I found this one really good especially for us Master rider.
I can’t believe TR didn’t post it up.
Found this too useful, that I couldn’t let it be forgotten.
One thing that was never mentioned in the 2 WO group - is that for running training, typically your long run is bundled into the “hard day” bundle - so someone might have vo2 intervals on Tuesday and Threshold run on Thur and then a 2-3hr run on Saturday. With easy aerobic, recovery runs, or rest on M/W/F/Sun.
The effect of a very long ride has been discussed with the 50% TSS rule greatly impacting Tue/Thur workouts. Yet wasn’t mention once in the podcast as it relates to how most people might train if just doing two hard structured workouts on TR… many are then likely doing 1 or 2 longer rides outside on the weekend.
If someone did a 3-5hr ride Saturday and 2hr Sunday, I suppose that gets you near or bumped out of your ‘3 is best’ group due to high volume?
I’ve been using the 2 hard workout/wk anytime I’ved had a TR plan - lets me have a long run on Saturday and then also a long Ride on Sunday - or just a long Ride on Saturday depending on the training goals.
This has made me change my next season to a 9 day rolling format instead of the ‘traditional’ 7. I feel this will allow me to recover enough to get more intense workouts in. I’m in my 50’s and hovering around 4.3/4.4 watts per kg, I have a goal of hitting 4.5 and hope this change may get me there. Doing the 2 intense workouts per 7 days feels not enough while 3 in 7 days is too much. I’d love to hear any other experiences of using a 9 day plans. It would also be great if TR could offer this as an option but realise this may be a huge undertaking given how a 7 day week is so ingrained!
I took from it that if you’re doing the longer rides bump it down to two Hard workouts per week.
Jonathan said it when training over 10 hour per week, i just took it as if doing longer rides during the weekend to back down the training two hard days.
I will have to have another listen, but have definitely heard the 9 day thing being suggested as an option for masters struggling with/wanting do more intensity and I’m sure he mentions it, albeit briefly. It may be that I’m searching for confirmation as my maths does seem to suggest an increase in overall intensity completed, by basing things on a 9 day week, furthermore I can see how I can make it fit my life!
I think a lot of people focus on 7-day weeks because it makes for easy scheduling for people who work regular/predictable hours, but from a training stimulus standpoint, weeks are obviously an arbitrary measure. A hard workout every other day seems like the correct answer, which would put you at 3.5 hard workouts per week / 7 hard workouts per 2 week period.
the problem with this approach is scheduling more than anything else.
Joe Friel mentions it in his book published in 2015.
I use 10 days cycles for training, it gives me more flexibility. i workout 6-7/10 days (runs,rides and strength).
I started training organically. No set week. I’d just do the next hard workout after I felt recovered which worked out to a harder workout every 3-4 days.
How do folks do anything other than a 7-day week in TR? Manually move workouts each week?
I work on shifts and use 10 day cycles . 2-3 runs , 2-3 ride and strength training. The way I do it it’s not perfect but it suits me very well. I create custom plan so I can use the toggle for intensity and to lower it or up it when life need its. After that i delete or insert AI workouts. If there are let’s say 5 rides in the plan for next 10 days I delete some of them and schedule them around my shifts. That is not perfect, it could not find better solution. Maybe TR has better answer.
I think the option to have adjust number of days in your Trainer Road training week would be a great feature. While I wait with crossed fingers for this, I plan to use the flexibility that TR gives; allowing you to move work outs around. I intend to set a plan in TR to guide the workouts I do so I maintain the progression through base, build and specialty. Unfortunately though, I think my calendar will be a lot less neat 
Also in my 50s, how many days do you have between hard sessions? Often a typical structure is Tuesday/thursday hard sessions then a long ride on Saturday then the rest zone 2.
For me, I’m trying to sort out whether I need 1 or 2 days between sessions. Ideally it might be hard sessions Monday and Thursday. The only downside there is an extra hard long ride on Saturday my still impact a Monday hard session.
For me it depending on the workout for needed rest days.
Threshold and below I do well with the one day rest.
Vo2 and Anaerobic efforts really beat me up and two days rest serves me better.
I’m only halfway through the podcast, and perhaps Jonathan addresses this later, but doesn’t volume need to be a central part of this conversation? There’s a massive difference between a 45–60 minute high-intensity session and a 90-minute one.
When comparing two versus three weekly intensity sessions, if total training volume stays the same and recovery needs are met, then three intensity sessions will almost always yield better results, but if dropping to two longer intensity sessions allows an athlete to increase their overall volume considerably, say by 30%, the trade-off becomes much more nuanced.
Your right it is, I have just focused on the 9 day cycle as a way to get 3 intense sessions in a shorter space of time than when using a 7 day cycle. Jonathan did mention this, albeit briefly. I think the difficulty I have is the days needed between intense sessions in order to recover and make the later session productive. If I do intensity Tues’, Thurs’ and Sat’ (as I could manage when even just a bit younger) the Thurs’ session feels too hard. While waiting to Saturday and filling the days in between with Z2 usually seems to long. I take your point about an increase in overall volume, but on those workdays in-between Tuesday and Saturday there is a limit to how much Z2 life allows. Some may be able to do so much Z2 that it makes up for just doing 2 intense workouts per week. Furthermore, I now feel I have so much riding ‘under my belt’ in my fifties, that the fitness that intensity gives is, more of a limiter and therefore it warrants me trying to leverage more in. Emphasis on trying at this stage, I’ll see how it goes! I appreciate your point though, and if I don’t see an improvement it may be that trying to up overall Z2 volume or quality of Z2 volume is the next thing to try.
I don’t know how anyone does anything other than a 7-day cycle. The weekends are the weekends: off work, your friends off work, most of the population off work; all that makes for a weekend vibe and usually is where the fun rides happen. Weekend rides can still contain intensity/volume and help improve overall fitness, of course.
(preface: I don’t do much indoor workouts)
Since I prioritize weekend rides, I find it tricky to do weekday dedicated training rides. What I do for workouts on the weekdays completely depends on what I did on the weekend. If a weekend got rained out, or I simply had other life plans, then that’s a low-volume weekend and I’ll try to schedule more intensity/duration workouts for the weekdays.
Since I prioritize weekend rides, scheduling workouts in particular for Thursday/Friday can be tricky too, as I don’t want to do SO much work that I start the weekend already tired. Thursday actually is great for any workout, with recovery on the Friday, but if Thursday gets rained out I have to be careful about planning a Friday workout. Occasionally I’ll do that anyway and decide to be ok with a low-vol weekend.
tl;dr: Weekend riding for the fun stuff. Try to schedule two hard workouts on the weekdays, preferably Tuesday and Thursday. Avoid consecutive hard workout days.
I’m in my late 50’s, so I’m physically and mentally feeling the need to balance work vs. recovery. My current goal is 1 hard ride per week, 1 hard run per week, a moderate ride (something like SS/low TH or a long tempo climb), and then easy/long rides and runs to fill in the gaps. I also usually get in a hike every week. This means my legs are often heavy, and if that’s the case on a day I was planning to go hard, I’ll shift the hard workout out to a different day. As a result, I’m rarely following a strict daily structure like I used to. Definitely a benefit of being retired.
Just noticed Joe Friel has a second edition of Fast after 50 out. In the prologue he says this.
Even now, at age 81, I continue to be fascinated by the topic of age and athletics which, once again, led to my interest in completely rewriting this book. Nothing remains the same in this all-new edition. It’s a complete rewrite. Not only is there much more research now on the topic of aging in sport, but the over-50 athlete has also changed. As I was researching for the first edition years ago, I found that many, if not most, of the training of over-50 athletes consisted of long, slow, easy workouts. That led me to write a book focused on including hard workouts in training. Now things appear to have changed again. Skip forward a decade, and 50-plus athletes are doing more high-intensity training than is necessary or beneficial. In talking with, consulting, and observing 50-plus athletes over the past few years, I’ve become aware of their “never-enough” 40-something attitude. This insight led to a complete rethinking of this book. In it I’ve tried to guide you to understand how balancing both easy and hard workouts brings out the best of an athlete’s potential. As I’ll explain on the following pages, too much emphasis on high-intensity training is counterproductive for athletic performance.
This is the hang up - no way to use TR to do a rolling 9 day schedule. Once they offer the ability to do it I would give it a try. As it is for me now trying to figure it out by myself is a non-starter.