As I needed to focus on non-bike life since begin of this year, I comitted to TR. So few focus hours on the trainer per week and done.
I only diverged on few weekend club rides (which TR FTP prediction doesnt like, as they are too hard for my fitness) and the occasional winter sick week.
Still, It brought my decayed FTP from 275’ish back to ~300w by now. A number, given it’s somehow real, I usually had to invest 10+ hours weekly in past years to achieve and hold. Not bad!
But now I just had a rather grounding reality check during a recovery week.
3 easy endurance workouts. I did the first one, all good. the second one I had to skip due to things. So, I thought I would make up for it and keep FTP prediction happy by chosing a longer one for Sunday: “walker”, 2h @215w.
Long story short, after 1.5h I was completely done and could barely hold 200w anymore.
So, I guess all those 1h SS and OU workouts are great for excelling at exatly that: Going hard for 1h and stop.
Do you have similar experiences? If so, how do you deal with that?
I have some long group rides coming up over spring and summer and I am doubting now heavily if I should continue like this next week or rather change my training radically.
I wouldn’t change anything, nor judge the effectiveness of your training strategy based on the outcome of one workout alone. Could be many things and sometimes you have a bad day.
If it becomes a pattern though, that might be a cause for investigation.
TR has always advised to not make up work for skipping rides.
That said, you should be plenty capable of longer endurance rides. Maybe you were fatigued or under fueled on the day. Maybe your ftp is inflated and you were working at a higher percentage than intended.
Just do an easier endurance rides next time you long ride. If you’re ever doing an endurance ride and RPE gets too high you can just lower power. The point of these rides is time not power anyway.
My $.02 from what I experience.
TR is going to tax your body to the max, that it can, to improve your on the bike fitness. When you deviate by doing some extra it’s not going to be pretty. To get ready for those long group rides, they need to be in your plan. TR "should"and I say “should” account for that . I would add some group rides to your calendar to see how AI adjusts. If that’s not working I would skip a hard workout the week of your group ride. I find group rides tend to be hard even if they are “no drop rides” .
There are plenty of comments from life long riders exceeding lifetime FTP in a short space of time. Assuming your FTP is inflated then those higher % / duration Z2 will expose that.
In my experience Z2 is like any other zone and needs to be trained. An inflated FTP off 3 or 4 hours per week does not automatically mean I can ride for 3 or 4 hours @ 70% of that FTP.
I still loosely adhere to periodisation and each season will have 2 or 3 months high volume / low intensity. I find TR fantastic for a 6 or 7 month base / build / peak but unsustainable to continue intervals year round.
That’s what I would think. It’s a gravel plan, so I trust it prepares me for 4+ hours of riding. Now I can’t hold 70% of my FTP for 1.5h after a full week of rest.
Thank’s for all the suggestions, but I am not gonna start guessing if my FTP is inflated or not or add any workouts myself in the hope to improve things. Something is clearly not working out and outdoor events are coming up soon.
If nobody has any better idea I will put the brakes next week and start something else.
Without seeing what your plan is giving you every week it’s hard to judge it too harshly. I would counter that by saying that I find what works best for me (I ride a lot of audax rides) is just two interval sessions per week, which I do mid-week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I keep these to 60-75mins in length, and then I ride long and steady at the weekends.
If the weekend has rubbish weather, I’ll sub one long ride for a shorter sweetspot workout but still aim to get outside, even if that means getting wet, for a longer ride on the other day. I personally feel that the TR plans are quite light on volume, which I understand given they are aimed at indoor riders, but at least one decent long, steady paced ride each week will probably see you right.
I’d recommend you to keep the TR plan but do the TR workouts outside after 60 to 90 min of Z2 endurance extending your rides over 2.5 to 3h to work on durability
It’s not TR’s fault. And it’s not yours either… life stuff happened and you had to shift your time and focus on other stuff. It happens. As you build consistency and more time on the bike the endurance will come back.
That said, TR can be conservative with long endurance rides in my experience. I mean I don’t want to be on the trainer for hours and hours, so it makes sense. Just add in longer weekend rides outdoors with dynamic endurance when you can. I bet your endurance will see a nice boost in no time.
The same every single TR plan I ever attempted gave me as well: 3 workouts a week, 2xSS / 1xOU’s and later 1xSS / 1xOU’s / 1x VO2m.
Did anyone ever got something else?
Reading between the lines of all your posts I seem to be the only one who just did what TR asked for, e.g. without adding extra stuff on top.
I guess that answers my core question pretty well and given that I am not up for manual modifications nor self-coaching I will go with something else. Thank’s all!
It’s always been a quandry. 4-5 hour rides build some fantastic durability and endurance but I usually don’t want to be on a bike for that long. Three hours is usually plenty for me.
72% for endurance is also on the stiff side. You can do long hours in the saddle at 50-60% with good results. My theory is that it’s more about the total time in the saddle and not the intensity.
TR sets your FTP so that your workouts at a ~3.0PL threshold have a low probability of failure (~2.5%). It knows you can do higher PL workouts at that FTP, but they’ve decided that the benefit of prescribing those isn’t worth the downside of a higher potential failure rate.
It looks like from your calendar that you’re trying some stuff that wasn’t prescribed and may be a bit too hard for you right now.
Stick with the detected FTP and prescribed workouts. You can still progress nicely and more sustainably without the tightrope act of trying workouts so close to your limits.
I wouldn’t take too much from 1 ride, but the reality is yes, at 3-4 hours per week, you likely have fragile fitness.
Meaning your ftp is likely accurate, but your durability and ability to extend rides is going to be difficult. Treat long rides as A events. Have some extra rest and be on top of nutrition. 70% of ftp might be a stretch for these. I would start closer to 60% . And make sure you recover after these, even though they are endurance, it is going to be a big day considering your normal week.
I refer to this as brittle fitness, anytime I have done low volume 3/4 hours a week, I can keep my FTP up, I am good for short stuff, commuting, 1 hour workouts, but if I go ride for a couple of hours+ with friends, I am on a timer before I blow.
For me I have to do long rides to build my durability for how I like to ride in the wild (2+ hours).
Thank you, I suppose that’s where I am. A 3h/week “gravel plan” might work for some, but obvioisely not for me. I was BS’ing myself with the fact that my FTP was nicely climbing up. And by that I overlooked that lots of mates from my club, while not “training” at all and rather just riding on the weekend (but here maybe 4+4h) have way better endurance than myself.
Well, was worth I try I guess. Back to basics…
It isn’t one or the other, its about using your total time for Training, even with building to a solid 8hr of weekend riding, should still be able to sneak in two short TR workouts, also you can always swap one of those out for a longer midweek ride with some workout component. Like for me I might go out and do a few sets of 30/30’s (or do it in the basement) and then go out for an easy spin for an hour or two with my wife. Or do hard workout in morning and then easy spin with friends at night.
I have found good success with just two hard workouts a week (Tu/Thur) and then endurance ride on Sunday on trainer or outside (or sometimes both back to back).
If you have 8-12hrs you would like to train… doesn’t mean you should just be doing a 3hr/week plan only. Especially if you have a background of high volume training already.