I set up a triathlon off-road plan, 3 months, masters. It has MWF cycling and in the config wizard it has these as Moderate, Easy, Moderate.
But the calendar schedules these as VO2Max 5.8, VO2max 6.3, Threshold 5.1
Which doesn’t seem to line up with easy and moderate.
The “easy” ride on Wednesday has over an 80% chance of being hard or very hard.
It’s only 3 months so it looks like it’s started you off in Build instead of Base. I’ve got a Masters Olympic tri plan for an A event in July and in Base it’s mostly Endurance and Sweetspot, then Build gives me more VO2 and Threshold.
“Hard” is slightly misnamed, its really “Hard but you’ll get though it”. Probably worth trusting the AI and giving the workouts a go, especially if you’ve imported or already have a significant amount of training history in TrainerRoad.
Edit - it seems to have bumped up the workout time from 30 mins to 1h30??? If you didn’t accept this somehow then I’d ask Support what’s going on, that seems like a pretty big change
TL;DR
Been using the AI for a few months and I haven’t been progressing and show signs of not recovering towards the end of a block before the recovery week. So this is part of trying to figure out why.
No I completed the base phase.
I went through setup again to validate it was set to masters and that it was two “hard” days. So it reset the start date, but picked right at the build week I’m on.
Since I moved to multi-sport, I’ve been going through this cycle where right after a recovery week I’m super recovered and the first few bike workouts feel like I have a lot more in the tank. Like the last VO2 had two blocks of 3 2m VO2 efforts. . . I felt like I could have done another block.
But towards the end…like end of week 3 when it’s stacking two pretty hard VO2’s and a long threshold, I start burning out and sometimes failing the workout.
Keeping in mind that I’m also doing the running, swimming, and weights in between those.
So the masters Tri schedules 6 days of workouts, one day of rest. I’ll take an extra day of rest on hard weeks. Usually drop a run/swim day.
Ok, so this got me looking at the workout pattern for cycling and noticing the VO2/VO2/Threshold…..which absolutely is not what I get for just a cycling plan with the same settings. These are almost always VO2/Endurance/Threshold during builds.
I even just went through and created a Masters Cycling only plan targeting a gravel event in June. The build week follows the VO2/Endurance/Threshold pattern……on a plan with 7h less training a week.
Anyway, my FTPs been flat over the last few months where the AI starts out thinking I should shoot back up to my base in 30 days (from 225–>250) than gradually degrades me till at FTP detection it basically stays the same.
So I’m trying to figure out how to adjust things to make progress.
I’m beginning to suspect the AI isn’t doing so well accounting for stress and recovery in a multi-sport plan. Or that my weights is building fatigue and interference with my cycling and the AI doesn’t incorporate that fatigue/recovery. . . . I’ve dropped my weights from 3 days to 2 days and backed off the RPE for sessions. Basically an “in-season / maintenance” routine.
i actually reached out to support and opened a ticket on this topic a few weeks ago. if i built a Sustained Power build Masters cycling only plan i get two hard workouts a week with endurance in between , a recovery week every 4th week. If i build a Custom Masters triathlon plan i got 4 tempo/Sweet Spot cycling workouts a week for the first two weeks before it started subbing in an endurance ride mid week but you get recovery week every 3rd week. Support initially also thought this looked odd but got back to me later saying that was it was as intended. So a a ‘custom’ plan after i’ve been off/light work for a month threw 4 tempo/SS workouts at me from the get go, in addition to run/swim…..and a Masters plan. It doesn’t make sense.
I got in this loop when I introduced the other sports and after a sort of hiatus (when I just did swimming and weights for a couple of months).
I’ve tried doing just cycling. Then doing running, swimming, and weights on my own and letting the plan adapts. But that started marking me solid red all the time and down grading all my cycling to very easy endurance rides.
Then I started trying the “Tri” plans. I don’t do triathlons, but figured the training should fit. This didn’t turn all red and seemed a more normal fluctuation into and out of yellow days.
But it’s clearly more “hard” rides than a standalone plan with significantly less recovery. And I do see a higher tendency to fail towards the end of a build.
i had the same experience, i turned off RLGL for that reason. I’m in a holding pattern on TR until December when my membership renews. I loaded up a Tri plan but am modifying it myself for now and cobbling it together with past Training Peaks plans/data. Waiting to see how the new AI shakes out when they’ve got the bugs sorted.
What does RLGL refer to?
Sorry, it is now called Fatigue Detection. It was called REd Light Green Light when they rolled it out a year or so back.
Gotcha.
I think my strategy is going to be:
Don’t put them on the schedule and see how the AI handles them when it sync’s from Garmin. I think with a proper masters schedule and an easy ride mid week it’ll go a lot smoother.
What cycling plan did you choose? Sustained Power or Custom Cycling with Granfondo or Rolling Road Race?
This round I did an event targeted one with type ‘gravel’. But I’ll likely change it to increasing FTP. . . mostly because I’d really like to get my FTP back to where it was before I took the time off the bike to learn swimming.
So I dabbled with loads of the plans and, of the tri ones, MV Olympic tends to be the only one liked by my FTP Predictor. But as @smooh says, it’s not the same as the pre-canned Oly MV plan.
It’s not better than bike only plans so as it’s recommending 4/week I’m using bike plans. Not particularly successfully, it has to be said.
I quite like the Faster for Group Rides structure; Vo2, anaerobic, threshold + endurance.
Three months into the year, I’m uncertain what to do for a good tri season…and it looks like I’m not alone.
