I’m just 2 weeks into my first TR custom plan for above event in late March 2025. The program has me only doing 4 hours a week right up until the event. This just doesn’t sound right to me. I need more time in the saddle than that for a 6 hour event! Am I missing something here? Why the incredibly low volume for a high volume event?? I guess I will follow the plan but will also include my own long IRL rides.
Probably can find some help in this thread:
TR suggesting low volume…
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You can choose your available hours in the custom plan builder now. I don’t know your training history but you may want to consider a higher volume plan. Or if your availability is limited… you can turn it into a “masters plan” and do one long endurance ride in place of intensity. What people have done in the past is supplement with outdoor endurance riding. Now you can put in outdoor rides when you set up you plan.
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Hey there and welcome to the TR community!
Plan Builder recommends a training plan based on your recent training history. I checked out your TR account to get an idea of what your riding has looked like lately, and it seems like about 4 hours per week is a good starting point.
If you immediately jumped into higher volume than what you’ve been doing recently, it would likely be too much volume/stress too quickly, which frequently results in excess fatigue and burnout. Plan Builder is trying to present you with a plan that’s sustainable.
As you progress through your plan, your overall stress will increase as you advance your Progression Levels and complete more challenging workouts.
You can also certainly sub in longer Endurance rides into your plan when you have the time available to do so. Here are some tips on adding volume to your plan:
Just be aware of how those longer rides affect your recovery and subsequent workouts. Red Light/Green Light can be a helpful tool to use for monitoring your training stress.
Hope that helps clear things up – feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions!
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In my experience (going on year 3 with TrainerRoad) 4 hours a week of TrainerRoad is more than enough for a 6 hour event. I’ve done 9-13 hour events on 4-6 hours a week.
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In my experience with a few years of TrainerRoad and doing these types of events, I’d say it’s probably enough to complete the event but I wouldn’t say I found it to be optimal training. I have found that if I largely lean on TrainerRoad that I don’t do as well as I had hoped, and that friends who did the same event but did more actual miles and training saw bigger improvements over their training period through to the event.
Using TR for midweek workouts and investing in actual long rides on weekends worked for me. TR becomes part of the training and not the other way around.
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Thanks, that sounds sensible. I did a group ride today instead of my scheduled TrainerRoad workout. I added the group ride to my calendar last night, and this morning, my actual ride uploaded. Now, my calendar shows both the completed group ride and the scheduled one. Should I delete the scheduled group ride, ignore it, or mark it as complete/incomplete? Thank you
Completing and competing is very different and cycling is very very hard to excel at without volume.
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Just ignore it.
I’ve found the ‘associate the group ride’ and connected the two rides that way.
Thanks, will look into this.
Welcome to the forums 
Two reasons;
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Volume is not measured in time alone. Riding and structured training can’t be compared with any relevance when you only use hours to do it.
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You don’t need a maximum dose of training for the outcome, you need the optimal training to achieve the best improved fitness you can achieve. The outcome will follow.
In short, you’ll be fine on TR recommendations.
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nonsense, time/duration is still a factor and time volume is still paramount for training. someone training for a 6hr even should at least be able to do 6hrs of riding in a week, and I’d argue that at some point getting in at least a 4hr ride would be super beneficial in preparation. Are we at a point where we’re actively discouraging people from doing a helpful volume of work?
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I would much rather an athlete do more volume if they have the time rather than less. Starting out 4 hours is fine and I am sure you can get into good enough shape to finish the event on 4h but if you have the time why not use it?
Doing more volume on the bike is only going to make you stronger. Volume is one of the biggest drivers of performance improvement so it makes no sense to constrain that if you don’t have to.
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I guess the question is whether the plan changes and increases hours as you go. Maybe there is a setting where you picked a low volume plan or that all you have is 4 hours per week?
Personally, I would ride more endurance. I’d be putting in 3+ hour rides on the weekend at least every other week. They key is to go easy and just go for time in the saddle. Maybe some weekends you do 3+3 hours? Or, do a 4 or 5 hour ride one Sunday. It’s all a balance of how much time you have and what you want to do.
All that said, I did a 5.5 hour gravel fondo last year. Almost all my training was indoors and most of my rides were an hour because of winter weather. My longer rides were 1.5-2 hours and not that many of them. With proper fueling, I did totally fine on this 5.5 hour ride. I even got the flu 3 weeks before.
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How are the 1980s?
You’re welcome to your opinions obvs but the more modern industry view is as I’ve described.
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Huh? I would love to see some sort of reasoning that doing less volume is better.
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Personally speaking I don’t trust the new plan builder for this type of event. There’s some good advice in this thread about AUDAX , whilst not exactly the same as a Gran Fondo (much less of a race focus) there’s some good points about volume and how people used TR for their training.
There’s an awful lot more to riding that sort of time and distance than just knocking out a couple of sweetspot and over/unders workouts each week, time out on the bike helps prepare you mentally for your long ride, you’ll learn what works (and doesn’t) nutrition wise, a bike that feels okay for an hour on the trainer is a different beast after a few hours climbing hills and indoors you’re not having to carry food, spares, clothing etc.
I’d aim to build up a long ride each weekend until you get up to about the 4 hour point, after that it’s arguable whether you are gaining much more that will help you progress and you are just accumulating extra fatigue, maybe aim for 2/3rds of the distance a few weeks before your event, just for mental preparation / confidence.
I wouldn’t worry too much about progression levels and all that jazz, being consistent in getting a couple of interval sessions in each week and then increasing your volume with zone 2/endurance riding will see you fine.
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The 80s feel pretty great, I have power PRs in nearly every duration and I added almost 50 watts to my power from 2 hours to 10 hours.
Anyway, the TR Team already posted this link about adding volume: How to Safely Add Volume to a Training Plan
You can do it AND make it progressive. Do a long ride every Sunday or whatever, add 30-60min each time, keep it shorter on your rest weeks. Go EASY! Not 75% of FTP, try 60%. Use these rides to figure out your nutrition for long events.
If the long endurance rides are causing issues with your interval days you’re riding endurance too hard.
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I noticed this about the new custom plan builder as well. Last year my days were T, Th, Saturday, Sunday. My hard weekend ride (Threshild or VO2Max) was 90 minutes on Saturday and my long endurance ride was 2 hours on Sunday. This year everything is the same except the Sunday ride is 45 minutes. I went in and tried editing the my Sunday ride to be 2 hour and it said that was probably too much. It would only let me bump Sunday up to 1:15 without complaining. I can’t imagine rolling into the racing season having never ridden more than 90 minutes (My seson starts in February with a 3-day stage race), so I will modify my Sunday ride to build up to 2.5-3 hours.
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