Something I find useful related to alternate workouts-
There are many times where I look at a planned workout and debate whether to try something a little harder (or easier) depending on how I’m feeling, how rested/fueled I am, other life stresses, etc. I’ll look at a couple alternates and I keep those in mind when I start the planned workout. But I won’t swap the harder workout before I start because I’m not sure if it’s appropriate until I’m into the intervals. If I’m feeling good once I get started, I’ll make a game time decision and attempt the harder workout. If I complete it, I’ll just adjust my TR calendar after I’m done to reflect the workout I actually did (so the system ramps the next workout appropriately). That approach works best for workouts flagged as “outside” since you can change the workout association without deleting the workout. You can do outside workouts inside, it’s a handy way to allow the workout association to be swapped after you are done. I don’t think there is an easy way to change a workout association after the fact if you do it in the TR app, but I’ve never tried. I can think of some ways to do it, but it would be a pain.
Another option to make the system ramp quicker after you complete a harder workout than the planned one is to understate how hard it was in the post workout survey. The workout might have been “hard” because you added 20 watts to every interval, but you can “guestimate” how easy the original workout would have been if you had executed as planned. Answering “moderate” will make the next workout jump higher, even though the actual work performed was hard. I don’t love that approach since you are basically putting bad data in the system to trick it into ramping the future workouts higher, but it seems to work ok when I’ve done it in the past.
From what I understand, TR will eventually be looking at actual work performed rather than the planned workout and we’ll be able to make adjustments to workouts as we’re doing them and the system will recognize the change. Until that point, these are a couple work-arounds I’ve found useful.
Thanks @grwoolf I spend a lot of time swapping out workouts to make them fit around the terrain (I dont know about you but I wish it were easier to select outside alternatives - maybe its just me but I find I have to change everything back to inside, then select the alternative, then change back to outside), and sometimes selecting a higher PL because I’m feeling good, but I have never thought about having a couple of rides in mind and seeing how I feel after the warm up. That’s a great idea!
When I read the second part of your reply about guesstimating, I did chuckle and thought “poor @eddiegrinwald will be having kittens at that reply”
Don’t panic Eddie, I’m not smart enough to game the system
If I was that smart, I wouldn’t be constantly changing my workouts, blowing up, destroying my legs, eating chocolate and generally doing most of the things I shouldn’t be
Yeah, TR support isn’t a fan of some of these work-arounds (with good justification) and many of these work-arounds come with risk. I still think it’s good that TR allows users to throw bad ideas around to work around system limitations, sometimes they can help individual users. I try to put clear warnings on the particularly bad hacks, but I probably should have kept that second option to myself. I’ve used it a couple times and it’s worked in those cases, but it really is a terrible approach.
Sounds like a whole lot of fun and learning to me. One of the best things about cycling for me is that you can do it for decades and still have a healthy mix of failure and success. Limitless curiosity and exploration. Many other hobbies/activities tend to get stale once you figure them out.
One thing you have clearly figured out - chocolate is a key part of any smart training program.
This is so true that cycling is a never ending journey of learning new things.
This is so true! Particularly as our bodies, the technology and the trails/roads are continuously changing too. I’ve just posted in the podcast thread asking for an episode focusing on perimenopause/menopause. It’s been by far the biggest challenge I have had to deal with, both mentally and physically and it’s been a real case of trial and error to find out what works and what doesn’t.
The thing is, I know what works to make me feel healthy now, mostly. However, that never really ties in to the training plans, and it definitely doesn’t tie in with riding big miles any more…but I WANT to ride the big miles, and I WANT to push myself doing threshold training that I know doesn’t suit me metabolically. So I am constantly at war with my own body for sulking when I ask it to just do what it used to when I was in my 30s.
after my first full winter of TR I had my first “long” ride 2 weeks ago and was surprised how easily it went.. just need to fuel well.
Tomorrow Amstel 150km is the next test. The TR plan consisted of 3x 1h interval, 1x 1h endurance 1x2h endurance. And the only adjustment I made was planning 2 longer rides of 3h instead of 2h to see where I stand.
