A couple of months ago I restarted my training with TR, mainly because the weather turned awful!, I’d been cycling outdoors a lot, with a power meter.
when I restarted I accepted an AI FTP, I would have guessed my FTP around 220-230 but it came in at 197. I questioned this with TR themselves and they said it was right. I’m very much a ‘trust the process’ type person so I did exactly that.
now that I’m doing the training it’s suggesting higher and higher ‘progression level’ training, which again is fine, my question is ‘is TR just trying to find the correct level for me?’
I have not rated any of the workouts I’ve done as higher than ‘moderate’ as they aren’t.
So what do you think? Is it still figuring me out?
I’d not necessarily say it’s trying to figure you out. If you answer the post workout surveys with “moderate” at most, it’s pretty much expected to get to higher and higher PLs quickly.
If you haven’t been training with structure before or at least for a longer time, seeing such quick gains is also rather normal. It’ll flatten out eventually, not so much because the algorithm figured you out, but because your growth is slowing down. Enjoy those quick gains while you still can
I may be misunderstanding your question, but to me, that’s the point of the PL’s. You do one, you rate it, and TR moves the PL up or down based on your rating to make your next workout harder or easier. You don’t want them to sit flat. That would mean you’re not progressing in your training.
FTP could be low if the intervals that are supposed to be vo2 max just aren’t in your vo2 max range. PLs seem to be more about how long and how many of those target watt intervals you get (dose), where FTP determines the watt ranges (medicine).
It will figure you out, and you may be able to increase the ftp yourself if vo2 max feels more like threshold or SS in terms of RPE. For me, the first 30 sec of vo2 max is like “is that all you got?” And then by the last interval there’s no doubt the watts are above my TH.
Nothing looks too far off with those progression levels - they aren’t super high - but I probably would be expecting at least the VO2max workouts to start feeling “hard” soon.
Could be that TR has been a bit conservative with your AIFTP to start with - which is sensible to be fair.
You will probably get another healthy FTP bump soon
Regarding the quick progression, as was pointed out in various other threads already, TR has recently adapted the algorithm behind the PLs to account for your capabilities better and push higher increments of the levels. This may also contribute to the quick changes you currently see.
It sounds like we may be catching up to your progress!
Unfortunately, you don’t have another hard workout to try until the 14th.
By the way, next week is supposed to be a rest week, and it looks like you scheduled that one yourself. What’s the reason for that? We recommend sticking to easy rides during rest weeks, and if you’re ever feeling the need to load up a hard workout when there isn’t one scheduled, I’d recommend using TrainNow as it will give you a good workout based on your abilities. The workout you have scheduled for the 14th looks a bit easy for you..
Stay in touch and let me know how things go moving forward. You’ll be back at it on the 24th, and it looks like you’ve got a tough one scheduled!
Hi Eddie, this week is a week off. I’m travelling so won’t be able to do anything. I originally put a session in for today (Wednesday), which I think I choose because I thought I’d give it a go, but deleted it.
I let TR do all the suggestions for workouts, I even have auto-accept for any changes, and don’t think I put anything in the diary apart from the one I deleted.
Are you talking about the Tweed +6 that is in the calendar? Is that one not supposed to be there?
Thanks again for your support, I’d be interested to know if the Tweed session should/shouldn’t be in the plan.
The Tweed +6 workout looks like it was placed there by you. That one’s not a part of your plan.
I think things will be in a good place once you get in another solid week of training. It looks like you’ve been pretty consistent early in the week, but the second half can be a bit mixed, which might be why some of your workout zones aren’t calibrated just yet.
Let’s touch base when you’ve gotten some more training in.
ah.. I know why… that one was originally planned for Saturday.. but I moved it as I’m not available, so it was in the plan, but I deleted it and added it back in on the Friday.
So would you suggest I delete that one? or keep it in?
In terms of consistency, I’m in the UK, and very rarely we get a nice day in October/November, so sometimes, I ditch the training and go outside.. the weather is getting worse, so training will become more consistent.
