Upper category riders - what are you doing on TR?

Training
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I pretty much do 2, but the degree to which I modify the plans vary depending on the time of the year.

I actually wrote a blog post on my team’s website about how I used TR to prep for Redlands and now, the UCI Joe Martin Stage Race this week here that hopefully gives a bit of detail:

I have had a lot of success using TR (my 3rd year on the platform), actually posted about some of my modifications and results on this forum topic

In general, I follow high volume plans very closely in the Sweet Spot base phase, mainly because it’s easy to do with the minimal racing that takes place in this time period. The only significant modifications I make are very low intensity commutes to work and tacking on additional zone 2 to the end of the weekend sweet spot workouts.

Generally by the time I’m into the build/specialty phase, I’m more fluid with the plans. I still follow a high volume training plan, but make some updates:

  1. Aerobic rides are frequently outdoors because it’s finally nice/light enough to do so and it helps save mental matches for indoor quality workouts
  2. If I’m racing on the weekend, I reduce the number of workouts that go over sweet spot by the number of races I’m doing, replacing these rides with aerobic work. With the intense workouts I do, I try to prioritize the efforts I’m not getting in racing, which is typically Sweet Spot/Muscular Endurance workouts, and Threshold/longer V02max intervals. Road and criterium racing has so much shorter anaerobic/sprint oriented work in it inherently that I rarely do intervals on this end of the spectrum.
  3. Sometimes race week/weekends take more out of me than I think think they will, and so I modify the plans to give me more rest. Sometimes I only need to take another day before a quality workout, others (like after Redlands a couple weeks ago) I had to cut the entire week following and shift the hard workouts to the next week.
  4. In weekends I’m not racing, I try to get at least 1 4-5 hour ride in. Sometimes this is a TR workout + riding as in the base phase, sometimes a fast group ride + riding, other times just long and “slow.” But these have a huge impact on being able to race 100 miles into a road race.
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