I’m looking for guidance on whether I should adjust volume or intensity in my current plan.
I’m on a 4-day-per-week plan (2 hard rides, 2 easy rides), which was the recommended structure. I’m three weeks in. The two hard workouts feel appropriate and productive, and I’m confident they’ll get even better over time.
The issue is the two easy rides. They feel extremely easy, borderline unengaging, and honestly like a poor use of time. I’ve listened to all the TrainerRoad podcasts so I fully understand the purpose and value of low-intensity and recovery work, so this isn’t about dismissing endurance rides. I just want to be sure I’m not undertraining.
I’m considering increasing workload to hopefully drive faster FTP gains, but I want to do it correctly and avoid overtraining. I’m curious how others handle this situation when the easy rides feel waaayy too easy:
Do you leave them as prescribed?
Replace one easy ride with something more substantial?
Adjust plan volume instead?
Looking for best-practice guidance rather than guessing.
I’d rate them as easy and let AI do the thinking it’ll learn and up the intensity and if you still feel you need more volume use the check volume feature down the line.
I would go in and change the Endurance slider to encourage the AI to be more aggressive.
Go to your calendar. Click the training approach named at the top of the page (Balanced, Aggressive, Custom, etc). Click edit. Click “Customize by zone”.
Thanks for the quick responses and the helpful suggestions, everyone. @Helvellyn Here’s a screenshot from today’s ride as an example. The workout is 3×10-minute intervals at 140 W and 2×10-minute intervals at 107 W. I also had a similar 45-minute workout on Monday, which felt like almost no effort.
Yesterday’s ride was a 1-hour sweet spot workout, which I rated as moderate, and today I feel fully capable of doing more. Craving something like a longer tempo ride, for example.
Very interesting, thanks for the tip. I wasn’t aware I could customize by zones. This may be what’s needed, since the hard rides feel productive while the easy rides feel excessive in how easy they are. Thanks again.
I love me a 0.65 IF Endurance Ride. Almost as much as I love a 0.60 one.
That being said, I do them in the context of them being at least 2 hours at that intensity, and with 2 (occasionally 3) hard hard days per week on the other days.
This may be your issue, based on your general description I would likely be rating these easy. What is the AI expecting them to be? If it’s expecting them to be easy and you’re rating them moderate it’s unlikely to increase the intensity
@pirnie Yep, I’m definitely rating the endurance rides as easy, and the AI is also predicting them to be easy. The ride I rated as moderate was a sweet spot workout, which the AI predicted to be hard, but I was feeling particularly strong yesterday.
You could switch to 3 hard, 1 easy and see how that goes for you
Generally, I wouldn’t recommend increasing the intensity of endurance rides.
Do you have the time for more volume? If you do, I would recommend more time at that 60-70% area. More volume is almost always better IMO as long as it is at the appropriate intensity and doesn’t negatively impact your “hard” days. With more volume you can also increase time in zone on your hard days. So instead of 4 x 8 you now have time for TR to give you 4 x 10.
If you’re answering the post workout survey honestly it’ll adjust. It sounds like you’re answering them honestly from your example.
That is supposed to be an easy (or very easy) workout. My plan is on a series of them at the moment as its a recovery week; last week was much harder Anaerobic and VO2max workouts and next week its back to hard SS and Over/ Under Threshold workouts.
Great suggestions. I definitely have time for more volume. What I’m starting to understand is that increasing the endurance ride volume ( say from 45/90 minutes to 90/120 minutes) keeps the risk of overdoing it relatively low, as long as the intensity stays in the prescribed endurance range and it doesn’t negatively affect my hard days. If this is correct, I’ll likely start there and see how the AI responds. These longer low intensity rides will definitely require queuing up some good podcasts!
That is correct. The only caveat I’d add (and this may just be my personal training philosphy) is that there is no reason to be pushing that edge .75 IF or 75% ftp. As Helvellyn said “I love me a 0.65 IF Endurance Ride. Almost as much as I love a 0.60 one.” Queu up some good stuff and enjoy.
I think there are some good suggestions in here, but going to add a couple more.
You could adjust one or both your endurance days to dynamic endurance which would increase your time on the endurance rides. Assuming you have time in your schedule for it. This builds up and won’t instantly put you at a 4 hour ride this week.
You could run volume check on your plan and see if there are additional days/extended time you could ride.
As mentioned previously stop the masters plan and go to 3 intensity/1 endurance. Don’t know your age so not sure if this is appropriate or not.
Answer your RPE surveys and wait for the AI to dial up the intensity and wattages. If you are just starting it’s not a bad idea to leave some room for growth. You’ll get to the end of your plan and be missing the easier days/rides if you scale up too quickly.
Also could you post your training calendar or training days? This may help us see what’s going on. Schedule would be very different with 4 days slammed together, evenly spread out or like a 3 and 1 scenario.
If you are only riding 4 days, you recover on the days you are not riding. I don’t really see the need for additional recovery rides. Personally I would use the two “endurance” days to ride outside if you don’t want additional intensity.
If you can’t ride outside I would change one of the rides to something more stimulating… a “C-workout” of sorts. Something that is very doable but also engaging enough to keep you interested. The fourth ride would be long endurance if you can handle being on a trainer for longer periods. I struggle over 90 min so use rides like “Bays” (has a few accelerations) or tempo intervals as those can help with the monotony. If the added stimulus starts to add too much fatigue dial it back.
- not enough coffee