Where’s recovery workouts after a hard day?

TR has been scheduling an endurance workout that consists of 75% intervals the day after my hard Threshold or VO2 workouts. I keep changing them to 30-60 min easy workouts 55-65%. I’m usually sore after my hard day since I’m also doing my strength training on those days. I thought you were supposed to ride easy after a hard day??? I’m 59 yrs old and have only been cycling 2 1/2 years. Recovery is a big deal for me. TR also keeps upping my PL on my endurance rides. Pretty soon they will become sweet spot workouts. I’m a little disappointed in the AI when it comes to endurance workouts.

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Your PLs increase according to the PL of the workout you you complete. So, if you do a 4.5 workout, your new PL is 4.5. You won’t end up with SS power in your endurance workouts. Eventually you just have to make them longer to increase the PL.

But, there is much debate over the PLs for endurance workouts. See the following thread:

My suggestion would be to keep using alternates to select easier endurance rides.

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You should be, it’s not good. You can either turn off adaptive training in settings, keep choosing alternates, or delete all your z2 workouts and replace with your preferred workouts.

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We’d agree with @gally24’s approach. Workout Alternates can be a great tool to use if you’re looking for an easier/harder workout on a given day. :slight_smile:

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Now that I’m a few months into using TR, I seem to be using the alternatives more and more. The reason I’m paying a premium for this app was the hope AI coaching would do the thinking for me. Starting to look like I’m just paying for a big library of workouts and I’m making my own plan. What makes it even worse is there’s no option to “favorite” a workout. So I end up constantly searching for similar workouts

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That is part of your progression and very much intended. The way to deal with this is to honestly give feedback on how difficult a workout was. TR’s algorithms will then adapt and schedule easier workouts (including endurance workouts) in the future.

It seems to me that you are preventing TR’s algorithms from working if you wanted to have workout selection automated.

TR will adapt things like ramp rates over time, but requires your feedback at the end of each workout.

A few questions to you:

  • Are you on a training plan for Master’s athletes?
  • What was your setting for the “aggressiveness” slider?
  • How many workouts do you do per week? How long are they?
  • When choosing the number and duration of workouts, did you follow TR’s recommendation or deviate from that?
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You may be working too hard on your hard days, but certainly you’ll want rest if you are sore. Stay active, but there is no requirement to do an ‘easy’ workout - it doesn’t help recovery.

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To add to that: I would distinguish between recovery workouts (up to 1 hour at intensities <= 55 % FTP) and endurance workouts (60–75 % FTP). A 1-hour endurance workout even at the upper end of the intensity spectrum should not induce any long-lasting fatigue.

If it does, to me it is a sign you are doing too much.

Like JoeX has said, prioritize your hard workouts, guard them. If you need to add a recovery (≠ endurance) workout, I’d think about how to pare back your training schedule or make changes to it.

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Say what now? That looks like a very definitive statement. :thinking:

Some people do better if they don’t ride. Some do better if they cruise around at 30% of FTP for 45 minutes. Some people benefit from one or the other depending on the circumstances on the day.

I invariably feel better if I throw my leg over the bike and pedal … both in the moment and for my next workout or ride.

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I’m on the Masters plan. 5 workout/week, 6-7 hrs.
I followed their initial recommendations.
I always give the feedback after a workout. Obviously the endurance workouts are always easy.
I chose balanced on the slider.
So far nobody has been able to explain why TR is putting 75% endurance workout after my hard day of training.

What you’re recommending is pretty much what I’m doing. I still don’t understand why TR is putting a 60-75% endurance workout after my hard day of training? I have to keep changing it.

I was under the assumption that a short 50% workout after a hard day increases blood flow and helps recovery?

TR seems to progress endurance by increasing intensity right up to the top of z2 (there is a whole thread discussing PLs for endurance).

Personally I recommend riding endurance to RPE and ignoring a set %. But this looks like you are already doing this.

As for why TR ups the intensity rather than extending the time who knows, that’s something only they can answer and all we can do is speculate.

The explanation is that you’ve been completing the endurance workouts and marking them easy. This increases your progression levels and tells AT/RLGL that you can handle these workouts and the associated training load.

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Everyone is different. Some need a full recovery day or day off after a hard workout. Most serious, well trained younger athletes can recovery fine with 60-75% FTP.

There’s not one size fits all training plan. Everyone is different which is why alternates are needed!

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Well of course I can “handle” the endurance workouts and they are basically easy. I’m questioning if it’s the right thing to do after a hard day. Especially one that is 60-75%. I was figuring it wouldn’t do more than a short 50% workout after a hard day.

I think this comes back to a few things:

  1. TR has traditionally been geared towards “time crunched athletes.”
  2. It is limited to how much time the user says they have available to train
  3. compliance with workouts above 2 hrs is, from what I’ve read around the forum, low.
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The prevailing theme around here seems to be the opposite of what you’re experiencing. Lots of people seem frustrated with RL/GL being too conservative and adapting workouts/plans to be too easy. I’ve found that to be the case myself, even with the slider moved to the right. So, I’d say if you’re not running into a bunch of red or yellow lights and adaptations, then you’re probably in good shape to just follow the plan.

It looks like you’re doing 60-90 min workouts. Increasing intensity quickly becomes the only way to progress a 60 minute endurance ride. You could try cutting to 4 days and making one of the endurance rides 2 hours, which would reduce the intensity relative to your PLs. I dunno, just spitballing here.

I guess this isn’t a straightforward question nor do we have much to go on.

My hard days don’t kill me, I can still gain from an endurance ride the next day most times. You might be different.

Moving about anyhow is still okay but if you need a recovery day, then a structured workout is not mandatory. Sometimes no workout is better.

Physiologically, it’s not contentious that another workout of any intensity interrupts in flight recovery processes. If you are actually fully recovered, then there is nothing to interrupt.

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Several people have mentioned that: in a training plan you want to do what is known as progressive overload. That means you ramp up the difficulty. With endurance workouts you can do that with duration and intensity. If the workouts are short, the intensity tops out at 75 %.

That is why TR is offering you those endurance workouts. They are supposed to be easy, but not recovery rides.

Because a short endurance workout is easy. Easy does not necessarily mean recovery. In fact, I would only do recovery rides after really hard days where you want to stimulate your metabolism a little. In regular training, endurance rides do the trick.

If you need a recovery day after a hard day, then I think you should make your hard days easier and/or do less overall.

If you have the time, you can replace a shorter 1-hour, 70–75 % FTP endurance ride on the trainer with a 2-hour 62–65ish % endurance ride outdoors or so. But even then I would not recommend going lower than that.

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