No rest week before a week-long stage-race. Really, TrainerRoad?

The training plan that TrainerRoad came up for me looks like this:

It amazes me that it doesn’t suggest a rest week before the week-long event. That might be because it’s marked as a C-event. And in reality it’s no race at all. It’s a long hiking trip. But still, it’s not a recovery week in any way shape or form.

Well, I’m for sure not going to follow that suggestion.

I’m used to adjusting the workout-schedule that TrainerRoad suggests to me. But I have so far not seen a suggestion so terrible. Usually it suggests less than I personally would have planned, and then I add some extra on top of it if I feel like it.

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100% because it is a c event. It’s treated like a hard ride(s).

If you feel you will be fatigued, adjust your training.

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Sure.

I mainly posted it to provide some feedback on the deficiencies in TrainerRoad software.

If this happens because it’s a C-event, then IMHO it’s clearly a bug. Not all C-events should be considered equal.

No, that’s how C-events are supposed to be handled: apart from whatever you do on the day of the race, you don’t modify your training calendar.

With B- and A-events you progressively add more significant modifications to your training schedule. So you should re-classify this event as an A- or B-event.

If your calendar were created by a human coach, they wouldn’t have classified this as a C-event.

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You should take a look at this page for more info on how to set up your events:

https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016099031-How-to-Add-A-B-and-C-Events-to-Your-Calendar

Summary:

So, no issue with the TR logic, your event was just set up incorrectly if you think you need a taper beforehand.

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It’s not a bug, you are mis categorizing the event as a “c” race rather than a b or a race. C races are intended as training sessions by TR and don’t have any taper going into them.

A and B races do have a taper, if you want or need that you need to categorize the event as something other than c.

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I can’t say I agree. It works as designed. If you want rest change it to a B or A. “C race" is essentially treated as a hard workout, and you should train through it without tapering.

Not a bug. More philosophical WAD.

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Alright, I changed it to B event. It’s not any better now. Actually it’s even worse, because it added an opener before the event:


Perhaps I should make it into an A event? But then TrainerRoad will complain that I have two A events too close together.

You cannot escape reality. The idea is to peak for A-races. If they are too close together, you can’t.

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Hey @nene :slight_smile:

I think there is some big info missing from the puzzle here:

  1. Start Date of this new plan: June 23, 2025.
  2. B Event (Hiking trip) is on July 15th- 20th
  3. A Event is on July 26th-August 15th.
  4. Plan ends

With how short this plan is it makes sense there is not Recovery Week as it puts you in 3 weeks of Build Phase, and then goes straight into 2 weeks taper (Specialty Phase) leading to your A Event, but with the caveat that in the first taper week you’ve added the B Event (hiking trip), so this has naturally become tricky timing.

With the restraints you have and that your A Event seems to last 2.5 weeks, I would manually make the week of July 7th a recovery week, then the week of July 14th go on your hiking trip, and then follow the plan as normal into your A Event watching out for your fatigue levels and resting if needed.

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Thanks.

For further context, my true A-event was actually a week ago. These two are more of a jump into the unknown. Not really planning to peak for these, but would just like to have a reasonably good form and not suffer too much.

I intentionally didn’t put these events into the calendar at the start of the year, as I thought they might just confuse TrainerRoad. So I first finished my true A-event (and I’m pretty happy how that plan went), and then created a new training plan for the rest of the stuff.

I understand it’s kinda crazy schedule, so I didn’t really expect a whole lot from TrainerRoad plan, but it really surprised me how excessively aggressive the suggested plan was.

I was pretty much planning to tweak the plan as you suggested. I’m probably also going to cut back even more on the volume - I’ll be getting enough of that on the coming weeks.