My A event for the year is Masters Track Nationals where I’m aiming to race Points, Scratch, Kilo, and maybe Match Sprints. I’m planning to work standing starts into my build and specialty phases over the next couple of months, swapping that workout in for a vo2 or anaerobic workout each week. I’ll do this workout outside. I don’t think there’s a perfect TR workout that matches what I’m doing. Mount Tai is close, though I’ll be doing active recovery, not endurance, in between efforts. Stangate is close, but the efforts will start out at 20 seconds and I’ll do 10 of them.
What’s the best way to plan for these workouts, so my plan takes them into account when adapting?
I love TR, but will also take a moment to register my persistent complaint, which is that track cycling is almost completely ignored - by the plans, on the podcast, even in the workouts.
I’ll let the team know that we can’t forget about our track athletes!
Standing starts are certainly a highly specific type of work. You could probably fit them in as sprints, but we don’t have anything in the library that focuses on this type of drill specifically.
You could certainly use our Workout Creator to build the exact type of workout you’d like to follow, but it’s worth noting that you likely won’t get super accurate Workout Levels assigned to a custom workout like this due to the nature of the sprint-like work (from a stand-still) you’re incorporating.
If you simply want the software to know that you knocked out a hard workout, you could schedule unstructured “Solo Rides” either in Plan Builder or by simply right-clicking on a workout in your calendar and switching it over. Check out the Help Center article below for more info on that.
As of now, only TrainerRoad workouts will affect your Progression Levels.
I wouldn’t worry too much about that, though, as any strength you build during those standing starts will show up during your TR workouts, and we’ll recognize any fitness gains there.
