On January 13 I started to follow an 8-week “Mountain Bike - Building Endurance” plan I got from the plan builder. It consists of two 4-week phases, and I’m now finishing the recovery week of the first one (Build phase, with my FTP going up by 1.8 % a few days ago). The Specialty phase is to start on Monday. However, I’m going on a ski holiday the next week (during which I’ll get plenty of exercise). Since I do not do any racing, I do not have any race days planned and follow the plan only to be fit in the spring for long mtb rides. So, pushing the rest of the plan by a week seems to me like the correct approach.
I thought postponing the build phase by a week would be easy, but boy, was I wrong. Not having found any obvious way to do so, and following several suggestions I found here, I marked the next week as time off. Unfortunately, instead of pushing everything by a week, the specialty phase was just shortened to three weeks. Which is not what I wanted - I do not care about the end date, but I want to get the whole 4-week specialty phase under my belt.
Can somebody point me in the right direction so I get what I want - i.e. the whole “Specialty” phase starting a week later than currently planned?
(On a separate note: Deleting the time-off annotation stretched the phase back to 4 weeks, but the calendar now shows that the build phase started on February 3 instead of January 13. It is a shame there is no “undo” or manual changes in the calendar.)
You could try using the “Move Week” feature found under “Quick Actions” – especially if you don’t have another plan already lined up for when your current one ends. You should be able to move each week forward individually to work around your ski holiday:
Specialty plans by “default” are 8 weeks long, but you could apply the plan to your TR Calendar so that you can train for 4 weeks instead and then scrap the rest of the plan (or continue on to do the entire 8 weeks if you’d prefer).
While these are “stock” plans and not “custom” plans from Plan Builder, rest assured that Adaptive Training will still be active to ensure that you’re getting the right workouts for your current fitness.
Either of those options should do the trick. Let me know if you have any additional questions or need any more help getting things shuffled around!
Thanks for your quick reply. I’ve been aware of the possibility of choosing a “stock” specialty phase, but decided against it as I prefer to stay with my mtb endurance program to see how well it works.
I have now moved the four weeks one by one, which indeed worked. The phase start annotations are even more messed up as a result, but that’s hopefully just a visual defect.
But I have a follow-up question: You have mentioned that specialty plans are 8 weeks long by default. So what is the suggested length of an open-ended plan? (Open-ended in my case means no scheduled races, just gain more fitness before I start riding outside again.)
No problem! The phase annotations should indeed just be a visual mismatch – no “harm” to your plan should come of it.
I would say the length of your training phases/plans would depend primarily on your annual riding schedule.
A “full” cycle of Base → Build → Specialty takes about 28 weeks to complete, for reference. Athletes who go through this full cycle will experience a “peak” as they complete the plan, but will then need some serious rest upon completion of a goal event (or after a week or two of riding out that peak fitness/chasing Strava segments/smashing the group ride/Zwift races/etc.).
It sounds like your “event” or “goal” is getting faster for outside riding. I think it would be reasonable to build out a plan until about when you’d think you’d be getting back outside. For athletes in the Northern Hemisphere, that would probably be about April/May.
We’d recommend sticking with Plan Builder as it will take care of the smaller details for you. If you let it build you a plan that runs until you’re able to get outside more consistently, I think that would be a good plan length for what you’re looking for!
