Hi, I’m trying to do most of my spring summer workouts outdoors again this year and use hills for my threshold or sweet spot intervals but the automatic progression always gives weird and wonderful intervals.
Q: Is there a simple way to just add another hill repeat/interval?
So week 1, 4x10mins, week 2 5x10, week 3 6x10, week 4 recovery - “Alternates” never seems to give simple options. Frissell workouts +1,2,3,4 gives that kind of progression with 9min at 95%. But basically it’s hard to search for a workout in this way.
Just to confirm, you’re looking for TR to prescribe your workouts as progressions of the same workout format?
You’d like a 4x10 one week to progress to 5x10, and 6x10 the week after. Is that right?
If so, there isn’t a way to achieve that with an adaptive plan since we don’t think that’s the best way to train, but if you’re wanting to simply find those types of workouts yourself, you could try searching for the specifics in our workout library.
For example, below are the results of searching for 5x10 and 6x10 Threshold workouts.
As you can see, there are only 30 5x10s and 13 6x10s, so finding something that’s close to what you’re looking for shouldn’t be too hard. You can further filter/sort the results by duration, workout type, difficulty, etc.
Let me know if this helps get you where you’re looking to go!
So ideally the outdoor prescriptions would be a bit more pragmatic and suit routine. I’ve got a ten minute hill I can use most Saturdays by driving there, during the week it takes 20min to ride to a 3min steep hill for vo2. But 20min sweet spot intervals are impossible where I live, those I have to find alternates or ride indoors.
If adding such constraints to custom plans isn’t reasonable, then making it easier to search the workouts to find things suitable for a 10min hill would make it a lot easier to be consistent with outdoor training. Imo.
Having looked at Jonathons super smooth outdoor workouts it’s hard to feel like it’s feasible to get good sessions done without some help matching the available terrain to workouts more easily.
I do know that finding the right terrain for each specific type of workout can be tricky.
Jon’s workouts might not be the best ones to use as a comparison.
He lives in an area that has a lot of good routes, which are variable for each type of workout. Also, he has a ton of practice in both finding the right workout/route as well as outdoor execution.
For those workouts with sustained intervals such as x15, x20, x30, etc., there are usually Workout Alternates that have shorter intervals.
For example, Round Bald -1 is 3x15, but for alternates, I’ve got options like Garrowby -2 for a 75-minute option, or McGregor -5 for a 90-minute option
Moving from 4x10 to 5x10, for example, is a 25% increase in time in zone (TIZ) from one workout to the next. That’s not likely the “best” or most sustainable progression for your fitness week over week. It is simple, as you’re just adding in another interval, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most effective.
Smaller jumps in TIZ could be better, but so could doing a similar workout but slowly raising your power targets, or reducing recovery between intervals/sets. It depends on your goals and the discipline of your training.
Also, training generally isn’t that linear. It’s not as simple as A + B = C, and it’s impossible to calculate true values for A and B since we’re all humans living lives outside of training.
There are some whose #1 goal is to extend their ability to pedal at certain percentages of FTP, and they do something similar to what you’re referencing, but that mostly applies to sustained work.
In those situations, I’d probably argue that following one of our training plans will help you build general fitness quicker, and unless you’re looking to build specificity that’s exclusive to that type of riding (time trials, triathlon, very long flat(ish) riding, etc.) you’d be better served doing a bigger variety of workouts.
That’s kind of the problem I’m highlighting - the alternates aren’t appropriate for where I want to ride, and it isn’t easy to find ones that are.
If a workout obsessive like me is finding it hard to get appropriate outdoor workouts easily, then I’m guessing it’s something other people glaze over, and then do inappropriate sessions instead.
Workout creator is an option. You can build those workouts and then workout creator will score them. For relatively steady state stuff, the workout levels are really close to the TR standard workouts, if not identical, so building out 3x10, 4x10, 5x10, etc you could get WLs that would align with existing WLs. If the jumps were too much per week, you could also increase the targets or add one more 5 minute.
I like @Jesse_Vernon1’s idea here too, although it will take a little effort to get the workotus you want built out.
In the workouts I’ve looked at, there are quite a few different options in terms of interval numbers, types, layouts, etc. What specifically are you looking for? Only sustained power under 10 minutes?
Agreed - maybe I should be more comfortable with variable power on hills but as power fluctuates a fair amount anyway I’m not sure it matters. The longer simple over unders have been good.
I was supposed to do 5x9 mins SS last week at 233W, tomorrow I’ll find a workout around 6x9.
I hear what you’re saying on TiZ increases but the overall TSS doesn’t rise much and as an Ironman triathlete I struggle to be satisfied with the prescribed low volume even if doing more doesn’t accelerate my fitness.
Hi @JoeX, I was in a similar situation until about a year ago & often subbed workouts to make them fit the hill I lived on. As Eddie suggested with alternates, I typically just picked one with a suitable format somewhere around the prescribed workout level. Sometimes it was a different duration, sometimes it was a different power level.
Sometimes I shifted days around if I knew that at some point during the week I was going to be near the velodrome with a couple of hours spare, just not on the day that the long-interval or sustained-power workout was prescribed.
Besides just adding TIZ, are you spending any time resting stationary at the top or waiting at the bottom of the hill for the next interval? If so you could progress by cutting some of that rest period. I had switchbacks & sometimes school traffic to deal with so I was constrained to a max work-to-rest ratio 2:1. The Warlow & Antelope series got quite a bit of airplay on my app. If your road is a straight drop & safe to do at speed you may be able to go up to 3:1. Progressing rest from 5 minutes down to 3½ minutes is significant.
If you really want to progress by adding TIZ, remember too that you don’t have to use the whole hill. One week might be 4×10’, next week might be 5×9’, next week after that might be 5×10’. Seems to me to be less aggressive than just adding an extra interval each week.
Okay now this one’s scraping the bottom of the barrel: I never tried this because I couldn’t work out how to do it cheaply & safely, but if you can add some weight to the bike you could turn that 10-minute hill into an 11- or 12-minute hill. Panniers, if you already have them?
Fairly easy to work out. To make it 11 mins you need to add 10% to all up weight, and for 12 mins, 20% to all up weight. Thus if you and bike weigh 80kg, you’d need to add 8kg and 16kg resp. Panniers, frame bag, rack pack, bike packing saddlebag would all easily be able to add that kind of weight. More weight will also reduce recovery as you’ll be faster downhill.
Oh, I had no problem working out the numbers. My difficulty was the practicality of adding weight to a bike that wasn’t designed to have a rack attached. The hill I was on is a sealed road surface, but is very bumpy, & unsprung loads can fatigue the frame. I had a chainstay crack near the wheel which I attribute to this. Also they cause the wheel they’re over to track the ground poorly bad handling. Oh I thought of things like filling the frame with fishing sinkers, strapping a 20kg plate for a gym into the front triangle, or even just buying a cheap, old, heavy banger bike secondhand for $20 & attaching my $1000 M-force 8 Assiomas to it. I’m sure you can see where that’s going.
bad handling. Oh I thought of things like filling the frame with fishing sinkers, strapping a 20kg plate for a gym into the front triangle, or even just buying a cheap, old, heavy banger bike secondhand for $20 & attaching my $1000 M-force 8 Assiomas to it. 
I’m sure you can see where that’s going.