Training Plans Misaligned with High-Frequency Racing (Cat 3 Club Racer)

TrainerRoad Software
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I’ve been using TrainerRoad on and off for several seasons now, and while I really value the tech and structure, I keep running into the same issue: the training plan system just doesn’t reflect the reality of a typical Cat 3 club racer who’s racing 1–2 times nearly every weekend from March through August.

The current race prioritization and plan-building tools seem geared toward riders targeting one or two “A” events a year, with long build phases and clearly defined peaks. That’s great—if your season revolves around a single goal. But for me (and I suspect others in similar categories), the entire season is the goal. Every weekend is game day.

I should say this isn’t a crisis for me personally—I’m currently working with a coach who builds my plan around my race calendar, and that’s been a solid fit. But what bugs me is that I can’t rely on TrainerRoad as a fallback when needed. I’ve self-coached with it in the past, and the experience just didn’t match the demands of consistent, high-frequency racing.

Even now, TR tends to underrate my coach’s custom workouts, often tagging them as “easier” or “unproductive,” while giving inflated credit to its own workouts, even when they’re objectively lighter. That bias makes it tough to trust the platform’s insights unless you’re using its built-in system as prescribed.

What I’d love to see is something like a “frequent racer” or “club racer” mode—one that recognizes racing as training and helps manage freshness and progress across an entire season, not just peak toward one event.

Another challenge I’ve run into is how TrainerRoad handles priority settings. Since I’m racing nearly every weekend, I initially marked everything as B-races, thinking that would help maintain a steady progression. But the system ends up tapering me for every race—so I burn through the fitness gains from spring without a sustainable way to rebuild.

I tried switching to C-priority for all races to avoid that tapering cycle, but then it swings the other direction—I’ll get hit with hard workouts on Sunday right after a demanding Saturday race. There’s just no middle ground that reflects a race-heavy schedule where recovery and freshness need to be actively managed, not left to binary A/B/C tags.

Anyone else in this boat? Curious how others are handling it, and if TrainerRoad has anything like this in the pipeline.

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Classify them as a group ride rather than race, in plan builder. Or change it to a masters plan with 2 hard work outs a week instead of 3.

The TR answer will be something along the lines that races aren’t structured training, and you can’t hold form all season.

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I agree with what @Macy said.

These types of schedules are a bit trickier to integrate into a structured training plan since a large part of the intensity comes from racing once or twice a week.

I like the idea of turning those races into “Group Rides” though! We’ve built some flexibility into our plans for things like this, and now we even have a “Zwift Race” option as well.

Ultimately, you can switch any of your workouts into Zwift Races, Group Rides, or Solo Rides. I’d just make sure that the workout you’re replacing with your races is representative of the effort.

As @Macy said, you can adjust the number of hard workouts per week on your schedule and move things around in a way that will surely work for you.

If you’d like a hand getting things set up, I’d be happy to help! Just shout! :slightly_smiling_face:

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@eddiegrinwald Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m stuck. These aren’t casual spin-outs—they’re sanctioned USA Cycling races where I’m surviving surges, testing tactics, and pushing far past anything a Zwift Race would simulate.

I’ll tag them however I need to for now, but it does feel a bit off to reduce real racing to group ride status just because the plan structure can’t digest variable effort. Would love to see future updates reflect the training value of actual competition—it’s a core part of the sport, after all.

Thanks, @Macy—appreciate the suggestion. I’m actually working with a coach right now who has me racing or doing structured efforts six days a week, so I’m not planning on modifying the training load from TR’s side. I thought I’d made that clear in the post, but maybe I didn’t spell it out enough.

That said, I get the logic of tagging races as Group Rides just so the system doesn’t panic. Even if it doesn’t feel like the right label, it’s probably the cleanest workaround for now.

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I’ve been using TrainerRoad for tracking while following a 6-day-a-week coached plan that includes sanctioned USA Cycling races (Cat 2/3, 3/4 fields). These are not light spinouts or “group rides.” They’re tactical, aggressive, and in many cases harder than any TR-prescribed VO₂ session.

But when I try to log these races in the system, the only suggestion I get is to tag them as “Group Rides” or “Zwift Races.” That’s… baffling. It feels like TR’s ecosystem has shifted toward supporting virtual competition over actual road racing. I don’t even use Zwift anymore—price hikes made that decision easy—and yet it’s still the only sanctioned tag that gets anywhere close to a real race in TR’s logic.

If the product is still marketed as “for racers, by racers,” maybe it’s time to rethink how Plan Builder and ride classification treat outdoor competition. Right now, the structure treats real races like messy data points to be smoothed away. And that feels off.

Would love to know how other outdoor racers are navigating this—or if anyone at TR sees room for growth here.

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TR should load in any races you do as a race no? Are you saying the only two options you have for them is Group Ride or Zwift Race? Because you definitely can tag them as Race.

TR started as an indoor training app for gaining fitness to race outdoors, before Zwift was even a thing for competition, I don’t think that has changed. TR still geared to primarily workout indoors (although it supports workouts outside just fine) to build fitness for racing.

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@Twowkg You’re right that there’s a ‘Race’ tag—but in the thread I linked, TR staff explicitly suggested I reclassify sanctioned races as ‘Group Rides’ or ‘Zwift Races’ to make them count for Progression Levels. That mismatch is what I was calling out.

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I’cm curious how your coach is navigating the racing calendar?

Being in top form March though August sounds like a mission impossible. After you do your build cycle and race prep you are probably going to have about six weeks of solid fitness before you need a mid-season break and then try again for the last half of the season. You can extend it by going into maintenance mode - doing the minimum possible to maintain fitness and recover for the next race. This level of scheduling may be beyond software as you probably need to do a lot of adjusting on the fly.

Back when I raced (Northern California district) my calendar was similar. There was a race you could do every single weekend if you wanted. I did that some season. Ultimately, I’d concentrate on a handful of races I wanted to do well in.

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@vorzap I merged threads since they are about the same topic :slight_smile:

I think what @eddie was trying to explain is that since these races will be part of your weekly schedule, you could set them as Group/Solo Rides in the system.

The nice things about setting these to Group/Solo Rides if they land on a day that you would have a TR Workout instead, is that the workout cards have instructions on how to target your efforts so that you are at least working the energy systems meant for that day.

Otherwise you have the option to set them as recurring race events:

More info on how to categorize your races: How to Add A, B, and C Events to Your Calendar

I’ll give your account a deeper look and see if I can suggest a good solution for you :slight_smile:

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Could you not set them as a “C” race then? Not sure what plan you are following but something like Masters or another option with 2 hard workouts per week should work I would think. You would end up with 2 workouts each week and 1 race, which is generally a good balance.

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@ajs914 Totally get where you’re coming from. I don’t think it’s impossible to race solidly from March through August—it just depends how you’re defining “top form.” For me, it’s not about peaking for every event, but building enough fitness depth that I can show up, race hard, and recover fast week after week. That base lets me ride well above threshold when needed and still feel like I’ve got fuel in the tank.

My coach and I take more of a rolling approach—load, race, adjust—not a strict peak-taper-peak cycle. And yeah, I do hit burnout around October like clockwork, but until then, I’ve had stretches where I could race and then go jog 10K afterward, just because the engine was that dialed.

It’s less about perfect timing and more about durability. Not every race needs to be “the one” to still teach something or sharpen the edge.

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In your case scenario, it sounds to me like you’re talking more of an ongoing Specialty Phase… but to maintain this, you need a really good Base>>Build Phase leading into it.

I am not sure if you’re trying to create a plan with TR now, as you have a coach… But I would categorize at least 2 Events as your A Events, so this keeps you mostly on a Specialty Phase, and then label all your other races as B Events.

I raced the UCI circuit for Cyclocross and completed about 35 races (2 day weekend races) in 4 months, 1 of them being a World Cup and the other being Worlds, and I still had to decide where I wanted to peak most at.

Even when you want to do well the entire season, it’s important to set the races that you want to do best at because your body won’t stay peaked week after week. The idea is to have done all the work prior so that when you get to a season this intense, you’re able to maintain fitness. All these weekend races now become your training, and in my opinion, they are the best kind of training. Your fitness won’t decay because we have you do openers the day prior, if anything with all this racing it almost becomes more important to recover in between and do maintenance work. And then the only races we taper you for are A Events, so you can stay fresh to “peak”.

As you mentioned, every race becomes a learning opportunity, and may be the ones that you are least optimal for could be the races where you work on technique, etc…

I am not sure if you ever reached out to support, but we have many athletes in the support team with loads of knowledge and racing experience that I am sure can help you out to set up a schedule that works for your unique case scenario! :slight_smile:

Just wanted to clarify this:

Even now, TR tends to underrate my coach’s custom workouts, often tagging them as “easier” or “unproductive,” while giving inflated credit to its own workouts, even when they’re objectively lighter. That bias makes it tough to trust the platform’s insights unless you’re using its built-in system as prescribed.

I think you’re talking about Progression Levels here? The rating system that TR has is only for the TR Workout Levels ecosystem. So, if you see a workout being rated super high or super low, this scale is not comparable to how we internally rate TR Workouts.

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@Caro.Gomez-Villafane Thanks for the response—I really do appreciate the broader context around TR’s structured plans.

Just to clarify, I’m using AI FTP to keep my coach’s workouts scaled properly, and my coach is fully looped in. The challenge I’ve been having is around how TR’s rating system interacts with my custom sessions. For example, I recently did a 7x5 tempo workout that was no joke—definitely felt like a demanding effort—but since it was rated as a 1.6, I ended up lowering my RPE just to avoid triggering an “inappropriate” response flag and additional survey.

I totally get that the system is designed for TR’s internal workouts, but when that low rating makes it harder to give honest input, it’s a bit of a catch-22. Especially as someone using TR as a tool to complement my coach’s programming, not override it.

My role on the team also leans heavily toward support—I spend most races keeping the peloton organized and bridging gaps so our sprinters can shine. That means I’m training for consistency and resilience, not for giant FTP gains or razor-sharp peaks. I’d love to see more flexibility in how Progression Levels interpret value—not just by intensity score, but by how the workout fits into a broader, more team-oriented training context.

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If you’re concerned about the Progression Levels maybe you could ask your coach to assign you specific TrainerRoad workouts

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@uwdawgs Sure, if TrainerRoad also functioned as a coaching platform for managing 30+ athletes like TrainingPeaks does, that might be a more viable solution. But as it stands, it’s not really built for that kind of workflow on the coaching side—which is why my setup leans on TP with AI FTP helping scale workouts on TR.

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If you’re using workouts and a plan generated by your coach - why do the PLs within TR matter for your day-to-day workouts?

I’d imagine your coach is proscribing power/zone targets based on his own view of your plan, not on the TR PLs.

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Hmm.. Tactics can certainly be different, but unless you are riding off the front and wining every Cat3 USAC race you are doing, there are Zwift races/categories that are going to much harder physically. There are plenty of legit real world racers tearing it up and crushing hopes and dreams on zwift (at levels well beyond what you’d find in a Cat3 race in the real world).

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I don’t know how well TRs rating system deals with custom workouts but that does not sound terribly far off what should be a reasonably easy workout no? 7x5m of temp is a pretty low stimulus workout and should not feel demanding.

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I was thinking the same thing. 7x5min of tempo (80-85%) shouldn’t be demanding for anyone.

Unless the terminology of tempo (76-91% in classic coggan zones) is different or if the OP is switching between a bike power meter and a smart trainer that aren’t accurate to each other.

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That should not be challenging.

This sounds like you’re really fatigued, your FTP is set too high (AIFTP is not perfect), you have bad power readings, you have poor cooling/fueling/recovery, etc.

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