I’m going to try and do an 130 mile 10k ft elevation gravel ride in October. My training this year has been more consistent than it’s ever been but still low volume. My TR plan has me riding about 4.5 hrs a week now with the longest ride being 1.5 hrs on Saturdays. My longest ride of the year was in June when I did an 100 mile 6k feet road ride but I have been mostly sticking to the low volume tr rides since. Would it be a good idea to start substituting my Saturday TR rides with some longer ones? I did a 3 hr 50 mile ride yesterday, trainer road lowered my ftp prediction which I’m not complaining about because I didn’t follow the workout but I guess I’m just wondering if I should keep trying to do 50+ mile rides on the weekend until two weeks before the event or stick to my 4.5 hrs a week and then just hope for the best. My goal is just to finish not set any time records.
Not sure what TR is giving you, but a basic plan for a ride like this would be 2 interval sessions a week and a longer endurance ride. And I would try and increase that endurance ride by 15 min each week up until 2 weeks before your event, at least until you can comfortably do a 5 hr endurance ride.
Cool yeah I think that’s what I’m going to do, just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a bad decision. I don’t know if there is a good way to put an endurance plan like that in trainer road with the plan builder unless you do it manually. At least none I saw but maybe it just doesn’t want to suggest longer rides for me since my volume is so low.
If you want the plan to remain as is without adjusting for your longer ride. Turn off your computer at the TR suggested endurance time limit. I know it’s gaming the system but “ if “ you know your body it can be done.
Good luck on the event
What are you accomplishing by doing that? I’m not saying it’s wrong, just don’t know what the purpose is. I largely ignore everything in a TR plan except the interval sessions and it doesn’t seem to have any issue with my dramatically higher volume and different modes of training. I’ve never run into any reason to hide my training from the TR system, but maybe I’m missing something.
For the OP, adding volume should be fine as long as it’s gradual. At only 4-5 hours a week, any increase in volume is likely going to drive improvements in fitness. Volume is one of the biggest drivers of performance, so more is generally better as long as it’s done in a consistent way ang gradually increased. I like the TR guideline of keeping your long rides under 50% of the TSS of your weekly training volume, that keeps the long ride from becoming a ride that wrecks you and hurts your intensity days. You can certainly adjust your TR plan to increase your volume, but I personally like to manage my overall training volume on my own and just lean on TR for my interval sessions. Lots of different ways to use the system, it’s pretty flexible.
Build a TR plan and follow it, FTFP.
TR knows you dont need long rides to race long, do your hard sessions and be ready for race day.
Because it sees your ride history, your long rides already done?
You don’t need to do long rides to complete long rides/races, but volume is a key performance driver and it’s tough to increase volume when limiting yourself to 1-2 hour rides. “Get fast on low hours” is a great selling point, but you can almost always get faster with more hours. It really comes down to goals and priorities, more volume is going to make most people stronger/faster. But there are only so many hours in the week, so how many hours do you want to spend getting faster vs. prioritizing other things in life?
What I have found that I’m not fond of is ;
I have the plan. It sets my workouts to achive a certain level of gain over a period of time. If I go out and do a 4:30 hr easy endurance ride in the flats instead of the 2:30 easy endurance ride with rolling hills, the AI gives me all new workouts. Usually shortens my intervals for the next few weeks or even worse, get a red day and tells me not to do any work when I’m feeling great.
I would rather it not factor in “time” for outdoor rides like it does. I think it has to do with how it factors in TSS for time in the saddle outside.
And how’s about that narrow TT thru tunnels at the Vuelta? Pretty wild.
Yeah that’s the thing during the week I can ride most days but can’t really get anything longer than an hr in, on the weekends I can do a 4-5 hr ride most of the time if I leave early but I’m having trouble fitting that long ride into my trainer road schedule.
TR has seen issues when people increase their volume, they get fatigued and start failing the actually important sessions. If people actually followed the plan to the letter they would be faster than adding their own sessions with no rhyme or reason behind them
Yeah, it’s conceivable that you might not get faster if you added volume in a really dumb manner, but I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. Following the basic interval structure of a TR plan while manually adding volume in a measured/gradual fashion is a proven approach to getting faster and it’s not rocket science figuring out how to manage your overall training stress. I’m not saying it’s better or worse than letting TR manage everything, just that it can be a very effective approach for people who want to take a little more ownership of their training.
I guess I could see that if it results in a significant ramp of training stress that wasn’t in the plan, but that’s not my personal experience when volume is ramped gradually and consistent with my training history. But we all probably use the system a little differently, so it might be those differences that trigger different outcomes. I pretty much never use outside workouts (even when doing my workouts outside), so maybe the “outside workout bug” that has been talked about it playing into the differences. In the peak of my training season I can be doing 300+ TSS days and not triggering a yellow day unless I’m stacking a bunch of hard days in a row, certainly not triggering red days and not affecting my intervals. But if I did a 300+ tss ride today, tomorrow would certainly be yellow or red because it would be a big day compared to what I’ve been doing recently.
Hey @Yeager139 
How did you feel on that 100 mile ride in June? That can tell us a lot.
We definitely recommend throwing in a couple longer rides before the event to test out the bike, gear, nutrition, hydration, etc…and then backing off 2 weeks prior so you can start tapering. Maybe throw them in bi-weekly those Saturdays (with nice recovery in between) so that you don’t over do it. Ideally at this point of the Specialty Phase you’ve done the work and now it’s a matter of keeping that fitness fresh. So listen to your body
What a lot of people overlook is your nutrition and hydration plan for these long events. If you don’t fuel properly and the tank goes empty mid race, it’s hard to gain that energy back even if you’re super fit.
Thanks for the tips! It was challenging but that’s the best I’ve ever felt after doing an 100 mile ride so definitely promising. I definitely have a lot of room for improvement with nutrition during the ride so I’ll do a few long ones and try to focus on that before October.
Nice! That is very promising after completing 100 miles! Let us know how it goes