I’m another one back since the Zwift integration and I’ve set up a custom plan for the Fred Whitton (in May).
I’ve done it last year with a time of just over 7 hours but I’m looking to go sub 7 this year.
Question is regarding how the custom adaptive plan works long term. At the moment I look at all my weekend rides for example, and not one is over 1 hour long, all endurance rides are exactly 1 hour.
Now, obviously I’m going to be riding for 6-7 hours in May… might be a silly question, but is the plan just putting those sessions as place holders and they’ll adapt to get longer as I progress over the next 3 months?
I’ve selected Gran Frondo as the ride is 100 miles with 11,000ft elevation gain.
*Just found a couple of forum posts/ topics reference this (kind of)… would seem people are saying I can choose to do some more longer days (within reason) and see how the red light green light adapts and if I’m recovering well enough etc.
I’ll keep an eye and update the post with findings over next 3 months
Absolutely. You can substitute for longer rides or do your own progression (I usually progress my weekend ride up to 3h indoors and then go longer outdoors, when the weather gets nicer). It shouldn‘t trigger red days, if the progression is sensible.
TR said they are planning a progressive long ride, but it‘s not a feature yet.
If I lived closer by, I would love to ride Fred Whitton! Sounds like great fun. Enjoy!
Plan Builder will build out your plan based on your recent training/riding to make you a weekly schedule that will be sustainable to help you reach your goals.
At the moment, your volume won’t change automatically (though this is something we are working on!), but, in the meantime, using Workout Alternates can be a great way to sub in some longer sessions for when you have the time available to do so.
Keep an eye on what Red Light/Green Light tells you when you do those longer rides and consider how they may impact the rest of your plan. If you find that you build up a bit too much fatigue, don’t be afraid to take some extra rest/recovery if needed to keep the rest of your plan on track.
If you continue training and adding volume for a bit, you could try updating your plan’s volume by “editing” your Plan Builder plan and seeing what new recommendations it may give you. Instructions on how to do so can be found here if you need them.
Gran Fondo sounds like the perfect selection for the type of ride you’re targeting. Sounds like an epic event – 100 miles is already a big day, and anything with over 10,000ft of elevation gain is a real doozy!
Happy training and feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions!
Cheers for the reply, it has raised a question though.
If the AI/ system knows I’m training for a ride that’s 100 mile with 11,000ft of climbing… are you saying that it’ll never prescribe a ride longer than 1 hour for endurance?
I can’t get my head round that at all.
Even a bog standard cookie cutter plan through chatGPT would implement some form of progressive overload.
TrainerRoad implements progressive overload only through intensity. So your rides will get progressively harder as time goes on, but the total volume will stay about the same.
You need to manage the increase in volume by yourself by e.g. replacing your suggested workouts with longer alternates. And then after having done so for a while, you might go and tweak your training plan to have more volume by default. Though as to when would be the right time to do this I also struggle to understand.
The goal event duration in my experience has zero effect on the volume of the training plan. Like, I’m training for a several times longer event, and well, TrainerRoad still wants to suggest 1 hour endurance rides to me.
Ok I see what you’re saying, that just seems mad to me.
I’ve just watched a youtube video with Chris Miller and they were talking about how advanced the AI is etc and will get you faster and it’s going to replace coaches (not exactly but you get my point), but in the same breath it prescribes 1 hour endurance rides for a ride it knows will be 7 hours.
Surely I shouldn’t need to be tweaking an AI generated and monitored program my manually deciding to do longer rides… what’s the point in the AI aspect of it then?
I know this might upset a lot of TrainerRoad fans but I’m really struggling to get my head round this. I get that recently I haven’t been doing long rides, but in the last year I’ve done several 100 mile plus rides, some easy, some races… back to back big days in Gran Canaria etc… I just thought that the AI would take that into account
I think the larger problem here is with this term “AI”. It makes people expect too much.
I totally agree that it would be awesome to have TrainerRoad suggest you increases in volume. On the other hand I acknowledge, that this is most certainly a way harder problem than it would look on the surface. I’d rather TrainerRoad concentrate its efforts on one aspect of training and do it well, than it scattering its attention to lots of aspects and do them poorly. I think TrainerRoad does this, but I think that aspect is not communicated well enough.
Even though TrainerRoad has concentrated its efforts on solving just the intensity part of the equation, it’s far from solved. It works pretty good when you’re consistently doing all the workouts from week to week. But when you have some downtime or you haven’t done a specific kind of workout in a while, it’s suggestions might be quite off. You can easily nudge it back on track by giving it feedback, but of course ideally I’d like all my interval sessions to be just right and never too easy or too hard.
Take all the personal opinions and mud flinging out of the thread I think the core of it stands…
For an AI driven training tool, and everything we know about the effects of zone1/2 training/ length of training for adaptations/ diminishing returns in reference to going for too long on long rides… I’d expect to see endurance volume increase (through time rather than intensity)… and that being factored into plans that specifically deal with longer event times.
If I hadn’t have come here and had this conversation on the forum, and knew very little about training and took the suggested workouts planned for me by trainer road… would I be prepared to even ride for 7 hours, considering my longest prescribed ride is 1 hour?
Time is fixed and I agree with that, as amateur athletes it’s common that we set that constraint. I’d theorise that fiddling with that would lead to reduced plan compliance - so it’ll be interesting to see how they would introduce such a feature.
Let me start by saying I agree with you that long rides are important, just sharing so you have more context.
In the distant past, the TR plans had longer rides on the weekend, but compliance was very poor, so they modified the plans (and added notes saying you could change the shorter rides to longer ones if you had the time). I respond better to more volume than to more intensity, so I do agree with your concern, but I also think it’s important to remember this context. TR was originally built “for the time crunched athlete”.
It’s definitely possible to do those longer events on low volume training, it’s just a matter of how much you want to suffer and if your goal is to finish or to be competitive. I’ve done plenty of charity events where people who clearly are not athletic at all are participating. I just assume they stop a lot, suffer a lot, and are sore for days.
There are many things that contribute to finishing a long event that the TR/AI may always have as out of scope. The short answer is yes.
Compliance and consistency with a plan and going into a long event with a higher FTP and or good muscular endurace is going to make a big difference. The Fred Whitton is lumpy with many steep climbs (so I’ve heard, not ridden it), personally I’d rather have a higher FTP and or have completed many ‘long’ intervals (e.g 2x20s) to get the muscular endurance up.
Fueling, pacing, core stength, saddle comfort, etc. are things a user may need to consider for finishing a long event and that’s on them to decide if they need long rides to iron that out.
The short answer might be different if you wanted to win a long event. It is a whole topic of ‘it depends’ that comes back to most of us being amateurs. As pointed out above, long prescribed rides = lower plan compliance but it is entiry possible for the TR/AI solution to accomodate a user choosing to do them.
I’ll definitely be doing alternative sessions on my days off, more towards the 2 hours at the moment, looking to progress up to 4 hours over several weeks (endurance rides)
Yeh I agree with everything you’re saying and I’ll be really focusing on the quality workouts on lead up to the Fred… but I’ll be using red light green light to assess and pick alternative longer endurance sessions when weather and days allow.
I feel like my fueling is always good and I have good strength/ conditioning work 3 times a week which i like and stick to.
I’m an Audaxer 200km is an 8hr day out, 3-400 is a long day out and 600 is a stretch goal for the 24hr TT. With all that said, I only do big distances once a month with maybe a couple of 2x/month during summer. The rest of my time I rarely go over 4-5hrs, I’ve found consistent day to day volume is the key rather than too many weekly long training sessions.
I’m on a high volume plan with 2x 1hr intensity, 2x 1.5hr endurance plus 2x 3-4 outside group ride. I might swap one of the indoor endurance sessions for a more relaxed 80-100k when the weather is nice. ATM I’m manually restricting TR to prescribing ~530TSS/week. I’m actually doing ~800TSS/week through the winter rising to an average of 1000/week in the summer where TR sessions get swapped out with the longer rides and more recovery on the days immediately after them.
In winter I use the TSS difference to do more fun things like MTB, fast group rides etc. mixing it up week to week to keep things fun. I use Red/Yellow days to keep a lid on it especially after the Audax rides. If TR makes a workout easier or bins it altogether then that’s what I go with I don’t want all my riding to be structured training.
If I gave TR more time allowance it would quite easily fill 2x 90min intensity and 2x4hr indoor easy workouts up to that 800TSS limit without blinking an eye however I want the freedom the plan as it is currently set up gives me. If an outdoor ride is cancelled or doesnt turn out to be what I planned for then I change the indoor ones via alternatives to compensate.
If you give TR the availability in plan builder it will fill it. If you limit the available time it will hit the limit then go no further and increase intensity instead. Try adjusting the session time limit in plan builder when first shows you which days are hard and easy. Try moving the days around so as to not concentrate fatigue in one part of the week. You could always go with the warning and let Red/Yellow days control the plan after it’s built to keep your fatigue honest.
Hope this helps you understand that a TR is more than just a plan provider. With a little thought it can be a great tool to help you customise your training to an extremely wide range of objectives outside of the current available official “plans”.
I think you’re right about how I should view the plan. I’m going to leave it as it is with the 4 sessions it’s planned in (I’ve selected masters program as I work night shifts also and no way I could do intensity after nights)… but what I will do is use trainnow and alternative longer sessions when time allows (whilst considering red light/ green light).
I think the way it’s marketed is quite misleading BUT… actually, with tweaks and a better understanding of the software and its uses, it’s more like Garmin suggested workouts (primary race day adapted)
At the moment, Plan Builder will build a plan based on your recent volume and intensity to create a sustainable schedule you can stick to built out to your goal event.
Even on lower-volume plans, we’ve seen many athletes crush big events…
For now, if you’d like to add volume to your plan as you continue to train, the best steps to do so are laid out in my previous post above.
As I mentioned, though, incorporating “automated” volume adjustments as you work through your plan is something we are actively working on – so stay tuned for more on that in the future!