I am currently training for Leadville 100. Ever since Trainerroad AI was rolled out, my FTP is predicted to remain the same after decreasing upon roll out (312 to 306), despite me completing all of the prescribed workouts.
I follow the plan, except instead of a 1 hr long endurance ride on Saturdays, I do a longer Z2/Z3 ride that is usually 4 hours+ to help prepare for how long sitting in the saddle will be in Leadville.
Should I adjust my plan volume at all, is this a. hiccup with AI? Iâm just struggling to understand how my FTP is remaining at 306 after multiple weeks of training and hitting my workouts.
Is that a TR plan? My concern would be that you appear to never be doing back to back to back hard workouts and your one long ride took out what looks like 3 days of training.
Yeah, itâs a balanced plan, should I adjust the endurance workout at the end of the week (saturday) to be 4 hours to reflect what Iâm really doing that day then?
Three hard workouts in a row is too much IMO. Canât imagine TR plan set that up.
Iâve never done Leadville but Iâve done Unbound 4 times (finishing in the 14-16 hour range). I never did a training ride more than 5 hours and I only did that once or twice. So yes itâs good to do a few long rides but 5 hours this far ahead of Leadville is too early, IMO. I would use TR plan builder and set Leadville as your A event and pick the Gran Fondo plan. Use dynamic endurance on your long rides and select 5 hours max. The plan will slowly build you up to longer and longer rides.
Short answer, you arenât giving your body the time to recover and get stronger. You get stronger on rest days and recover weeks!
Just start from scratch honestly. Use plan builder and put in Leadville as your A. Have your workouts be something like Tue/Thur/Sat and your long ride on Sunday. Or Mon Wed Fri/Sat.
You can do your long rides slightly tired. Set your long ride as Dynamic Endurance. You probably would be better off doing 90 minutes on Tuesday or Saturdays and 3 hours for your long rides for now.
You might also want to change your Endurance day from âFixedâ to âDynamicâ, with a maximum duration of however long you think you need to ride. You wonât always get a ride of that length, but the TR AI should start moving you toward that length, if youâre handling the volume ok.
I agree with what people are saying above. Also - that 6+ hour Z2/Z3 ride like that hurts your training when done like that, not helps. Basically what itâs looking like is youâre nowhere near ready for that volume / intensity so you lost days that could have been productive. Same thing with the one you just did - too hard for too long is what it looks like.
You need to ramp up, and I wouldnât have those rides as Z2 / Z3, Iâd go steady Z2 at a lower IF this far out to start building volume and endurance.
I think TrainerRoad has an anti-volume bias, so it might be worth getting a second opinion from e.g. the r/velo subreddit (admittedly might have a pro-volume bias!) I love long rides - itâs just what I enjoy most about riding (and training shouldnât be joyless - you should indulge joy for consistencyâs sake if nothing else) and I also respond really well to high volume.
Other stuff people are saying sounds right to me. You want to feel good before any intense sessions, because theyâre most effective when you can hit them hard and push your limits a little bit (e.g. get that progressive overload). So you probably donât want two sweetspot days back-to-back.
Probably on long ride weeks (e.g. a 6hr Marshall wall) you want to scale back to maybe only one hard workout other than the long ride. Sounds like a 6hr ride is quite a lot of stimulus for you / quite fatiguing, so count it against your allowance of âhard ridesâ per week. Quantity has a quality all of its own. When I do this and I want to get my intervals in, I do intervals during the long ride, e.g. hitting some long climbs at sweetspot or threshold, but this might be a bit annoying if youâre just trying to hang out with your group. Alternatively, itâs nice to keep these > 4hr rides fully at Z2 (and chill Z2 at that). The length itself is more than enough stimulus. Doing a bunch of random intensity (rather than intentional intervals) can fatigue you more than the stimulus is worth. But (!) if itâs a group ride where you donât control the intensity, it might be worthwhile going along with the group just for fun. Itâs okay to prioritize fun vs adaptation-maxxing!
Iâm in the same place but getting frustrated watching that prediction number either staying the same or going down by a few watts. Iâm definitely improving and feeling stronger, I also use intervals.icu and it confirms this, but that ftp prediction keeps playing head games with me. If I hadnât already paid for the year Iâd be taking a break from TR just to see what else is out there.
Really appreciate your comment here- I too also love long outside rides (especially in a group). So is what youâre saying for longer weeks with Marshall Wall-esq rides maybe cut out one sweet spot and keep the threshold and other sweetspot? In other words, would you consider a SST at âhard rideâ?
I also really appreciate the idea to cut out one of the rides and instead hit SST or threshold during a climb on that long ride.
It looks like your decrease may have occurred right about the time the new AI was introduced, and many people saw decreases from that. Also, the 5 and 6 hour rides on days when an hour was scheduled have to hindering recovery. TSS from those were 280 and 300! I know you say those are zone 2 rides, the sheer length produces a much bigger impact (more like riding at FTP for 3 hours).
Alas, prescribing a detailed training plan is definitely above my pay grade
If it was me and my body, and Iâm doing a fast Marshall Wall that week, then Iâd only do one other hard workout. Between threshold and sweetspot, Iâd keep the threshold one since itâs the most intense stimulus. If I was doing a slow easy endurance Marshall Wall then I might keep two workouts. One thing Iâd aim for is not accumulating so much fatigue that I need to take 2 consecutive days completely off the bike. Itâs important to keep up consistency with endurance rides, even if itâs just an hour.
SST counts as a âhard rideâ because anything where youâre going above LT1 stresses your autonomic nervous system. If Iâm riding > 10hrs a week, I try to only go above LT1 on two days, otherwise I tend to accumulate too much chronic fatigue and feel crummy. (Unless Iâm deliberately doing a punishing VO2 Max block, where the whole point is to pummel yourself.) I think different people have really different experiences with this - itâs gonna depend on your age, training history, genetics, etc. If youâre only doing < 6hrs a week I think you can handle three hard days.
