and doing a PL2 recovery really is just noodling around as I just tab out watch some Netflix and my avg hr is 100. Barely even an increase in breathing rate so a ride like that is really a recovery day just spinning.
As for the nutrition part, I’m capable of consuming over 100g carbs per hour as long as the intensity or duration is there. I wouldn’t load a bottle like that on an easy ride either. That’s definitely far more than what I’d take on a run.
I totally understand the easy days easy hard days hard. See my previous comment.
It’s not like I’m saying o all workouts I can do easy. Of course if you set the workout to 120% ftp for 3 hours I’ll be cooked in like 10 minutes or something.
Take yesterday’s workout as another example. I switched it from a recovery ride of somewhere in the PL2.x back to a sweet spot as the original plan had a hard day in it and picked a stretch workout of PL4.0. I did the Herman sweet spot for 1:30 hours. This workout only really has about 23 min of work in sweet spot bookended with a block of high zone 2 of 23 min each. That I marked as easy. The first 7 min block of sweet spot ended with a hr of 130 and the last block with a hr of 128 then the hr hovered around 119 for the zone 2 block. Going to 88% of ftp yields 10 bpm increase. This I marked as easy since as a hard day it really wasn’t hard and it was rather short. If this was a running day I’d be about 1:00 min over marathon pace or just around 6:45 min/mile or just under. Not quite easy pace but also not quite hard. I’d be in some weird in between pace.
You are 100% correct. The onboarding is not great. It may work for someone new to training, but for experienced athletes, I thought it was horrible. You have to override the system, ignore the warnings, and pick your own workouts. Eventually it will settle in.
Basically what I’m doing but the whole point of signing up for an ai coach that looks at my past rides and says it will set the right level and I don’t have to do anything is that I have to ignore what I’m paying for tell it where I’m at then have it take over. Which is not how it’s advertised to work.