Hereās a short term success story.
Started training again seriously 8 weeks ago, āgetting faster for group ridesā plan. Just finished 2nd base block. On low volume, but Iām trying to push it to 6 hours a week with a long weekend ride while honoring red light green light
FTP from 245-262. 2 watts a week isnāt too shabby!
Hi.
Signed up for a xc race a year ago, placed last by a big margin. Did garmin xc plan for a few months, still placed last at the end of the season, but now by a small margin.
Borrowed a smart trainer and a road bike. Two weeks later i started with trainer road. Started out with a FTP of 237 @97 kg, took a ramp test a few days later, up to 253.
Now Iāve been following the same plan from day one, and Iām 4 weeks out from my A-race, feeling good.
Got a new ftp adjustment due to a 9+ session.
Currently at 318 watts @95 kg with a completely changed body composition.
79 watts in 8-9 months, and summers round the corner and TSS to increase as weather improves.
Trainer road has been amazing to use as a coach leading to great results. Cant wait to start my first race this season next week.
In the last few years Iāve completed a Virtual Everest and a 1-Day Seattle to Portland, both in under 12 hours. I started using TR 9 years ago after I had a bad crash in racing and could only ride indoors for a while. I have ADHD so having my workouts planned for me removes a major hurdle. Genuinely, cycling is the only routine in my life that Iām really consistent with and itās because TR removes the decision making step that I struggle with. I often joke that I need TR to make an app for household chores.
That request for AI tip for feedback would be awesome.
I hope they consider this request 
Hi TR, Just a thank you! Long time user, many years of racing, riding. I went through a bit of a depression and significantly increased weight with the resultant loss of interest in riding, and more negative feedback from being so slow. Finally, I had enough around the end of October '24. I got on some proper meds, stopped drinking nearly as much, and got on a Masters program with the purpose of a week in Girona at the end of April. What with life, kids, work, I was less consistent with this training plan than I have ever been with any in my life disappointingly. But, I lost 25 lbs and, given the extreme efficiency of the time spent on the trainer/bike, my legs were back and I was prepared to have an absolutely wonderful trip to Girona, flying up and down the roads of Spain. Els Angels, Rocacorba, Mare de DĆ©u del Mont, heck, we even went all the way up to the coast of France just to say we did, 104 miles round trip. All in all, 325 miles of riding in 5 days with 25,000 feet of climbing, all on <8 hours per week training.
The Zwift integration is what really allowed me to be consistent. I was mentally able to do the workouts far better than watching the blue boxes on the screen.
So thank you TR!
Thank you, TR and team!
This post to express how grateful I am to have found this platform when I started cycling in 2021 (yes, COVID baby here!). Started with an FTP of 233W, currently at 296W 4 years later. Aside from that, my weight decreased from 92 to 88 kg. While overall, my W/kg increased, Iām most proud and happy not to suffer too much on the climbs, being able to push the watts on the flat for long time and being able to do repeated efforts. Having a regular training schedule and optimized nutrition changed also my life, I feel much better overall.
To illustrate that, I raced on the Magny-Cours race track for 12 hours starting at 08 PM on Saturday, arriving at 08 AM Sunday. The result being 258km and 3200M D+. While this ranks me 19th out of 33rd, the final classification is not the priority for me. As someone who has been overweight all of his life, not being the sporty type, finishing such an event is a massive victory for me.
TR software, the podcast, and the community here help me to push my limits and achieve this performance (the podcast kept me also awake during the darkest part of the night).
Looking forward to the next challenge with the support of TR 
I know this is a thread about success stories and there are some incredible stories here. Iāve cycled off and on for many years however, it was very unstructured and everything was just in a whim. Iām getting back into after a year off and really excited to see how well TR works for me. I just signed up a few days ago and absolutely love it so far.
Looking forward to growing and being part of this community. Ride on!
TrainerRoad Review ā Backed by Numbers!
After going through some rough patches in life, I discovered that sport is the best therapy. I bought my first road bike back in 2020āa beautiful Bianchi in celesteāand thatās when I fell in love with cycling. In that first season, I was a complete beginner, just riding around with no clue what I was doing. I had only water in my bottles and no food on my rides.
In the winter of 2021, I started doing workouts on Zwift, and thatās when I truly fell in love with the sport. I love the hard work, the grind, and the feeling of pushing your body to become the best version of yourself. Iām very competitive and love racing, so the goal was clear: to race one day.
When spring came in 2022, I started looking for a cycling coach. I hired oneāand he was awesome. We started with the basics and progress came quickly. We got along well, but I always struggled with consistency and the guilt of missing sessions. He was a great coach and taught me one of the most important lessons: without consistency, there are no results and for that, Iām truly grateful.
At the end of 2023, we parted ways, and I hired a new coachāmore expensive and great at marketing himself. Things started off strong, and I was flying in April. But by May, I was overtrained and burned out, and I missed my main goal in early June. So just like that, my 2024 season was over. I spent the rest of the summer just riding on weekends with no structure.
Then in December 2024, I discovered TrainerRoad and decided to try the 30-day free trialāand let me tell you, I was amazed! This app is incredible with all its features, and it keeps getting better. At first, I wanted to sync the workouts to Zwift, which wasnāt possible at the time, but just two months laterāit was! I got used to the TrainerRoad app itself, and now I donāt use Zwift anymore. I donāt care about the visuals or virtual worlds like in Zwift or Rouvy. I care about getting my intervals doneāand this app delivers.
Now for the numbers I promised:
In November, I did a lactate profile up to LT1. I didnāt do the full profile because I wasnāt in a training phase yetājust riding, no intervals. It was the beginning of base season.
Other key metrics:
HRV improved from 70ā80 ms to 105ā110 ms
Resting HR dropped from 54 bpm to 44 bpm
VO2max increased from 60 to 65
FTP improved from 275 W at 67 kg to 286 W at 63 kg
It was measured on the same garmin watch and the same power meter.
I absolutely love the app, the workouts, and the training plans. Iām a tough crowd to please and consider myself an advanced cyclist. Of course, there are a few downsidesāsome workouts are designed for indoor trainers and are hard to execute accurately outside.
I got sick two weeks ago and had to take a short break from the bike. When I came back, I had one week of hard intervals followed by a recovery weekāI think it wouldāve been better the other way around, but that was on me.
Final thoughts:
TrainerRoad is an amazing platform that keeps evolving. If your goal is structured training and real progress, this app is for you.
Highly recommend: 10/10.
This isnāt much of a story, but it feels worth sharing.
Iāve been (mostly) following TRās plans since early February.
My first FTP estimation by AI was 240W on Feb 12, a slight increase on the 236W I entered as a starting point. Iām impatient, so I ask for a new estimation every 28 days. Those have been 244W, 247W and then 250W.
On Sunday I finally beat my 2020 PR up Alpe du Zwift.
I averaged 250W for 54 minutes, which was bang on my AI FTP at the moment.
Itās still a week before I can ask for an update, so today I did a test up The Grade on Zwift, and I just set my best ever 30 minute power.
In that ride, āThe Gradeā climb estimated my FTP at 251W which is very much in line with TRās AI detection. However, I completed the āElevation Evaluationā route and got a Zwift estimation of 261W as well. A 10W difference in two estimation approaches, so itāll be interesting to what TRās AI FTP estimation tells me next week.
Anyway, thatās the story. Sticking to a plan (90%) is paying off, and at 56 years old itās encouraging to see I can still improve. Iām hoping to ride the Fred Whitton again next year - maybe 2026 will be the first year I donāt have to walk Hardknott. 
I trained this past winter and spring using Masterās MV Base 1 &2, Sustained Power Build and 40k TT Specialty plans. All MV-Masterās. I did my āAā race last night. It was a 20k TT for our local racing club, Buffalo Bicycling Club (BBC). This was in the āCannibal Catā. I shattered my PR by over one minute!!! It was an out and back course along the Niagara River. A block head wind going out and a tail wind on the return. Not only did i set my best time on this course, but I felt great all the way. My IF was 1.01 and my HR and power were both at threshold average. This was a win for me personally. I am 73 yrs. old. I plan on doing this same TT in the State championships in August. I will then race cyclocross in Oct-Nov. Thanks TrainerRoad!!!
I have been using (perhaps better, mis-using, or under-using) TrainerRoad since November of 2020. I am now 62 years old. I was not an athlete earlier in life, so any athletic achievement is meaningful to me, and every improvement ā measurable or intangible ā is both a source of amazement and a cause for celebration. To say they are deeply satisfying would be a gross understatement.
I came into cycling in January of 2019, basically because my brother-in-law-to-be needed a riding partner, and I had always had an interest. We rode together 2-3 times a week and I hated being āthe slow one.ā I didnāt like the feeling that I was holding him back, so I began thinking about how I could get stronger, to get faster, on the off days when we werenāt riding together. I wanted a sort of ācheat codeā that would give me results faster than just more riding.
In that process I found the āAsk A Cycling Coachā YouTube videos and immediately was sucked in. I loved the discussions, the apparent relationships between the group, and I was getting answers to questions I hadnāt even thought to ask! Nutrition, strength training, muscle cramp management ā¦ a whole world opened up for me, and at the center of it, of course, was TrainerRoad. But I didnāt have a trainer. Yet.
COVID hit in 2020, and like so many other people, we rode more. Cycling became a greater and greater focus for me, in no small measure because it had produced results I wanted, and could see, in terms of my fitness and body composition. I decided it was time to invest. And document. And analyze.
I bought a Garmin Edge 530 in August, and began looking seriously at trainers. I had a lot to learn, and all of it seemed to be like drinking from a firehose. Ultimately, I found the Tacx trainers to be a natural choice because of the Garmin connection and the seamless integration that came from that. The Flux 2 fell within the budget I thought I could justify, so in November I took the plunge, bought the trainer, and signed up for a year of TrainerRoad.
My first ramp test was eye-opening. And demoralizing. I had read/heard enough to know that an FTP of 139 was, shall we say, kindly, modest. I was disappointed, but took it as a challenge. In retrospect, I think my initial FTP was significantly higher than that, but I just didnāt know how to take the test ā you know, when to quitā¦ how much suffering is enough? How much can I really endure? How much should I really endure. What does āfailureā actually mean anyway? Should I be able to string together a coherent thought when Iām done? Am I actually damaging my heart? That sort of thing. I believe that, because a month later, with spotty use of TrainerRoad, I tested at 173.
All that said, in truth, I discount much of my numerical results prior to December of 2022, when I began using the AI FTP calculation, simply because I really donāt think I ever tested well. Since then, with a couple of notable and explicable exceptions, my FTP has steadily improved and just yesterday, my AI FTP update was 233 ā still nothing to set the world on fire, but a milestone for me, and one Iām proud of.
Discounting that initial ramp test, I have averaged just over 1% increase per month while using TrainerRoad ā again, very imperfectly ā along with my ongoing two-a-week outdoor rides with my brother-in-law. I had a significant setback in the late summer of 2023, after an extended road-trip vacation followed by a long bout of COVID. I lost 14 W, dropping from an FTP of 210 in May (my highest ever to that point) to 196 W at the end of August. The psychology of dropping out of the 200s back to the 100s was brutal for me, but a month later I was again improving.
By December I had surpassed my previous high FTP and kept improving up to a maximum of 226 W by October of 2024. Unfortunately, at that point, my mother-in-law became very ill and required round-the-clock care. Our whole small family pitched in and provided that care until she passed away in late November, but riding time was non-existent. I managed to slip in a few training sessions here or there, but still, by the time I could once again focus on training, my FTP had fallen to the point that when I ran the AI FTP calculation again in mid-January, it was 215 W, down 11 W from my previous measurement.
The past 5 months have been some of the most rewarding to date, though. To see myself climb out of the hole created by that off-bike period, adding 18 W (+8.37%) in that span, has been really satisfying and exciting! I have improved every month, and the past three have all been record highs to that point. I know that TrainerRoad has been the determining factor in that improvement. Notably, the Red Light-Green Light functionality has been enlightening and has helped me to better understand what level of fatigue/intensity is actually productive. Together with that knowledge, RLGL has enabled me to shuffle some of my scheduling to minimize the appearance of the red days, making more efficient use of my limited training time.
As far as tips or insights, I would just say use it! As Iāve said, my implementation of TrainerRoad has been far less than perfect. But anything is better than nothing. And I have found pretty consistently that when I am using TrainerRoad more, I am improving more. It really is as simple as that. Consistency is key, even when itās inconsistent. Use TrainerRoad as much as you can. Follow the recommendations as best you can within the confines of your ārealā life, and you will get results ā measurable, quantifiable results, as well as those intangible ones like satisfaction, improved self-image, and a sense of accomplishment. Even if ā or maybe especially if ā youāre an āold guyā like me.
Thank you, Nate, Jonathan, and everyone at TrainerRoad!
PS ā TrainerRoadās online chat representatives rock! Thatās how it should be done. Thank you so much for setting a high bar in every area, but especially in customer support!
Nice work 
Are you using the TR plans?
Thanks MeMeToo. Yes, Iām on a Masters Improving Climbing plan (LowVolume, as I recall) but necessities of life demand significant adjustment from time to time. It has been a challenge keeping recovery prioritized, yet still getting in the intense workout each week. RLGL often downgrades a Threshold workout to an Endurance 
I should also mention that the ride with my Brother-in-law is entered on the calendar as a āGroup Ride,ā and is pretty fixed at about 1h 45m, on Tues./Thurs. I usually have indoor Endurance rides scheduled for Mon./Sat., with the Intensity workout scheduled for Wednesday. Itās pretty easy to get too much intensity mid-week though, so thatās where the juggling comes in. Sometimes Iāll shift an Endurance workout to Wed. and move the intensity workout to Sat. That seems like a better schedule, and it was set up that way at one time, but I found myself unable to consistently be āupā for the intensity on Saturday so it made sense to move it earlier in the week in case I was up for it on Wednesday. The whole experience lately has been an exercise in "what can I do right now?
Many thanks for the reply. Sounds like you have a good weekly setup there. Chapeau!!
