Long weekend endurance rides have been replaced with shorter Sweet Spot workouts across many Sweet Spot Base plans, and our high-volume Sweet Spot Base plans have been drastically reworked.
Which plans have been updated so far?
Roughly half of all training plans include long endurance weekend rides. Currently, minor updates have been made to Sweet Spot Base low-volume plans — this does not affect any weekend rides. Mid-volume plans have been updated with shorter Sweet Spot interval workouts in lieu of the longer weekend rides. Sweet Spot Base high-volume plans have been completely reworked.
Many Build and Specialty plans have been updated to replace longer endurance rides with shorter duration Sweet Spot workouts as well.
Why the change?
Unless your discipline demands you prepare for very particular aspects of a long-distance effort, Sweet Spot training is ideal. Sweet Spot workouts bring about most of the same adaptations as longer endurance rides, but allow you to rack up TSS much more quickly. Take the workout Longfellow, for instance. It takes 4 hours to pile up 181 TSS but Marcus Baker -1 does it in a fraction of the time: 2.5 hours.
By replacing longer weekend rides with shorter interval workouts, we’re able to keep your TSS where it needs to be while eliminating the need to end your week with a long, slow ride. At this time, only the newly updated mid- and high-volume Sweet Spot plans reflect this update.
What changes were made to the Sweet Spot Base high-volume plan?
High-volume Sweet Spot Base plans have been reworked to incorporate all “sub-threshold” work (i.e. intervals nudging at FTP). This means you’ll no longer see the mix of VO2 max intervals and other varying forms of work that mid- and low-volume plans include for the purpose of getting you fit in a time-crunched situation.
The nature of a “high-volume” plan changes this approach a bit, and our changes are meant to reflect that. To reduce some of your weekend load, we’ve distributed some of that workload throughout the week. In order to make sure you don’t overdo your training with that increase, some of the higher intensity work has been removed.
Should I stick to my legacy Sweet Spot Base plan or update?
If you’re starting a new plan, these workouts are already part of the plan.
If you’re currently in the middle of SSB I or II low- and mid-volume, Coach Chad recommends you finish it out as is. If you insist on accessing the new changes, your workouts from your legacy plan will not be automatically added to your new plan.
If you’d like to update your new plan with completed workouts from your past plan, you must stop your current plan and unassign the workouts from your past plan in order to assign them to the new plan. It’s recommended to delete your legacy plan to disassociate all your completed rides. This will allow you to more quickly assign those completed rides to your new plan.
If you’d like to do a longer, lower-intensity workout similar to what you’d find in the legacy mid- and high-volume SSB plans, you can find a description of the alternative workout under Week Descriptions (+Week Tips). Keep in mind that the quality of an indoor ride is about 1.5 times more effective than an outside ride, so you’ll usually need to spend more time outside to get the same training benefit.
Will all training plans be updated?
The following plans will not see any changes: All Triathlon (Base, Build and Specialty), Traditional Base and Century Specialty.
For riders on these plans, longer workouts provide value that goes beyond training stress. Long rides should be used to experiment with on-bike nutrition and hydration strategies, address changes in bike fit, grow accustomed to long durations on the bike and gain confidence doing longer distances.
Have a question about the latest training plans update? Leave it below or send our support team a message to support@trainerroad.com.
Editor’s note: this blog post was last edited on January 27th, 2017 to include training plan recommendations and additional information re: the change.
