Hi brenth. The easiest advice I can offer is to “ride more”. That has been my main problem preventing me from significant increases in FTP. From random health and injury I had to cut my riding during some seasons which caused me to kind of ‘start over’ with training (using TR).
I know that my season will go well if I can get out and ride say 3 times per week including one long ride (50 miles or more). When I lived in Chicago, my weekend rides were around 60 miles or so, because Chicago is FLAT. But here in upstate NY I have to deal with a lot of climbing, so a 35 mile ride can be a challenge. I just need to get out and do that a few times per week. So that’s my advice to you…use TR during off-season and get out and ride when you can…
Good luck! 60 is still young!
I’m 68 and also starting my second year with TR, with similar sort of goals. I do those long steady workouts outside when possible, or on Zwift when the weather is bad, to make it more interesting. For Zwift, I just print out the workout specs and do it. I don’t think the stats all accrue quite as well, but TR does “associate” the ride with that workout. Anyway, some pretend scenery, some other riders and finding that random small group of riders doing your pace is all just a tad more interesting. I still use the TR app for all the more complex workouts.
I just turned 65 and plan to make 2022 my best year ever (10,000km, 400k brevet, etc.). I’ve been averaging over 3000 miles/year for the past seven years with a focus on long rides (weekly centuries or 200ks). I’m ready for a year of more time and miles on the road, and more adventure of multi-day rides.
This winter I hired a coach (specializing in endurance and senior cyclists) not only to guide my training and give feedback, but also one-on-one advice on things like nutrition on long rides and how to prepare and pace for long brevets. He has me working on a stretching routine and core-strength exercises, something I probably would not have started on my own but I certainly am seeing the benefits from this extra work.
The advantage of being an older rider is that I am not tied down to a day job. I treat my workouts as a part-time job (something I schedule and have to make time for). For this winter, I’m riding (on the trainer) about 10 hours/week, and my stretching & core-strength routines take maybe another 4 hours a week. It’s my “part-time job.”
Some year I will hit my physical ceiling and not be able to ride as hard or long as I had the years before – but I’m certainly not there yet.
Amen brother!
Since starting using ATA on 20 Sept I have seen my FTP rise from 240 to 277. Yesterday I hit 277 in the week of my 65th birthday. I am 80kg so 3.45 w/kg.
I have completed MV Base 1 and 2 and then repeated MV Base 2. I am just starting MV Sustained Power Build. All as part of the Climbing Road Race Gran Fondo - to do a sportive (103m) in June.
As an aside, I am not sure how you can see what your plan history is. You can look back through the calender but I dont see the names of the plans anywhere.
I loosely follow the TR workouts, doing most of them but I tend to swap the threshold workout for a very hard effort on zwift or a Fulgaz ride. That gives me the harder efforts that seem to work well for me.
To your question about older cyclists and following TR… and does TR meet ones needs.
Well, you could say you dont know what you dont know…
But for me a 61 year old fart, 62 in July,… TR appears to be working.
I like XCM stage racing and do two per year a 4 Stage UCI Hors Categorie and a 3 stage Extreme XCM. This year I’m including two Gran Fondos(GF) 138km/ 3048m climbing (86mi/10,000ft) and 208km/ 3508m climbing (129mi/11,509ft)
I feel TR is meeting my needs for the XCM stage races. As for the GFs I don’t know as I have only done 1/2 GFs and here they are 138km/86 miles but with a lot of climbing.
When I follow TR plans for XCM races I am physically fit and capable of finishing the races as they are both very demanding.
I normally follow plan builder XCM or Gran Fondo plans Mid Volume… I feel that it prepares me for my selected races… although if I mix in outdoor TR workouts such as threshold on a hill I feel even better. I recently complited both XCM stage for 2022 and fitness was never an issue… However, during the build phase I failed a couple of threshold or VO2 workouts for the first time. I was on plan builder and AT
. So I revieved what I was doing and 1. I was not getting good sleep changed that started tracking sleep… 2. Nutrition off the bike while I didnt eat bad but was not dialed in so for 2022 I started treating all my food as fuel 
track and weigh everthing but dont get really dialed until about 4 weeks out… so far it is working plus it keeps interested and not overwhelmed… 3 I changed my TR hard, easy moderate day schedule.
Because I do the XCM stage races I did back to back to back hard days and was always within TRs acceptable pwr compliance range and never had any problem.
Until OCT NOV 21 when I failed two workouts under AT. Reviewed my system and made adjustments. Now I do Rest day, threshold and VO2 back to back, rest day, TR Outdoor Endurance, TR Outdoor SS(I flip flop the last two workouts depending on weekend obligations) repeat… so far I have had sucess and energy no failed workouts and just recently did a RAMP test b4 starting GF plan and had a marginal gain of 2% that equaled 5watts…according to TR 2 or 3% gain is within the norm.
So I feel good with the TR system and AT…I don’t know what I don’t know but on the bike I’m good with TR as for nutrition off the bike one of my foci for 2022, I’m reading and following “Advanced Sports Nutrition” by Dan Benardot…
What are your current thoughts as your post is a few months old…
After giving this some thought….
I’m doing Low Volume. All extra rides are Z2, as the day get warmer I will do more of these. I’m racing an 11 hour race for me and I feel the time on the bike is important. I like the flexibility of the LV plan. I can move workouts around to fit my schedule and get the prescribed intensity I need. And then I have to add the volume. I use Intervals.icu to track freshness, fitness, and to help me ramp my work in a block plan way increasing workload 10%\wk. probably my biggest beef with TR is that it does not give enough priority to it’s over 60 athletes. So every 4th weekend I prescribe myself a rest week dropping my training volume to 50-60% of my last peak week volume.
The biggest problem with this approach is that it throws off TR prescribed rest week and then I am left with the help of Ai to figure out the rest for that block. It feels to me as a 62y/o that some degree of self coaching is required. I do like TR but I do feel that their is room for improvement.
66 and have been using TR on and off for a few years. I am now using it full time on high volume and being very consistent 
on the run up to doing London-Edinburgh-London in August. I hover around the 3.5W/kg and struggle with ramp tests as I tend to be better on long distance, which is just as well. I am punting for 4W/kg which I was at after Paris-Brest-Paris in 2019. I am a bit like Chad, I think, I don’t have time for being old and although I can’t keep up with the hot shoes in our club at 5W/kg I can still make a good showing on Strava KOMs. As they say, you are only as old as you feel 
So this winter I changed my riding to do 2 intensity days and 2 endurance rides. I let AT deal with the workout levels but I would adjust the workout to what I felt I was weaker at. Overall it just seemed SSBII and build plans had VO2, threshold and Sweet spot. I just stuck to a VO2 and a threshold…for the intensity. AT was slow in ramping so I pushed the ramping. So for VO2 It was a few rides until I hit the 7 range in levels. I ignored AT wanting me to do short intervals and I picked all workouts with a longer durantion 2-5 minutes.
Threshold for me is another weaker area…so worked hard on doing these workouts but had to switch the order around to ensure I was well rested for a threshold workout where as I could do the VO2 workout regardless of rest.
So not as much hard work as prior years. Made sure I stayed feeling fresh and motivated for the hard stuff. Currently I can see my power progress is on par if not ahead of the last few years. I have just switched to changing out one of my endurance for longer sweet spot rides. Just want more endurance in the legs as we get closer to being able to ride outside.
Overall this year less work has felt a lot more beneficial to me.
Nice strategy! Several parts I like is opting for longer VO2 intervals and progressing them. And now moving towards more SS. I love AT, and the flexibility it offers. For me getting ready for an 11 hour race, I am moving away from the shorter threshold Saturday ride (low volume) and moving towards much longer SS intervals on Saturday. I’m using intervals.icu to track training load and trying to progress the load 10%/wk with rest week every 4th.
David. Thanks. That’s a pretty amazing app. Never saw it before or if I did it slipped from memory-overcrowding. Nonetheless wanted to say thanks for posting. Some great info here.
I think the intensity button is all you need. No matter what age you are, or what level of fitness, the plan is geared to you.
Some of us diesels struggle with the vo2 max, but i think you’ll find that most people find vo2 max hard .It’s meant to be.
I think extending the recoveries between intervals is not ideal.
I did Ramada today.The 4 minute recoveries are plenty long enough.
It is more likely that the intensity is too high and you burnt too many matches doing the first one to sustain the watts required.
This happened to me today. Intensity lowered 4w and I achieved the session ok.
The thing I’m not so keen about is, if you lower the intensity, (even a teensy weensy bit), TR knows, and you get a dialogue box with a list of reasons why you didn’t (quite) manage the prescribed session.
This is often because I have not recovered fully from a previous ride, so is a bit age related.
Maybe I’ll do a seperate post on this!
I’ve been doing this progression, and after communicating with Joe Friel, I switched the rest intervals to equal the work intervals. I’m currently stuck at 2.5 min on/off. I try to do 2 sets of 5, separated by 15 min of noodling. It pretty much wipes me out for the rest of the day.
For what its worth my coach has me doing even fewer intervals. A lot of 90 minute to 2.5 hour rides with stuff thrown in. Recently its a lot of over-unders, not the TR OU but the criss cross style where the overs are things like 1-min at 125% and immediately into 4 minutes at 85%, repeated two times for a set, short recovery, and do 3 or 4 sets. With the exception of endurance Tuesdays, there is always some intensity on 4 out of 5 workouts, every week of the year. I’m always able to finish, always able to do more, always able to go out and do a quality session the next day, and most weeks I’m riding 5 days. Volume will need to come down at some point, right now at sixty years old and a cycling age of six, doing 8-10 hours/week with 12+ hour overload weeks is working well for me.
I’m taking a long break from intensity until after Easter. I plan to switch my VO2 session to do an hr of Zone 2 a la ISM, followed by a set of 3 intervals at 120%. If this goes well, I’ll add a second set. At 67, I try to keep the intensity at 2 days/week.
Sounds like a good plan, and reading your ‘pretty much wipes me out’ comment you might want to try experimenting with fewer intervals and then go from 2 to 3 days/week. Even before turning sixty this year, until there was enough endurance miles in my legs I had trouble doing intensity and risked knee issues. Not ride across the country and lose your top end endurance, like you did last year. Just a solid base of 4-5 hours/week of steady endurance.
My two days of intensity have been one VO2 session and one threshold session. I’m working on a duration progression.
Here’s eleven years of TR FTPs, from this 63 y.o. 1,390 rides. I don’t know that it says much, especially if you consider the rather random and unreliable FTP edits prior to 2016 (it was 20-min or 8-min test back then). Main points I note are a) decrease in max power over the years, not evident here. Have got increasingly into weight training, which is hilarious for this 154 lb. ectomorph… b) Big increase in recovery time - wouldn’t dream of less than 2 days rest between (e.g.) VO2 max workouts… c) Biggest/quickest gains (early 2020) were by focusing almost exclusively on VO2 max workouts - then COVID came along. d’oh!
Thanks for posting. Similar to what I have experienced with little real change since I started riding for FTP. My endurance is dramatically different though.
I’m nearing the end of my second winter training block on TR and yesterday posted my fastest 200k ride since I started cycling at the age of 50. I’m now 66 and although my peak FTP seems to have reached a plateau of around 270, my endurance has improved.
This may also be partly due to increased strength training - 3 x 1.5 hours per week. Certainly felt better and stronger on the bike yesterday with less physical niggles and able to stay on the tri-bars for long stretches.