TR not for "serious" amateurs?

[OreoCookie]

@Crosshair

You were probably ignoring signs that told you that but chose to dig yourself further into a hole in the name of following a plan.

In my case the signs were very subtle, basically an unusually low heart rate during exercises. I thought this was a sign of increased fitness rather than a bigger amount of fatigue. Plus, I have been able to cope with this amount of training and stress for >= 3 years. @kurt.braeckel (who is a coach) really helped me and I followed his advice.

I don’t think this would have been an easy thing to catch for any type of software-only solution. This is a situation where exchanging with others and/or having a coach pays off. Hey, that’s why I am active in the forum

@Crosshair

But it is an extremely rigid training plan designer/virtual coach on the other.

Extremely rigid compared to what? Compared to having a coach?

@Crosshair

Neither train now or subtle variations in the form of workout alternatives address the days you either want to add unstructured intensity (and therefore maybe tomorrows vo2’s become unwise) or are feeling below par and should really skip some intensity or switch to an endurance/recovery ride or day off.

I’m really confused: when I encounter this for any reason, I just manually move, add and delete workouts as I see fit. E. g. I got my 4th Covid shot this Wednesday and predictably felt under the weather on Thursday. So I moved this morning’s workout (a threshold workout) to tomorrow and deleted tomorrow’s endurance ride. (I will still do an endurance ride, because I need to go to my LBS to have my STI levers replaced.)

If I want to or need to take days off, I add an annotation to my training plan and AT will adapt my plan accordingly. That also works after the fact. Done that many times already.

How is that “extremely rigid”? I have easily been able to accommodate the situations you have mentioned in your post. What more do you want? Do you want all of this to be completely automated?

@Crosshair

Which means a plan flexible enough to cater for my reality. Nate said on the podcast yesterday that people should take a day off V doing something non-TR so they’re fresh enough to hit the next workout.

I’m lost: what do you mean by “your reality”?

@Crosshair

So the way TR can add longevity for experienced cyclists is to do a trade with us. Give up some control/outright performance and write a fuzzier plan that starts with our reality (the specific number of days, hours and weekly group rides I want to do) and adds whatever it can on top to make me a faster cyclist.
Telling people who want to ride 6 days a week that they’d be better off riding 3 and adding 3 days of recovery is a big turn off. Especially for those of us who use the bike to feel better mentally and as calorie control.

TR expects you to be an adult and know what you want. And IMHO it does offer plenty of options for people.

• If you want to train occasionally, and structure is not important, use TrainNow.
• If you want to go on group rides or thrash yourself on a weekend ride, but you want to train a little, because being fast is fun, then opt for a low-volume plan. Replace the weekend ride with your unstructured weekend ride. Two workouts per week, and you can ride as much as you can recover from.
• People who love training can pick from a ton of plans which are then adapted by AT and themselves.
• For anyone in between, it seems to me you can find a solution that balances fun and training (unless training is fun, then you balance between fun and fun ).