I am seeking help understand my next suggested workout. I know what I am going to do tomorrow, so no need to suggest “Use the alternatives function” an choose achievable
Base information: male 40 years old and cycling since 2007, and training with structure (power meter) since 2013. Currently at my all time highest ftp (288w / 4.27 w/kg). I have been using AT since early access started and it has been brilliant!
Looking at what AT got planned for tomorrow, there is 0% chance that I will be able to complete Noonen without scaling back 10%'ish. So why??
Bellow is my latest workouts, the 2 where I wrote “Did not pass” I rateded it “I did not pass” in the post survey.
If your FTP is correct then your threshold workouts will usually be in the 4-6ish range and noonen is a 5.1 - it’s the kind of ride I would expect to be doing 3 or 4 weeks into a plan.
I’m surprised that you are being given a stretch workout after rating rides “hard” though - I think it would be wise to email support so that they can investigate and fix if needed.
While it does seem that Noonen is a bit high, it is possible to see Stretch workouts appear on your plan.
I reprocessed your Progression Levels and reloaded your plan for this week, and AT subbed in Ritter -4 instead of Noonen, which is still a Stretch workout at 4.8.
We’ll keep investigating this to see if any unexpected behavior is going on. I’ll report back on what we find.
For the moment, though, your idea to choose a Workout Alternate in cases like these is a good call.
And for the bonus question, as @kevistraining said, yes! Depending on your Progression Levels and where you are in your plan, Noonen is definitely a doable workout. Try to approach those more challenging sessions with a positive mindset. With proper fueling and rest leading into those harder workouts, you might just surprise yourself with what you’re capable of doing!
Probably yes, but not necessarily. Meaning, I would not agree with the converse statement, if you can’t complete Noonen, your FTP is too high. Let me expand:
Duration is something that needs to be trained. 116 % FTP rather than, say, 105 % is a marked difference in the fatigue you incur.
Mental toughness is a thing. Sometimes your motivation peters out before your legs, lungs and heart do.
Your other workouts this week and the rest in between (or lack thereof) have a huge influence. If my training was slightly too ambitious, I’d often ace a hard workout on Monday, do fine on Wednesday, but crack on Friday. These were cases where my FTP was definitely set correctly, but I couldn’t recover fast enough to give my all on Friday.
if the galena -2 (which looking back looks like 2x20 sweet spot) is hard, I’d revisit your FTP, at that intensity and that duration, a workout like that should rarely be considered hard
come on now, they just came off an easier and had a workout and a day off prior, there shouldn’t be that much fatigue. if there’s that much fatigue at the beginning of a block, then there’s a problem.
There is a bit of subjectivity to the survey answers and I believe the line from trainerroad on that is to not overthink it - as long as you are consistent it will work.
And for your SS workouts it sems to be adapting fine - you marked the last few rides “hard” and it has responded by not increasing the difficulty of the SS workouts - actually dropped a bit from 5.6 to 5.5 which is sensible.
Trainerroad support are the people to sort this out for you, but, there are a few things that do look a little off with your current levels in my opinion.
It is not typical to have such a difference between SS and threshold levels - and even stranger to be relatively strong at vo2max at the same time.
I’m not saying they should be equal or follow any particular pattern – but judging by your levels you appear to be slightly above average for SS and vo2max but below average at threshold - which doesn’t really make physiological sense.
One possible explanation is that your FTP is set a touch too high making the SS workouts nearer threshold and making the threshold workouts too hard to complete. Your threshold level of 3.7 isn’t incredibly low though, so if your FTP is set too high then it’s not by much.
Now to be honest, this shouldn’t really matter, it should figure itself out. As i said before, it looks like your SS workouts are adapting down already, but your issue of it serving up a stretch threshold workout after marking a previous one as hard isn’t expected behaviour and I’d be asking trainerroad to try and explain the logic.
Trying to jump you straight up from 3.7 to 5.1 makes no sense – if you didn’t pass a 4.1 then the next workout should be around 4.1.
Hopefully after you pick an achievable workout (I’d suggest a level between 3.7 and 4) and fill out the survey it will adapt your future workouts accordingly.
If I was at a PL of 3.5 and had failed the previous 4.1 workout (having fuelled properly etc.), I would personally dial it back a bit using alternates (and not do more than the 4.1). Not sure if you are planning on doing the workout indoors or changing it to an outdoor ride like your other hard workouts. If done indoors, the limitations of cooling would make me go for an even less intense threshold workout than the PL 3.5 one.
Have a look at @Simonwallindk’s annotation to his training calendar: he marked the previous two workouts as hard to all-out. Ditto for the weeks before.
From my own experience, the total accumulated fatigue (as in accumulated over weeks and months) can be too much to do three very hard workouts. That is especially true if I don’t sleep enough. At present sleep is not logged by TR (to my knowledge), so it doesn’t know whether I have had 8 hours or 6.
I’m just saying that this is a different issue than having your FTP set too high.
Good suggestions. Let me add one more: you could also reduce the number of intense workouts by one day and see whether you are more consistent that way. Over the long run, consistency is king.
