I am riding the rock cobbler on Feb 10, 90 Miles, and currently enrolled in the Gran Fondo training plan. The week of the event I am schedule for a threshold workout on Tuesday and a Vo2 max workout on Thursday which is two days prior to the event. Does this seem excessive or is this normal to do a harder workout two days prior to the event? The event was scheduled as an “A” event.
As an outside guess, it could be similar to another person’s experience:
TL:DR, it could be a combo of issues related to your overall training plan length and the “Experience” selection you made driving AT to trim phases down to fit the time allowed.
1 Like
What PLs are those workouts? Maybe they are just touching those zones?
2 Likes
Threshold 5.7 and vo2 max 4.9. My training has been going well and I presume I will actually be above those PLs, especially coming off a rest week two weeks prior.
It just seems odd to not taper prior to an A event. I would almost prefer to skip the rest week, power through, and taper 1-1.5 weeks prior to the event. I did change the plan from sweet spot from another format to the Trainer Road gran Fondo plan on Jan 1. I assume that is where the issue stems.
Maybe more relevant, what’s the duration/TSS of the scheduled workouts? A ~30 min. effort might make sense as part of a taper, but a full hour+ would probably not.
See Chad’s response; it seems like TR plan builder is bad at tapers, and might adapt as you approach the event (or might not.) If you don’t want to try re-making your plan at a different experience level as suggested, I’d reach out to TR help. I had a similar issue and they manually fixed it.
Thank you for the response. Yeah, they are 1 hour workouts. Likely more TSS than I would want. The day after the event the plan calls for a 2 hour endurance 4.0 ride. I have a feeling I won’t feel like doing anything that next day.
Does the current plan actually place you officially in a Specialty Phase?
If I’m understanding the question correctly, Yes. The Gran Fondo specialty.
In your calendar, find your A-event and then work back up to find the annotation showing the phase that is closest to your event. Open that and you will see the precise definition to be sure you are actually in a Gran Fondo Specialty phase leading to that event.
Depending on the Experience selected and time to your event, it’s possible that you are not actually in the Specialty phase and could be in Build phase.
Yup. Gran Fondo. Mid volume. Thanks Chad for your insight. I’m contacting the team.
2 Likes