Firstly for context here is my weekly TSS from when i jumped back on the bike after a 1.5yr break. im a 45yr old male and 6’4, 86kg. i had a 345w ftp prior to the break. Current week is 510tss total riding 9-10hrs/wk and current AIFTP is 361w. my 10wk rolling average TSS (inc. recovery weeks) is 401.
Switched from 6 to 5 days for an extra day of recovery.
Switched to 2 intensity days from the recommended 3, switching that ride to a long endurance ride. Im 45 now and think i would benefit from the less intensity and it seems to be working up to now.
Reduced 2nd ride of the week to 1 hr. im usually quite sore after vo2 mondays and doing a 2hr ride is a bit much.
changed length on saturday endurance ride to 3hrs max and switched to indoor.
Wednesday endurance is generally anywhere from 3h30m Manakau 106tss 2507kJ(Cal) easy peasy to 4hr15m Excelsior +2 193tss mid to upper z2 3650kJ(Cal)
why am i getting red-flagged for potential overtraining with the schedule i customized? im doing 1 less high intensity ride and 1 less day on the bike overall, TSS is somewhat similar. The total hours on the bike are also similar. Does it have anything to do with me self assessing as a master and that i should be doing less? Here is the schedule it gives me if i make no changes other than switching to 2 high intensity days and 5 days per week over the recommended 3/6.
I feel pretty good with what im doing. my ‘A’ event is coming up in 10wks and im feeling as good as ever physically. im tired after high intensity days but recover well, i dont miss workouts and very rarely fail them. Im just interested in the inconsistencies in the plans recommended to me. What do other riders my age do? do you do the 3 high intensity days? how does that make you feel?
I found similar issues with Plan Builder, it seems to have a very fixed ideas on volume so I suspect the switch to the long ride is what’s causing the issue. When I tried it out, it seemed very much to like quite even durations for ride length, and an easy day after each interval day, in my case it recommended 30min rides on Wednesday and Friday, if I removed these and put a longer ride in place at the weekend, I got the overtraining warning, despite having a history of long audax rides.
Over the time I’ve used TR since I signed back up when the new features were released, it has got more tolerant of volume, but now it wants to give me two hour interval sessions a couple of days a week and still frowns if I try to stick longer rides in at the weekend. It very much comes across, that it’s set up for people who are ‘time crunched athletes’ which I suppose is in the DNA of the company given it was purely an indoor training app in the beginning.
I’ve decided to take a break from it for a while and maybe try again in the winter to see if this and a few other quirks have been resolved.
In response to what other athletes do? I’m currently doing two interval sessions a week indoors with one endurance session indoors mainly, but occasionally outdoors when it’s too hot,these three sessions are between 60-90minutes, lower end of that for VO2 workouts and upper end for endurance/sweetspot. Weekends are one two to three hour pure endurance ride on flat roads and then a longer ride over mixed terrain on the other day, plus one strength maintenance session per week. Fridays are my recovery day and I use the time to get my kit sorted for my weekend rides, seems to be working well, feeling good and enjoying my training.
certainly feels that way. Dynamic hours has improved this but its not perfect. I’d like TR to factor in our personal ‘Target hours per week’ or ‘Available weekly hours’ into how our plans are structured. For example if im available for 15hrs and want to ride 15hrs, then my plan meets me where im at and incrementally and safely builds up my volume until im riding 15hrs per week. Maybe it could be a question on our account page “How many hours per week do you want to train?”. Or maybe add it within the plan building process. If you all of a sudden only have 10hrs per week, simply change the value in the settings and your plan immediately adjusts the hours down.
I know TR has shown over time that we can get fitter with fewer hours sometimes, especially as masters athletes, but at the end of the day, i want to ride my bike more and i have the time to do so.
i just messed about with the planner again and this happened:
Kept the 6 recommended days but just got rid of 3rd high intensity day, replacing with long ride. very similar to what i currently do except with a thursday 1hr easy ride and an additional hour on tuesdays.
All i did here is change tuesday from 2hrs easy to 1hr easy and now its a red warning. the warning seems too inconsistent and almost random in its judgement.
That being said, i do love Trainerroad. Ive been making solid improvements for 18 months now and my ftp is still rising so i cant complain too much.
I’m forwarding that second case to the team for further investigation.
The first one could be a related, but it could also simpy be you crossing over a threshold of planned TSS or hours. There has to be a line somewhere, and the recommended plan was likely close to the limit.
