You can do this now on a per-block basis.
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Maybe I’ m doing something wrong then. I can adapt the workout durations in plan builder, but plan builder immediately makes those changes and sometimes warns that the training load becomes to high. This is not what you want of course. My suggestion was to let plan builder know that on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I have a maximum of 1,5 hours available and on Sunday max 4 hours. And then based on that plan builder starts building a plan that in the beginning maybe not use all that available time but progressively starts filling this available time out. I do not see something like this happening right now, other than decreasing volume in recovery and taper weeks.
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It does work how you would like it to, although in my experience it will trat interval sessions and endurance workouts differently. In the past it would max out the time for interval workouts, but be more flexible when it comes to endurance workouts.
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So you are saying that I should ignore the overload warnings and trust that plan builder will adapt workouts later?
Not necessarily, these are two separate issues:
- Plan Builder has algorithms that determine volume recommendations. The order of workouts and rest days matters.
- You can set times that exceed Plan Builder’s recommendations.
You can ask Plan Builder to generate a training plan it thinks is too intense for you. You can override its recommendations, but the farther you go beyond them, the more likely it is you will struggle with the training plan.
Thanks for clarifying this. But the feature request I made seems still something new then. It is letting adaptive training know where I have room for (more or less) volume. I understand that the algorithm can make suggestions about volume (the check volume option). And I also understand that I can ignore what trainerroad is scheduling for me based on what I have done before. But that is not what I want. Over the years I have developed great trust in the process that trainerroad lays out for me. I’m just looking for a way to let the system know what all my time boundaries are so that it can also start to ‘play’ with that in order to maximizing performance within the time available.
Right now I have to do this manually (and thereby disturbing the process?) For instance, my latest recommended schedule is less than my maximum available time, but I extended the Sunday (Group) ride from 1,5 to 3 hours. And skipped the 30 minute recovery ond Wednesdays (because I cannot ride on Wednesdays). Because turning around halfway into the weekly group ride with my friends is not an option for me 
. Red light/green light helps to keep fatigue in check and sometimes adapts workouts on Tuesdays…but this is not really the same as my request.
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I wish RLGL can be predictive at least a week in advance. I want it to warn me if the random solo ride that I added to the calendar outside the plan is going to trigger a yellow or red day so maybe I can alter the ride or something.
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I think this is a tricky thing in terms of UI/UX: if you select max training times, what do you expect to happen? I think either of the two expecations is reasonable:
- Plan Builder tries to stick closely to the max, allowing you to override it.
- Plan Builder sticks closely to its max training times guidelines, and it may happen that it will never use the total time you allocated.
It seems that TR opted for the former, and you expected the latter. Not saying you are wrong.
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Option b is kind of what I mean. Right now our trainingplan adapts according to FTP and PL’s. But duration also seems a variable to me. The check volume option is going in this direction but in a different way than my feature request. I do not expect this btw, I am really happy with trainerroad the way it is, I’m only making a suggestion for a feature that might improve TrainerRoad.
For me the best outcome would be an adaptive trainingsplan that (also) makes optimal use of the total training time I have. And if this means training from time to time for less time than I have available so be it.
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How would it know if you will be going all out or taking it easy? That would be pretty hard to predict. I can do a 3 hour ride in z1 and feel pretty good. I can go do 90 minute ride all out and be totally wrecked. How would TR have any idea how you plan to ride?
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You would tell it. I do this with runs all the time. “I have planned a 45 minute tempo run”, for example. It even adds predicted TSS.
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Yeah, I would prefer the latter. I want to inform the system of real world constraints while remaining neutral on how available time should be used.
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It asks for RPE planned and estimates the TSS when you create a ride. I understand that tss isn’t created equal but I figured rpe should help close the gap since they use it if you don’t have a power meter
Nearly 2 years have passed … would be nice to get an update about how things have evolved and what is planned for upcoming features. Unfortunately @Nate_Pearson has not visited this form since 6 months ago (last seen February 12th). Forum has become a bit boring since Nate left.
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If TR is still chasing this tool, then yes, an update would be good. But I consider the real value in Progression Levels & Workout Levels has been in determining which workout to do next. It seems that AI is superseding that. TR plans already do this, TN already does this, but the gaping hole in this approach is that it’s not exposed to the user when they select an alternate or just cherrypick a workout from the catalogue.
So I’d like to see the Workout Alternates tab to be informed by these analyses as well as the particular phase of training, with the ideal workouts for a given duration grouped together at the top of the list & highlighted. An added bonus would be to see reasons why a workout is not ideal, perhaps on mouseover on the webpage view. And display all this info when viewing the workout.
I’m going to go out on a limb here: Give me that, & I wouldn’t need to care what my progression levels are.
Another thought: Bring back the colorised Achievable, Productive, Stretch, Breakthrough, Not Recommended, but base them on AI analysis of the athlete & the expected outcome of the workout rather than just the WL.
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What @roleypup says 
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I think an even better version would be dynamically generated workouts that are slightly harder/easier and/or are shorter/longer. IMHO that’s where TR should move next. It is currently a mess to look for similar workouts if you want to have a progression from, say, 7x3 to 4x5 minutes at VO2max (at various percentages and different rest interval durations).
I reckon TR could launch analogs of AI FTP to detect the various power levels (e. g. for traditional, long VO2max intervals) and create a workout just for you.
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Yep, I’d definitely go for that.
Would be super useful for fine-tuning a progression. I could see the most benefit in Specialty phase when you’re training the sort of efforts you’ll need to do in the target event.
In the absense of that, here’s the sort of nonsense I’ve got up to, trying to make sense of it all… 
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Holy shmollkes, I always wanted a table like that!
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On one hand, pretty cool. On the other hand, if you are going to the trouble of all this, I am assuming you are choosing your own training, why use trainerroad? Why not just use something like Intervals.icu and fully embrace being your own coach?
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