I think it’s fair to say that TR has gotten some heat in the past about starting plans with workouts that are too easy. I’ve found that to be the case and I’d typically just pick an alternate workout that I thought would be a decent starting point (but still pretty easy). And then TR would do a nice job of adjusting workouts going forward based on my survey responses. All good, but the system didn’t seem to consider recent riding/efforts to figure out how hard the initial workouts should be.
I recently built my plan for 2026 (starts next Monday) and saw that TR had initially queued up a really easy (1.5) sweet spot workout for me (as expected). That was cool and I just planned to bump it up to a medium-hard alternate (maybe a 5 or so). But after my morning ride today (just a zwift ride, not a TR workout), TR told me I had adaptations pending and it was replacing the sweet spot 1.5 with a sweet spot 8.6 (2x30x94%). Honestly, I’m not sure I’m ready mentally or physically to jump into water that deep yet (I haven’t done a structured workout since July).
TBD whether I’ll try that sweet spot workout or not, but clearly TR has some new/improved decision making going on in the background. I assume it’s looking at some of my recent rides (today’s ride was a pretty big effort) and is making changes based on that. In the past, I don’t think it considered non-TR rides to dictate future workouts besides looking at overall training load and also for AIFTP calc. Maybe I’m wrong on that, but that’s how it appeared to me.
Not sure if this is a byproduct of the new stuff that’s coming soon or if it’s already been there a while, I haven’t been on a TR plan since last summer. But it looks like a big step in the right direction if it’s able to look at unstructured history and use that to shape TR workout suggestions. I guess another possibility is that it’s looking at prior years for me and getting an idea of what level I can start with. Either way, it’s nice to see the improvement in the system. I haven’t really been keeping up with what’s coming in the new changes, but excited to play around with them once available.
Agree. I resubbed at the beginning of the year, and have already been doing my own structured plan since November. I was expecting the usual case of being prescribed way too short and easy workouts, but have been pleasantly surprised. It challenged me from my first interval day and has been frequent increases for every workout since. In less than a week or so, I am well up in the WLs. Happy to see these improvements. Now if they would just let me into Beta……
meh, it isn’t that aggressive. Anyone with an accurately assessed ftp should be able to do 60min time in zone right off the bat, if not 2x30 at least with 3x20. I was going to do 2x20 on tuesday this past week but was roped into doing a zwift ttt with my club, ended up at like 50min averaging 90% and NP 93%, did 3x20 yesterday, and essentially will add 10min tiz to each subsequent workout of this block. it isn’t rocket surgery.
I just started a new plan after doing my own 6 weeks of base and I’d say it is continuing the progression pretty seamlessly. I set my availability during the week to 1 hour workouts and it did suggest a 1.25 hour session which I accepted and completed. One thing that I noticed so far is that the intervals are pretty standard, for example 2x20, 5 x 10, etc which I really like.
For the first time in a couple of years I’m excited to train and body willing, adapt to the workouts.
If you are saying everyone should be able to knock out 60’ at FTP (or 2x 30’) the first week of the season with basically zero proper training leading into it, we can agree to disagree. At the risk of devolving into an FTP definition debate, it does depend on your definition of FTP. For me, FTP is not synonymous with 1 hour power (which has little relevance when not trained IMO), I prefer the physiological marker of lactate steady state.
If I tried to knock out an hour straight at my FTP right now, there is zero chance to make it through before my legs would be cramping. I guess we’re all built differently, but even when I’ve got OK aerobic fitness, I still need to ease into things to get the legs ready for hard work. This past week was basically just pushing a bunch of Kj’s through my legs to get things ready to start training (old knees and hips take some time to get rolling again). That included a 4 hour 300tss (3600kj) tempo ride at .85IF yesterday, but tempo is always my happy place and I tend to maintain that zone during the off season to keep some base fitness around. But tempo is not the same physiological stress as pushing to the upper limits of sweet spot or into threshold (at least for me).
Even when fit during the season, knocking out 2x30’@94% is a legit workout. Not crazy, but legit. Making that the first workout of the season after not doing a single interval or proper training for 6+ months is bordering on crazy in my mind, but it’s probably an emotional motivation thing as much as anything.
and my experience this year is the opposite. I have a coach that I mostly use (he tends to use TR workouts or very similar) but in downtime I have signed up for trainer road (and have also in the past) to give him a break when I am less concerned about specificity and just need my base. What I am getting from TR is much easier or shorter than I typically would have. It’s serving a purpose though. I am itching to get back to “real” work again.
I took that as referring to 2x30 at sweet spot. If it was 2x30 at 90% - I think 60 minutes TiZ is reasonable, but those 4% extra watts matter for me and earlier in the season that’s going to be tougher.
I did actually do 1x60 minutes at 94% out on the road after I got back home after Leadville, took a couple weeks off then started building some volume again (September). It was a hard effort, but doable if you’re carrying that type of fitness. Not sure I’ve ever had an hour in me at FTP, I train a lot at Sweet Spot and Tempo, but have never pushed Threshold that hard.
Curious to see how TR goes for you this year with Unbound and Leadville on the calendar.
I knocked it out today and it was surprisingly manageable. I jumped in a tour de zwift stage to help pass the time. Plenty of aerobic fitness, just the legs twinging a bit at ~45 minutes but the cramps never came. After completing it, TR adapted my Thursday threshold workout up as well, so I guess there’s no easing into things this year.
Still surprised to how aggressive things are starting, but I’ll run with it as long as I’m feeling OK. I add a lot of Z2 work on top of the scheduled TR interval workouts, so I end up with quite a bit more TSS than what TR is serving up.
TrainerRoad has indeed changed things It now looks beyond just Workout Levels, factoring in your fitness, recent training, and overall trends to pick the right workout for you that day.
When a workout looks different from what you might expect, like the Sweet Spot 8.6, based on past recommendations, it’s reflecting a broader view of your current fitness and capabilities. This supports consistent, high-quality training, and that’s exactly what helps you get faster!
Normally we encourage athlete’s to try it and see how it goes, and it looks like it went well for you
No I meant like 90%, so if FTP TTE is, say, 40min, 60min tiz for sweet spot should be minimally achievable. But my personal rules of thumb for sweet spot is that intervals need to be at least 15min in duration and as an absolute floor of 40min for time in zone. Anything less than that I feel like just masks inaccurate assessment of FTP, in my opinion
I’ve got to be doing something wrong. I’ve never been assigned a workout longer than 1.5 hours… and that is on a weekend.
I’ve had the slider in the middle or one more aggressive.
I’ve always set my plan for XCO
I do not choose masters, even though I’m old (52)
This season I moved the slider to ‘Demanding’
The only thing I can say is the workout are more aggressive with the new AI.
I had the exact same thing happen to me. I just started the plan on 12th of January and then on the 11th a day before It wen up to 5.0 workout as well, after that workout the next workout(Z2) went down and the Thursday workout went up to 5.0 as well. It also upgraded my Threshold workout on Saturday as well. I blame it all to a few years ago when every body was complaining that the workouts were too hard and they couldn’t finish them. That is when they revamped SS training and then it went from 6 week cycle to a 4 week cycle. After that move I noticed all the training plans were much easier.
Have you set the max duration for your endurance rides to longer than 90 minutes?
Not sure if this just the new AI features,but you can choose dynamic endurance and set the maximum time to xx, for example 2½ hours and the AI will determine the length of ride you need.
I think that’s beta stuff. If not, I’d love to hear more. My “dynamic endurance” is adding more Z2 rides until I get tired and/or I slide into a yellow day (or high risk zone in intervals.icu). Those rides aren’t TR workouts, just free rides that are uploaded into the system.
And for what it’s worth, I was able to knock out my first threshold over/under session yesterday, but it was right at my limit (much harder than the sweet spot). Marked it “very hard” and it still ticked up next week’s threshold workout, but just slightly. Hoping next week feels a little more manageable.
Both of these week 1 interval workouts were pretty close to appropriate IMO, maybe just a little too much on the O/U’s. A big improvement over what the system would have recommended previously.
I don’t have access to any of the new / beta stuff yet, but every time I’ve tried to create a plan to test things out it wouldn’t come close to the volume I was currently doing. In fact, if I do adjust it such that the hours and TSS are close to what I’m actually doing at the moment, it always gave me the overtraining warning….
I’m one of the weird cases though - still working with a coach and all my workouts are custom (but for the most part, really simple and straightforward), but also still a TR subscriber. At some point I’ll go back to TR and Self Coaching, but I’ve kept getting faster every year and at least for this year I’m still committed to prioritizing the bike, so been hard to argue with progress.
3 more weeks of base work for me before the beatings really begin…
OP was prescribed a 8.6 SS ride. Even a 2x30m @ 84% is 4.9 (Spruce), that’s pretty intense for someone that’s just getting back into training. Seems to me the plan is way too aggressive.
It now looks beyond just Workout Levels, factoring in your fitness, recent training, and overall trends to pick the right workout for you that day.
