hmm, the zwift races were baked into the plan (replacing a VO2 workout with the race), the commutes are all <30 minutes, usually 5-10 TSS. Assumed since there’s ~2 years of commuting data backed into the log it would be able to factor in that minimal addition. I tried backing down the plan all the way to “moderate”, but that resulted in an ever greater decrease than balanced/demanding.
My Monday rest day I never do anything demanding on (at most 2 commutes to the grocery store, ~10 minutes, HR in recovery zone, no PM on shitty commuter but from feel <50% ftp).
On the recovery weeks I just follow what TR prescribes, try to keep off-bike activity lowkey. Eg. this past recovery block I went for a gentle hike, learned how to XC ski, neither particularly intense/long days.
In my early 20’s with a non-demanding white collar job, few obligations to distract from training / recovering properly.
Is the bottom line that you’re asking how to set up your plan so that your FTP increases in the Specialty phase? If so, I would try to change the way you think about this phase. Specialty is meant to hone your skills towards the event that would typically occur at the end of the phase. It often means an increase in the specific intensity your event will focus on, but also decrease volume to try to keep you fresh going into the event. All that to say your FTP very well may not go up and might even drop a bit. It’s not a phase aimed at increasing FTP. I’m not sure how the new AI manages this, but historically, a lot of people without a specific event would just skip Specialty and do base/build/base/build…
I think this fact gets even more obscured by the lure of trying to game the FTP detection at the end of the phase!
It’s not clear if @chrishtatu has a specific event as a goal or not; even if not, I think the specialty phase still has value - given the past 8 weeks have seen a 50 watt increase it’s not a bad idea to have a few weeks consolidating at that level before you go again.
Cheers, thank you for the clarification. Looks like I misunderstood the purpose of Specialty. My first warm-up crits will be in early April, so a good shout to replace this specialty block with another Build Phase, push specialty until March, then start my next plan (oriented at Randonneuring vs racing). Or, as @Flashpoint51 pointed out, just stick with this to get used to more VO2 efforts at this level, then go again to build.
Thanks again for your insight & clarification y’all, appreciate it!
understanding your point Nate, can somehow relate to “so-called” though. What everyone names AI these days, used to be an algorithm, not very long ago. I understand that everyone jumps on the bandwagon, but still, naming something intelligent that actually isn’t. Is that excellent?
The calendar is fairly flexible yea (Just following what TR recommended) with the exception of the Zwift races which are either every Wed or every Sat (I prefer the Wed evenings), typically 25-35min TT’s at >0.9 IF or longer at >0.85 IF.
The TT series ends at the end of Feb, with a 4 week new series running throughout March on the same day and time, however these will be 60-120 min long, same intensity.
I do treat the races as one of the hard workouts of the week, given its entirely at Z4 or higher.
Think ill play around with the durations & maybe turn off Masters plan, although I originally put that on after 3 hard sessions a week left me aching in the mornings, before then having to commute.
Commute wise, they are short and I dont have a PM on the commuter so have to rely on HR, but HR wise I average 134-145BPM, 68% - 74% of Max HR which should have me well inside Z1/Z2. They dont feel like a .85 ride .
i mean, people are skeptical about the AI because it is doing odd things. Rather than get defensive perhaps hear what people are saying and try to improve the current model. No one wants an “AI coach” that tells you you fitness will get worse if you follow a month of their “custom” workouts they made for you. I mean, we’d all fire a human coach who said that, but that is my experience with TR right now, and many others too. “In 9 days your ftp will be…..8% worse” Wow, thanks! Great training program you made me!
When discussing things it’s important that people stick to facts though, else chaos eventually beckons, and it’s usually much more productive when people park the emotive stuff. For those whom the new system isn’t working well, or how they’d hope it should, the channels to use for addressing that are TR support and/or reaching out on the forum for input from the many people happy to help if they can.
None of this works well when people become emotive, make sweeping generalisations about things not working for anybody, or make claims that aren’t factual. I was directly addressing that latter point in my reference to Nate’s post where he describes the technology, which was in contrast to the OP’s characterisation.
But, but, this totally sucks for absolutely everyone and every single decision it makes is the worst decision it could possibly make and it’s intentionally trying to make me weaker and keep my ftp as low as possible. You can 100% see this in every single post by every single person who has posted in the last 5 weeks, and if you disagree you’re clearly just a fanboi or an employee who gets paid by TR.
Just came back to TR after being away for 2+ years( still cycling just not withTR). After choosing a training plan, I did a Ramp test to determine my FTP to base my training. A.I Predictor suggested over 20 watts less. I did my first 3 workouts based on the Ramp Test but changed today (more for curiosity) to what AI predicted. Mistake?
Welcome back, the forum reckons it’s been three years..!
No mistake, just go with the AIFTP is the short answer.
The longer answer is that you’ll get the same recommended power levels in your workouts anyway, and then we get into the whole complexity that’s already described in this thread and a lot of other threads.
How does AIFTP Detection/Prediction work with indoors/outdoors and different power meters? My outdoor PM reads higher/easier RPE riding outside. Let’s say I’ve ridden lots and I know it’s about 15W difference between indoor PM and outdoor PM.
If I get an assigned workout that prescribes 250W intervals based on winters worth of riding indoors, and then I go and do that workout outside, how does this difference get handled? Two scenarios I can see are below:
If I ride at the prescribed 250W outdoors, I’m actually doing the equivalent of 235W indoors and not getting the training benefit. But does TR know this? My HR and post-ride survey would look like it was an easy workout and would mess with future indoor workouts.
OR
If I ride at 265W to compensate, then TR thinks I’m progressing massively? It would up the difficultly of my next workout but then say it’s raining outside and I want to ride indoors but now I have this much harder workout assigned.
I just don’t understand how it compensates. I’m guessing it does somehow. Riding with my outdoor PM is not an option. Would like to understand.
TR could somehow account for that if the power source vendor+model was an input to their ML models (IIRC I asked that before and never got an answer).
@dhengen Best option would be to offset one power source to match the other source in the power meter configuration (if available as for most power meters nowadays).
Don’t know if it is possible, but obviously the answer is use the same power meter indoors and out.
Otherwise - your question really is, how does the model deal with me giving it bad (or at least inconsistent) data when it doesn’t know I am giving it bad data? Seems very hard to solve on TR’s end.
@AussieRider, the not recommended warning for the Threshold workout is because the chance of failure is high enough that the system does not recommend it. But this does not mean you can’t complete it as you did
And there are plenty of power meters that read a greater % off at higher watts than they do at lower watts.
They’d have to develop a tool that created a PM profile for every single device and equalize them somehow, which sounds like an insanely huge lift to me.
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