Plan Builder when you are not a "racer"

[cisbrane]

I would not consider myself a “racer”, but as someone looking to build my fitness. I do like to sign up for large ride events, I guess a “Gran Fondo”, throughout the year. Otherwise, I like to do longer/group rides on the weekend and during the week I fill in time with Zwift or shorter rides outside.

I have an event I want to get stronger for on 4/18 - 64mi/100km ride. Should I use plan builder and set it as my “A race - Gran Fondo”? For weekend group rides, are those “C races”?

Or should I just do the 6 week SSB Low Volume plan and not use the plan builder?

I just don’t consider myself a “racer”, so seeing race specific terminology makes me feel unsure how to proceed.

Thanks for any guidance!

[onemanpeloton]

started replying…saw Bryce typing…stopped replying

[Bryce]

@cisbrane

I have an event I want to get stronger for on 4/18 - 64mi/100km ride. Should I use plan builder and set it as my “A race - Gran Fondo”? For weekend group rides, are those “C races”?

This is a perfect approach .

The terminology “A Race” simply means that it is your top priority event for the season. Racer or not, we all want to get faster, so taking the Plan Builder appraoch will set you to optimize your performance in your target event .

Good luck!

[cisbrane]

Thanks! I went ahead and set it up that way. Still picked Low Volume Sweet Spot Base but subed in that ride for Saturday and gave the other days right before a lower intensity. Nice!

It had than plan also include the second part of the SSB, and I am on vacation for part of that. Do I just delete my workouts for certain days?

[Bryce]

@cisbrane

It had than plan also include the second part of the SSB, and I am on vacation for part of that. Do I just delete my workouts for certain days?

In the case of vacation, refer to this advice I pulled in from another thread:

@Bryce

In the case of a training interruption due to sickness, injury, or vacation, our current recommended course of action is to keep your plan intact and leave your skipped weeks as “skipped” in your Calendar.

Then, on the week when you are jumping back into the plan, select the -1 versions of each workout to allow you to more comfortably ramp back into training. “-” versions of a workout typically decrease the duration and the number of intervals prescribed in the workout, which lowers your weekly TSS as you’re getting back into the swing of things. You can learn more about alternate workout versions here .

If a workout does not have an alternate workout version, or if the “-” version is still slightly too difficult, we recommend decreasing the intensity to between 90-95% so that the workouts feel tough but manageable.

I know this is not an ideal solution, but we are working to program more complex logic into Plan Builder so that eventually we can to handle all this for you. In the meantime, this is our recommended course of action for keeping you on track for your events.