Hi guys…I’ve just signed up to trainer road… could you help as I have sportive/grand fondo events coming up in 2022 ive just completed a base phase from a previous coach and would like to use trainer road to now help me to Build into Sportives starting in March, should I select the “Plan Builder” or “Build Phase” or “Speciality Phase” and does any of these then apply the Adaptive Training element bit confused ? prob my age…
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Welcome!
The easiest way is to use Plan Builder (it’s a tool not a training “phase”) to create a plan for you. It’s a fairly simple “wizard” that asks you a few questions: how much time do you have to train?; your level of training experience; any events; those sorts of things. You can play around with it, nothing is committed to your calendar until the very last step. There’s a few gotchas - when adding races/events/sportives, it doesn’t like your ‘A’ events to be closer than 8 weeks(?) apart so if you intend to do a series of events it might be better to set them as ‘B’ events with maybe one ‘A’ later in the season.
AT is slightly different, in a sense it “sits on top of” your plan and monitors your progress making adjustments/adaptations along the way. You need to enable it via your account - it’s helpfully labelled “Adaptive Training”.
Thanks Bob… yeah I selected the Plan Builder it all seems quite low intensity is that normal… Yeah I put my run up events as B and and a 200k Fondo as the A. I have enabled adaptive in the account section 
Im coming from Zwift although still going to use that to I think for events etc
The general recommendations both from TR (Plan Builder and comments on the podcast) and many users is to select a lower volume plan than you think you might be able to handle. The load may seem quite low to begin with but a month or two down the line and you’ll be glad of the lower workload. It’s generally better to nail the workouts and add more than to have to skip workouts.
With a couple of exceptions I’ve only ever done low volume plans, I’m currently on a medium volume polarised plan but that’s only two intense workouts a week, everything else is low intensity endurance so it’s not like I’m doing two VO2max and two sweet spot/threshold workouts a week.
AT is generally conservative - it aims to have you complete workouts rather than ramp the difficulty up too quickly. Answer the post workout surveys as honestly as you can (there’s help via the website and there’s a chart by @mcneese.chad that’s useful in determining your response) and AT will/should adjust your upcoming workouts to match your abilities.
There’s a lot (too many?) threads on AT so there’s plenty of reading 
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Cheers Bob… yes I have answered as honestly as possible… I’ve done Dorr and Recess to try out TA and start the plan on Tues as Mon is marked as a rest day 
so Tues is Ramp test… yeah bit of learning/watching/reading to do I think
Per Bob’s mention, here is my chart so you don’t have to dig for it:
It is “unofficial” and not directly endorsed by TR, but I built it based on long discussion with, and direct info shared from Ivy at TR.
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