For now, we still advise everyone to answer post-workout surveys as naturally as you can without overthinking it too much.
Here are our “official” definitions from our Support Article on the subject:
How to Rate Your Effort
Easy
This ride felt easy and non-taxing, requiring little effort or focus. You could repeat the ride and pass it without issue.
Moderate
This ride was somewhat comfortable but required some focus to complete. You felt a little challenged but had confidence that you could finish. If the ride had an additional set of intervals, you could complete it.
Hard
This ride required effort and focus and was challenging to complete. This will feel tough and you’ll look forward to this ride ending. If there was an additional interval, you could have done it with some focus.
Very Hard
This ride was very difficult to complete. This ride tested you. If there would have been one more interval, you wouldn’t have been able to do it.
All Out
This ride was extremely difficult. It pushed me well beyond my abilities and took a massive amount of energy and focus to complete. You’ll feel like you barely made it to the end of this ride, and that you had to pull out every mental trick in the book to finish.
Keep in mind that backpedaling/extra rest/decreasing the workout %/drops in power/etc. would fall into what we’d call “All Out” (barely making it to the end of the ride/pulling mental tricks) – you don’t have to be lying on the ground puking!!
100% this. If FTP is set correctly, it doesn’t matter what the subjective feedback is, this is not a workout that should be given to anyone by an algorithm (it should only be given by a coach with very specific rationale, if at all).
Don’t justify it by saying TR algorithms are replacing a coach, because this is exactly how you burn people out, which makes them slower, not faster, if they don’t quit the sport completely.
TR, purposely or not, puts on the blinders by saying their plans make people faster if they comply. However, taking out non-compliers also takes out people they burned out. To be fair, there’s also many people who just didn’t ride for other reasons. But I think TR plans / algorithms focus too much on volume and individual sessions, but not enough on quality training and keeping the athlete healthy.
For the sake of clarity, I’d like to point out that @hubcyclist chose the workout at 105% that they did on their own – they weren’t served that workout by Adaptive Training.
Depending on the goals an athlete has and the details they enter into Plan Builder, 105% FTP workouts may very well be appropriate. They’re hard efforts, no doubt – but it may be necessary to train that sort of fitness depending on the type of race an athlete is targeting.
We advise athletes to adhere to their plan as closely as possible because that is how athletes get faster. Too much extra volume or “extracurricular” activities (like group rides) may pile on too much additional stress that then detracts from their overall plan. I think it would be fair to say that’s true regardless of whether an athlete is using TrainerRoad or if they’re being trained personally by a coach.
We would argue that nailing a tough 105% FTP workout at the right time in a training plan is quality training that will make athletes faster.
Adaptive Training helps guide athletes along during their training plan so they can come into these hard workouts prepared and knock ‘em out. These workouts will adapt to athletes’ current fitness levels so they get an appropriately challenging workout for where they are in their plan.
I have the same gravel grinder (in-season) hilly plan - along with 4 other plans. I did see a crazy bump in fitness in 2021 following a few of the plans, but they ultimately burned me out. the super threshold efforts are the ticket
I’ve got Mt Hale +4 queued up for thursday. 4 x 9 @105% with 2 minutes rest between intervals. With a properly set FTP, that’s a stupidly tough workout and only rated as a 6.2. I’m in my specialty phase and I’ve ignored a couple small suggested FTP increases, so maybe the system is really wanting me to train like my FTP is higher even when I know it’s not…
Anyway, I have less of an issue with the workout existing, more of an issue that it’s only rated 6.2. It’s basically 36 minutes straight of 105% with 3 very short rest intervals. 105% is where you’d be doing a 20minute FTP test, so it’s reflective of an absolute max 20 minutes effort(after an quick anaerobic purge). If you are seeing stars and about to die at the end of a single 20 minute effort, I don’t see how 36 minutes at 105% is only a 6.2 rating.
Interesting timing for this thread to come back around. On Tuesday I had 7 minute intervals at 105% on my schedule. I’ve been rehabbing from an injury, so have been sticking to Threshold and below and the 105% seemed a bit daunting to me (not injury related, fitness related)
I woke up feeling fit and fresh so decided to try it instead of switching to an equal PL threshold with lower and longer intervals. Went fine and I could’ve done a fifth interval, which was a pleasant surprise
Haven’t done much training at that % - usually I do longer intervals closer to threshold (102%) or shorter intervals further above it (108-110%) to hit related zones.
105% is a strange area to train - I imagine most of us will end up in VO2 territory relatively quickly there and frankly, having done 28 minutes there it feels like I can probably bump my FTP upwards a bit
Reading this topic, I just don’t get what the big deal is about 105%. Some people act like it’s a death ride.
I have my FTP conservatively set using a long KM 45 minute test. I can tell you that I could barely feel the difference between a 7 minute interval at my FTP and one 10 watts higher. It’s just not a big deal at all. Maybe if I were extra tired, it would feel hard? I don’t even hit my threshold heart rate doing 7 minutes at FTP.
Now, maybe 105% sucks big time if your FTP is over stated?
I did. Isn’t this what you signed up for? You should be loving it!
(I was responding more to the comments than your original post.) People get psyched out before the workout just looking at it.
People, give a stretch workout a try or just switch it out. It’s ok to back off to 100% or 90% if it’s not working. It’s ok to not do the last interval. It’s ok. It’s all training.
I saw that 105% thing problem on my calendar before. I was around threshold PL of 5 and vo2max PL of 3 at the start of specialty phase(century lv). What I saw on calendar was 105% threshold 10min interval(maybe one of rubicon series) on monday and 105? 106%? same power vo2max interval of 3 or 4 minute. Those records are wiped out because of my vacation annotation, but that’s what I remember. What is threshold workout? What is vo2max workout? That was confusing.
To me, I feel like there’s some steep RPE wall around threshold WL 5. When workout level was lower then 5, 105% interval length is like 6min(ex. TH4.6 Stevens) and it’s hard but doable. As it progress into WL 5, interval length become 8 to 10 min and after workout, I would end up very-hard or all-out survey. AT can make adjustment after I hit “all-out” on the survey, but maybe… workout level tweak on TR side maybe needed for those longer supra threshold intervals as it looks like extend TTE at supra threshold range seems hard one. Tweaking like… extend interval length to 6.5min at Threshold WL 5, not like 8min(TH5.2, Dicks -2) nor 10min(TH5.3, Rubicon -2)
Sorry for my poor English, but hope my message crosses.
