Hi everyone, I’m new to structured training and I’m seeking some expert advice. In January of this year, I began a low-volume TR training plan to prepare for a Grandfondo that I rode in May. It was my first time following a structured training plan, and as a novice, I was very happy with the results.
Currently, I don’t have any specific events planned, but I want to keep improving, so I’m following a low-volume plan that will last for one year (I chose a random end date). I’m currently in the Base 1 phase, and most of my one-hour workouts during the week are Sweet Spot, while the only threshold workouts are planned for 1.5 hours on Saturdays.
The problem is that I rarely train indoors on the weekends, and instead, I usually do unstructured outdoor rides of around 100km with 1500m+ of climbing. Since Adaptive Training (AT) does not yet account for unstructured activities, it seems like I’m missing my threshold workouts, causing my threshold level to decrease.
My question is whether I should manually replace some of my one-hour Sweet Spot workouts with one-hour threshold workouts that have a similar Training Stress Score (TSS), and let AT adjust the next workouts. Alternatively, should I stick to the plan and ignore the decreasing threshold level, knowing that I’m still doing some sort of threshold activities during my weekend climbs? I think this problem will be solved once WL2 is released, but for now, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I’m assuming you’re skipping the threshold workout. I think that leaves you with two sweetspot workouts.
Assuming (again) that you only want two structured workouts per week, I’d move the 90 minute threshold workout to midweek in place of one of the sweetspot workouts.
And I’d caution against thinking that an unstructured ride (even with efforts) is a substitute for a structured threshold workout.
Thank you for the suggestion. Yes, your assumptions are correct. I cannot do more than two workouts during the week, and they are both Sweet Spot at the moment. I agree the effort of unstructered rides is different and hard to match in a proper way to a structured workout, this is the reason why I prefer to avoid associating the unstructured ride with any existing workout, as someone suggested in other posts. Therefore, I was thinking of moving the 1.5 threshold workout during the week or, better yet, replacing the 1-hour SS with an equivalent TSS 1-hour threshold workout. However, I am concerned about whether AT would properly adjust to account for this change and reflect it in the next activities.
You can go into the plan builder and move the workouts around so that all your “Saturday” workouts become “Tuesday” workouts and vice versa. Then you won’t have to move them every week.
I thought it would be enough to match the TSS of the SS workout. I could find a 1-hour threshold workout that gives the same improvement (+1) as the longer one, with a TSS of 74, which matches the TSS of the SS I would replace. Maybe I can do this replacement not systematically but occasionally to balance the threshold with SS improvement. (Considering also that long weekend climbs are usually in the SS zone for most of the time.) Would this make sense?
Just use workout alternates to select a 60 minute threshold. Don’t look at TSS - the workout alternate function is for this purpose. Good advice above about using the calendar to move your threshold workouts from Saturday to a day during the week.
The proposed alternatives range from a level improvement of +0.1 to +1 and more, with a very high variability of associated TSS. So, it made sense to me to select a workout among those proposed that matches the TSS of the replaced workout and has a threshold level improvement matching the original 1.5-hour workout.
Maybe I’m missing something here…but I’m not sure starting with a 3.5 hr plan with 2 sweet spot workouts and 1 threshold workout, and changing that to 1 sweet spot workout, 2 threshold workouts, 1 of which is 100km, so probably 3+ hours on that day alone, is necessarily the best option.
TR is great for planning and the app to control workouts…but IMO a cycling plan that doesnt take into account cycling cant really be adjusted…you kind of have to start from scratch.
@Fabernova I am very much in the same boat. I do group rides on the weekends both Saturday and sunday. I’ve taken the approach that I need to essentially go off the reservation, and just pick whatever workout looks like one that is challenging but doable when TR isnt adjusting workout levels in a sane manner.
Sad but true, that’s the reason why I, like many others, cannot wait for the release of WL2. Meanwhile, I probably have to accept that there is no “automatic” way out, and I will have to navigate by sight.
Yea. I mean realistically speaking a hard group ride could have the same or more sweetspot AND threshold work as two TR workouts. To not take that into account or give credit just sort of means the system isnt really functioning honestly…
@Scotty_Likes_Toast WL2 = Workout Levels V2 in other words it should be the possibility to account for unstructured outdoor activities in AT Level progression…this would be the final answer to my (and I guess many other) problems since the training plan will be adjusted considering also e.g. Saturday group rides…you can have more info on the currenty status (sigh) in this post: https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/workout-levels-v2-update-unstructured-rides/80597/290
