56yr old beginner triathlete, mid-level Master plan too easy. Or is it, wish me luck :-)

Training
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This is partly feedback for the TrainerRoad overlords, partly nerves cuz I hope I did the right thing.

The mid-level Masters Plan is too easy even for those with 2-3 yrs experience. (Or maybe not, read through including the last line). I just deleted it and redid with a custom High Level but still Masters plan. Based on how that goes I’ll either keep it or drop to Mid-level but not masters.

Background. This is NOT a humble brag but rather to show that the mid-level masters plan is far too easy for someone who just got into shape, the AI bot needs to step it up:

  • Currently 56 year old male.
  • New to TrainerRoad (first 30 days), used human coaches for 2 years but ROI no longer there as IDGAF about times on any given event.
  • 6’1"/186cm. Dropped 60#, going from 238 to 178 at age 52 (sniff I’m now back to 205, that was unsustainably low levels of daily calories)
  • Bought my first “real” outdoor bike at 53 (going 2 miles with kiddos stopping every 100 yards doesn’t count)
  • Did my first ride > 20 miles a few weeks after. 100% flat.
  • Did my first century at 53.5 yrs old
  • Did my first “real” outdoor run of 2 miles right after the century
  • Couldn’t swim from one end of the pool to the other at 54.25 yrs
  • 2 Sprint then 2 Olympic then 1 70.3 in the 7 months after that
  • When I was only doing cycling, my FTP was 2.99w/kg (ugh).
  • My peak triathlete FTP was 2.75 w/kg. (training 3 sports = tough)
  • As of this moment I’m 2.2 w/kg cuz 2024 had family medical drama I lost fitness and put on fat cuz chocolate & fried foods are my emotional crutch.
  • “A” races in 2025 are WildFlower 70.3/May, Indian Wells 70.3/December. Tons of B/C.

Note: I am NOT some elite athlete. I’ve done 10 triathlons in 22 months, including two 70.3. Tons of single sporting bike or run events. In every single one I’m bottom 30%, often bottom 10%.

If the mid-level Masters triathlete plan was too easy for me, I don’t know who it would be good for.

Or perhaps the root cause is my FTP is artificially low cuz 2024 drama, once it gets back up to 2.5->2.7 w/kg it’ll be hard again, and I’ll need to re-test.

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Chill take it easy, little is lost by taking it too easy but a lot is lost when going too hard

Happy new year and best wishes

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A plan being “too easy” is nonsense.

The issue is that your FTP is not correct and/or your power meter/trainer is out of whack. Your post is very confusing. Most of your bullet points (diet, wkg, training load, etc) all confirm the performance results you posted. My suggestion would be to get your power numbers confirmed, and let TrainerRoad do its thing. All of the TrainerRoad plans will generate productive TSS. Me thinks “its too easy” is because you’re actually not working nearly hard enough to accumulate beneficial stresses. Finishing 10 tri’s in 22 months, all in a lower quintile of results is a strong indication you’re simply not going hard enough.

At 53 years old, you simply could not recover fast enough for all those events if you’re indeed pushing yourself.

I’m 55. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, and have been using TrainerRoad for almost 10 years. Productive TSS of 400+ per week is hard. Noodling around is not. Knock out 60 minutes at a legitimate .83 IF, at your age, and I promise you won’t say “too easy”.

I’m trying to be helpful, but apologize if my bedside manner is lacking…

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I’ve now done 3 straight weeks of TrainerRoad. TrainerRoad was beginning to throttle back, and yet I find myself wanting to push harder after every day. It keeps thinking I have yellow/red days and reducing it even further. You can call it “nonsense” all you want, but it’s simply not challenging me.

.8 IF at 60+ minutes was a regular occurrence when I had a dedicated human coach. His TSS range for me was 450-600/week. 4 weeks on, 1 week off.

Mid-level TrainerRoad Masters slotted me at 200 TSS/week. That’s not even enough to maintain much less improve.

It gave me 250 TSS this week so I just swapped out one ride with an outdoor 100K and added in another run, so I can at least cross 400.

First thing I did was the AI 8 minute FTP test. Showed an FTP that was 20% lower than my last test, although I’ve had an unplanned 100 day “off season” due to a broken hand then family drama so wasn’t shocked.

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One of two things is happening – either you’ve uploaded all your old data and TR sees that you’ve done nothing for 3.5 months, or you haven’t uploaded old data and TR thinks you’re completely new to training. Either scenario will result in TR giving you a very conservative plan.

Output is only as good as the in put. The system needs time and data to learn about you. If you feel like you can do more, do more. The system will adapt.

If you feel like your FTP is too low, do the Kolie Moore ftp test.

Remember – this is machine learning. It isn’t perfect and you need to self coach at points. Dont be Michael Scott following the GPS into the lake.

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Yeah I think you nailed it here.

I uploaded years of data, so I suspect TR is looking at my 100 day off season and going slow. But I put in my schedule, including Wildflower 70.3/May, which is more of a 3/4 than a 1/2 iron given that course. Several friends have done it.

200 TSS for 3 weeks was okay as a re-entry I suppose. But it’s time to self-uplevel, not throttle back (masters plan).

Lets see how I feel after the 100K bike tomorrow morning, or the swim/run brick on Thursday. That’ll get me to 450ish TSS, and my body’s reaction will tell me what I need to do next.

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Hi Vivek, welcome to the community, I’ve been using tri plans with TR for seven years you might want to check out the Ironman training thread for some advice and accountability.

Best thing to do here is post a link to your calendar so people can talk with that context to your questions and queries, consistent training is key to all training but even harder for triathletes. A 100 day off season would be a red flag to me.

TR gives you an objective analysis of what you’re doing to yourself and what the outcomes are and recommend ways forward based on the likely outcome over time, not the hardest workout you can possibly do today.

As well as linking your calendar, specifying which of the four mid volume triathlon plans would be useful, and if you’ve used Plan Builder to create the plan.

Hope you gain something from the discussion and good luck at wildflower and Indian wells.

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Oh that’s cool didn’t know anyone else could see my calendar. Will check out the various forum features and threads.

I did a custom training plan. The 100 day off season wasn’t voluntary, broke my hand in Zell Am See 3 days before Ironman 70.3 on a training ride to check out the course. Wasn’t allowed to bike or swim for most of that. I did 1-2 runs/week but had other family medical drama so it was whatever was doable.

My biggest angst is WildFlower, given that particular course is especially brutal due to the hills. The time off has taken a huge endurance hit. I can pound out 60 minutes strong before I start to falter.

I’ll solicit advice on my particular calendar & situation in a month, still too new to TR to make that effective. I want to see if my self upleveling to greater weekly TSS ends up burning me out.

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i dont get what you mean by “mid level” plan and to easy. a plan can only be “easy” if your FTP is completely wrong like a few people here already mentioned. other than that here is how it works usually:

you have to give TR an indication of how the workout was for you after completing it. you can choose easy, moderate, hard, very hard, etc.

lets say you do a VO2 or Treshholdworkout 5.5 and you put in the survey that it was “easy”. TR will then push your next workout of the same type significantly higher and make it 7.0 or even higher. if you complete that one as well and put easy, it will ramp it up even further and if you complete 9.0 or higher workouts TR will suggest you a new ftp. it is really simple.

the second thing you can change to make your training more challenging is to add volume by either doing “train now” or just use plan builder and modify the length of the sessions you are given.

both of those will give you more TSS and up your rolling average TSS which is used by TR for suggesting training plans.

very important here is you need to have powerdata or let TR estimate your TSS with some other option (i never use that one but apparently TR can somehow estimate TSS if you dont have power but you have to enable it).

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With Wildflower in May, some would say that pushing TSS up to the point where it might burn you out in the next month or so is a risky strategy.

As you can pound out “60 mins strong” before starting to falter, the conservative approach would surely be to work on extending that TTE towards race duration for a while, then add some threshold / VO2 to push up FTP?

If it was me, I would be looking to make a six week series that was 2x identical sweetspot workouts per week starting with the Round Bald, then Round Bald +2, then Round Bald +3 and then Tray Mountain , Tray Mountain +2 and Tray Mountain +3, built up to a sensible weekly TSS from low end tempo workouts such as Baxter, Baxter +1, Baxter +2 and Perkins. I might consider adding one of the Dorr workouts once per week to keep the top end poked if fatigue allowed.

That would take me to 13 Feb. I would be much fitter, have completed at least one AIFTP assessment and have enough data for Plan Builder to produce me a sound plan for the 10 / 11 weeks up to Wildflower.

Others that know more will have other ideas which might be better, but that is what I would start with for the cycling side of things. I don’t do swimming and running, so I have nothing to say about that.

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I recommend starting with this.

Once you know for sure what your FTP is, you can use the Progression Levels to bump up workouts and get to more appropriate levels, which will teach TR’s AI much better which workouts to assign. Once you’ve dialed in your FTP and PL’s, you can much better assess if the plan you’ve been assigned is difficult enough.

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Is the intensity of your workouts too easy or is it too little volume, or a combination of both? If it’s volume, then you can add more hours. If it’s intensity, is your FTP correct? Have you calibrated your trainer/power meter? Have your PLs been increasing? Have you completed a harder PL than recommended (ie stretch or breakthrough) to push up the PL? If the PLs are not increases fast enough for your liking you can adjust the training approach to demanding or aggressive.

Can you clarify what is this means? If you answer the surveys appropriately, the PLs should increase (become harder) as the system hones in on your abilities.

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First off, thanks to everyone for the education on how TrainerRoad works, I greatly appreciate your guidance.

“Throttle back” means change assigned rides to be easier rides, and shorten the length of runs.

The first ride I did was the TR 8 minute FTP test, which gave me my current FTP. Not sure if it was the “Kolie Moore”, TR auto-generated it, called it the Ramp test. I assume that’s correct, came in 20% under my FTP in July which is pre-injury and family medical drama, and I was working out 6 days/week at the 450-600 TSS range. I only did 1-2 hours of running/week from Aug 26th->December.

Since starting TR I’ve pressed 1 on every ride, and yet it still gives me yellow days after every brick run day then adapts/reduces the next workout. PLs are progressing, I wonder if it’s just playing it safe, and I’m just getting bored.

The hardest ride it assigned to me was yesterday, “Steamboat+3”, then a run. Analyzing results, it wanted today to be a red day. I ignored that as that ride was a “1”. Plus I was leading my triathlon club’s New Years Day 2 bridges/40 mile (only 1500 feet but .8IF) ride. I felt totally fine waking up, other than having a bazillion mechanical issues the ride was fine. Even contemplated a brick run but A protein shake at home then a pint of Guinness, a chicken club sandwich, and onion rings from the bar 1 block from my house proved to be too compelling though :slight_smile:

Right now it’s telling me the next 2 days are red and to do no workouts. I’m helping my 20 year old get into running, we’re doing run/walks at 3.5 run/1 minute walk for 5K every 48 hours so I’ll see how I feel and do that with her. 20 hours of rest including sleep before that plus it’s 2 min/mile slower than my pace, I’m sure it’ll be fine as it’s not a real workout. Driving her back to college on Fri 10 hours away, so that’s a guaranteed day off.

Someone above said TR is only as good as the data it receives, so I’ll just stay patient, see how the custom “High Volume” plan with the masters option works. Hopefully by mid/late January it knows me well enough to be better at predicting the future.

Again, thanks to all for your handholding, I appreciate it.

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Info on the Kolie Moore test protocols. This isn’t a TR test, it’s doing a longer test to define what power you can actually hold through TTE, rather than doing shorter tests and then guesstimating.

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got it. I don’t see that as a TrainerRoad workout. I see the standard 20 min FTP test (along with “not recommended”). Do folks just manually build that workout then do it?

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in case you did not know, you can also set your FTP manually. you dont have to accept the lower one from the ramp test you did. maybe it is just that you did the test on a particularly bad day and it was just off by a lot.
TR is just your tool, dont let it take control over you. if you feel good and feel stronger that it thinks you are just adjust yourself until things even out.

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If you haven’t done anything for 100 days, no wonder it suggests 250 TSS. A 100-day offseason seems way too long for me. That seems much more sustainable than 400 TSS, especially given the information you gave in your original post.

You also mention other life stresses in a subsequent post, keep in mind that this will eat into your recovery. I’m in a different life phase, but my kids are the biggest (beautiful und lovely) constraint when it comes to my training.

Moreover, given your age, you might want to consider adding strength training instead of additional hours on the bike for a more balanced approach to your fitness.

Is it?
Let’s say you want to train 5 days a week and rest on 2. How would you distribute the time amongst

  • strength training,
  • running,
  • swimming and
  • cycling?

Any FTP test (protocol) yields an estimate/“guesstimate”. I don’t think complicated FTP protocols are useful for most, pick one and then verify with threshold workouts.

If you know that a particular test protocol yields results that are systematically too high/low, correct the result manually. If you are sure that your FTP is X (e. g. by doing a threshold workout and manually adjusting the difficulty), then set it to X and see how you perform. As a general rule, if your PLs for one or more of the following power bands (sweet spot, threshold, VO2max) is in the 4–6 region, it is an indication that everything is ok.

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That’s a good idea, I wouldn’t worry about ftp testing particularly as you are returning to training. As long as your equipment is set up, calibrated and you fill out the post workout surveys accordingly you should see appropriate progression.

Easy run/walk should be fine as recovery runs but TR will be objective and may have a different opinion on what constitutes easy for you for now.

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I just go outside, but yes, you can build a workout in TR.

I disagree with anyone who says this is complicated:

  • 10 minutes at 92-95 percent of target FTP
  • Increase to 100 percent of target FTP for 15 minutes
  • 10-15 minutes gradual power increase until exhaustion
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Regarding the Kolie test and creating a workout – yes you could use TRs workout creator or if you have Zwift I find their workout creator to be much simpler to use.

As Pbase said, you could do it outside. Or, you could pick any TR workout and set your trainer mode to standard and just ignore the power targets of the TR workout and do the Kolie protocol. Use intervals.icu to analyze the data and find your FTP.

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