As a newer subsriber I’m learning the TR program. Before TR I would typically ride 3 days indoors and 1-2 days outdoors (2.5 -4 hrs each day). Additionally, winter early spring riding included 3-day blocks of outdoor riding. The temps are rising outside now and getting outside is a priority. What happens in TR when by the weekend the calander shows 2 rides that total less than 3 and less rhan 200 TSS, but you ride outdoors 2 days and go over planned TSS by 200-300 or more?
I’m on a program for a 100 mile gravel event (9K elev gain) the last weekend in April. The TR plan is 5-6 hrs per week that has been 5 days of indoor on average.
It seems like prep should be 2-5 hr weekend rides progressing to one 5-7 hr ride March and and April.
I do not have a power meter but do have cadence.
Thanks!
Also as a newer user of TR, I am going through some of these ‘growing pains’, also, but am asking a lot of questions to try to get up to speed. I know that a part of what TR is suggesting/planning for you will be based on whatever history you have fed into the app. Most important will be the recent history. I have also gleaned that TR seems to be geared towards ‘time constrained’ cyclists, so it’s not likely to plan big hours for you on any week. (I have a 6 hour gravel event in June, but I was - initially - not planned for any training over 2 hours, which seems odd to me.) TR will also want to prioritize rest during the training, to keep you from getting overcooked.
If you have set up an actual plan in TR you can edit the plan to include the number of hours you have on each specific day of the week that you want to train. The plan should then update, though it may still not suggest rides long enough to fill all of the time you have allotted, though it should start to adapt as you rate the trainings you have completed (if you rate the workout as ‘easy’, TR will adapt to give you harder workouts, but if you rate it toward the top end of the scale it might back you off a bit).
Having been going with TR just over 2 weeks, now, I am already starting to see it ‘catching up’ with my actual fitness level, and the workouts adapting to harder options (e.g. My next Tuesday workout was originally a VO2 Max 3.5, but after yesterday’s ‘moderate’ rating on my VO2 Max 3.0 workout, it has been updated to a VO2 Max 4.8.)
I’d definitely say it can feel a little ‘concerning’ when first starting out, but it does feel like the AI is doing a reasonable job of scaling things up until I start to reach my limits (but you do have to be honest in your workout ratings in order for it to work). And I’m guessing that when I start to reach those limits it will stop scaling me up so quickly.
As for outdoor rides, I have only done one since starting with TR. On that day I just opened the workout and changed it to ‘solo ride’, and it gave me some basics as to what to do. (It was an ‘endurance’ day, so nothing to tricky other than to try to hit a certain amount of time and TSS.) I’m not sure I could actually try to do any workout with actual intervals, as there isn’t great terrain near my house to be able to hold a specific wattage for any length of time, so I will likely continue to do those inside, and stick to endurance and tempo rides outside. And I guess I have to put some faith in the AI that if I do something outside the plan (either over or under) it will adjust future workouts accordingly.
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Hey there,
Definitely hear ya on wanting to get outside to ride as the weather improves!
Some good tools you can use are Outside Workouts and Solo/Group Rides.
If your outdoor rides end up being intense, we’d advise using them to replace one of your other high-intensity sessions for that week. Try to stick to 2-3 “hard” workouts per week while keeping the rest of your riding at Z1/2 intensity to avoid excess fatigue and burnout.
If you end up doing some longer rides than what your plan calls for, you may see warnings from Red Light Green Light. If those come up, you’ll see proposed adaptations from Adaptive Training to help keep you on track.
Hope that helps you out as you get started – feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions!
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