How do you approach that? Add solo or group rides on the other days on the calendar?
I kind of made an attempt to “fill out” my plan with solo and group rides this year to reflect most of my planned approach, but I mostly ignore everything on the calendar besides my Tues/Thurs intervals. It’s not that I “wing it”, it’s just not that complicated to add a bunch more volume on top of the intervals and I don’t really need a system to serve that up. And I never use a structured workout for anything besides intervals, it’s just free form outside or on the trainer. Sometimes TR will associate what I did with an endurance or group ride on the calendar, sometimes not so much. So yeah, I end up with a very messy calendar with a bunch of stuff I did and a bunch of stuff I didn’t do (or didn’t get matched up). At this time of year, I’m also usually swapping out the assigned interval workouts and even shifted an entire rest week (and didn’t bother adjusting my plan to reflect it), so TR is mainly serving as a calendar and workout player right now and that is fine. I also don’t use AIFTP because it tends to estimate too high for me, so I’m using a manually entered/estimated FTP. I guess if someone were relying on TR’s AIFTP, maybe following an assigned plan would matter more. But I think AIFTP is just going off work completed and doesn’t really care about what was assigned, so AIFTP would probably work fine.
I also use Intervals.icu to manage my overall training load, so that kind of helps me throttle the non-interval stuff up and down based on the load/ramp I’m shooting for. TR will progress the interval days appropriately if you are knocking out the intervals. I guess TR might step in and adjust an interval day if I wasn’t properly rested coming into it, but I can’t think of any situation where I ended up with a interval day that would be tagged as yellow or red. I am pretty disciplined about protecting those days.
I’m also using TR in a similar way.
TR holds the framework of a plan - what phase I’m in, assigns 2-3 intervals per week (depending on masters toggle) and when the de-load weeks are.
I then add my own endurance rides around these, planning them in as Solo Rides. Over time I have also been adding duration to the assigned intervals - stepping them from 60 to 75 to 90 minutes. Planning is done every 4 weeks, creating the Solo rides and tweaking the interval after FTP detection and within the new AI window.
I very much listen to RLGL.
If it’s a glorious day and I want to ride outside, I switch to a Solo Ride (not an Outdoor workout) and do the ride in principle, i.e. throw in a similar number of vo2 efforts and roughly the assigned TSS.
I find that the TR AI workout picker works really well when I do as you describe.
It adjusts those 2 interval sessions very well depending on the extra-curricular riding you do -increasing and decreasing intensity as required.
I’d say that’s mostly my approach. I want TR to assign my interval workouts and provide some guidance on fatigue via RLGL and adapting my workouts.
My current schedule is usually a Tuesday interval workout and hard solo or group ride on Saturday. And I the rest are endurance rides. I’ve always been a lower volume rider unless training for something like Unbound. But I am slowly working towards getting my weekly ride volume closer to 9 hours and see how that goes.
If I’m riding indoors I don’t always mind doing one or TR’s assigned endurance workouts but often would just get on Rouvy and do an endurance ride on route without be tied to a specific workout.
I am on the same page as @grwoolf and @spinnnout. I do the two hard workouts each week, but then just do my other rides. I don’t add solo rides or anything like that. I just ride and they show up in the calendar. Maybe that’s my issue with the predicted and detected ftp. I will usually move my two hard workouts as well because I’m not doing threshold or vo2 work on the trainer. If it’s scheduled for Tuesday, I’ll do them on Monday or Wednesday if the weather outside is better on those days and I can do them outside. I almost always do 5-7 hours of endurance outside that is not part of the calendar. I know what my ftp should be and what I can do.
I did a five hour gravel last week and my IF was .91 using TR’s ftp (which I think is low). That includes 30 mins of noodling during the 10 mile neutral and two very long descents (15 mins and 40 minutes); though I was pedaling when I wasn’t spun out. I did get third (age group) which surprised me when I checked results at the gas station on the way home because I thought there was no way. The race was only 65 miles but had about 6K’ of climbing and I’m a horrible climber; so maybe I did ride out of my mind, but I was super conservative at the start and the pro/elite group go at the first few rollers.
I’d be happy to look at your training history and let you know what I can see in terms of prescribed volume.
Let me know if I can share some of those details here in this thread.