Pretty good first week here, although I’m annoyed that RLGL is already freaking out, even with the slider all the way to the most aggressive setting. If it doesn’t catch up soon I might just turn it off.
I did run into a snag with my idea to use Runna for my runs: their triathlon plans are exactly 12 weeks long, no more, no less, so it won’t let me start it until mid-February. The app says I should do “another plan” in the meantime without offering any suggestions on which one, so for now I’m just gonna do TR’s runs since I’m in the base phase anyway
Because of my run injury I decided to do the Zwift FRR Stage Race in Watopia as an endurance block. Last race yesterday was Four Horseman route. Not bad values after 7 days (one rest day).
No thinking of how to get some value out of this ride? Because my PL’s are not up to date I guess without this ride ( but it is not structured ). I think it would be a good sweetspot ride because within the 3 hours I did 30min and 60min climbs at around 90% FTP. Should I make a custom workout? Or just leave it as it is?
I did a 10km / Oly plan, as I wanted to try a 10km PR before switching to 70.3 plan.
Worked well as I had got a good speed base to take into the 70.3 plan (although I did pick up my first run injury in three years, and had to miss a few key sessions in the first few weeks of the 70.3 plan)
Ive always used the bike only plans sweetspot base (as was), general build, 40k TT and build the swims and runs in, being careful to not to train each individually, but as an overall tri plan.
Have you completed a TR tri plan before. I haven’t in a while. My concern is that it will adapt my runs to the point there isn’t any progression. I just started a TR plan and after my first ride (this morning) it knocked my scheduled run (for tomorrow) to a recovery run. I am going to give it a couple build/recovery cycles (approximately 6 weeks) to try to figure me out. Hoping for the best.
I have, RLGL eventually does catch up. Last year it took a lot of work to get it to give me a red light, but I took a couple weeks off around New Year’s so it’s being more conservative than usual for me. In any case I take RLGL as informational, I don’t follow the adaptations if I feel I can do the workout without digging myself into a hole.
I have as well, and yes, it will catch up eventually. I think RLGL looks at something like your previous 6 week average TSS and then compares to what you are doing now. In that case, if you’ve had down time and jump into a plan it will think you’re overreaching constantly. Last year when I did my FD IM I listened to RLGL for the first several weeks. My plan had several weeks of me doing a 90 minute long run. Every week I got a red light from my long bike (saturday) wanting me to skip my long run (sunday). After a couple weeks of this I just ignored it and moved on. Eventually RLGL caught up. My concern was that I would get to the part of the plan where the long run was more than 90 minutes and I’d still be stuck at 90 minutes (or less) because I wasn’t keeping up. RLGL is a cool feature, but I’m not 100% convinced it works well for multisport, especially if you have a decent training background and just came off of some down time. FYI, for me downtime is still around 8 hours a week of training…
Thanks! My “base” or off season training is typically between 7-8 hours, and has been for a couple years. I took a week off over Christmas and then had the flu, so I had 10-14 days of minimal workouts. Hopefully it just takes a few weeks to figure me out.
Newbie here. My tri career so far is one sprint tri in March 2021 where (of course) I finished last and came out of the water bleeding with a split eyebrow.
Several similarities to @MrVivekB: I’m 53, male, and started cycling 2019, running 2021, swimming Q4 2024, and just making it to a starting line is already a win because work and family are massively unpredictable.
I’m at least 60 pounds overweight, but that used to be 80. I can run 10K’s and half marathon’s where I place in the bottom 2% or so, but again I used to be last. Very gradual but clear improvement.
Goals:
To be able to comfortably finish a sprint tri (2025).
Gradually increase speed until I’m out of the bottom third (2025-2026).
Add endurance until I can comfortably complete an Oly tri (2026).
Again add speed until I’m out of the bottom third (2027).
This year, hopefully I have two HM’s in March and May, then I’ll figure out how to run 2-3 sprint tris in the summer, and then the New York Marathon in November as a bucket-list item, though at this point I’m not very interested in long-distance stuff.
I expect most of what y’all discuss in this thread will be over my head, but I’ll hang around and learn stuff.
I was wrong about this. It gave me another yellow light last night after a single workout this week, so I checked in settings and the slider had somehow reset itself to the middle setting (“balanced”). Worth double-checking y’all’s settings if you’re getting tons of yellow or red lights.
Whilst initially I saw a load of reds and yellows, I played with the settings, but eventually chose to go back to “balanced”. All it really took was some consistency and allowance for recovery, so better organisation rather than reducing load, if you like. At least in my case.
A 100 TSS ride will usually trigger a yellow, which is fine and makes sense that I should just spin the legs the next day.
My regular tuesday night club runs don’t, because it’s been every Tuesday for years and riding the next day is okay.
That’s interesting. I wasn’t sure if race ranger would ever trickle down to us age groupers. I like how they want to differentiate between the competitive racers from the general entry group. If they are able to meet their goal in the last sentence, “for the general entry group the focus can be more on safety and their enjoyment of the event, with better live tracking providing a more engaging spectator experience for their supporters.” that will be a huge win.
Two tier system undermining the principle of everyone pro to bop racing the same race. I think they have to have the whole field as an end state myself. I can’t stand sweating it in aero only to find thirty people were drafting me when I sit up at a hill.
I agree, having people draft me is annoying. Maybe I am so use to seeing it on IM70.3 courses I am numb to it.
I feel like we already have tiered races/systems. We all should follow the same rules. However, I would phrase it that we are all racing the same course, we are not racing the same race. I typically finish a 70.3 in just over 5 hours. It’s an ok time, but not definitely not at the pointy end of the age groupers. My race dynamics are very different from the pros, which are different than someone leading the age groupers out onto the bike, which are different than the person finishing in 7+ hours. I guess I am ok with having different sets of technology for different racers. IM already lets you wear a wet suit in non-wet suit temperatures, but you are not eligible for age group awards.
Maybe in a few years race as the technology gets built out it does work for all racers (which would be cool). Or maybe organizers say you are only eligible for age group awards/qualification for world championships if you were using race ranger (or something similar).
