Anyone for more 45 minute sweet spot workouts?

Training
1

I am a cycling hobbyist and have enjoyed TR for a number of years. I am a very-low-volume user, 2-4 indoor rides weekly, and I prefer the 45 minute workouts. Goals for me are general fitness as part of a run/lift/cycle regimen, and in the summer to enjoy some modest group rides.

However, there is not much variety in the 45 minute sweet-spot realm, and they tend toward higher intensity. For instance, there are 9 sweet-spot rides and 1 tempo ride at 45 minutes.

I feel that if there were a wider array of these workouts, they’d still be a handy tool for making progress (or for maintaining) on my very low volume plan. It’d be nice to not just drop an interval off an hour ride, so as to fully participate in the TrainNow / FTP estimation tools too.

Should I just buck up and do hour rides? Or are there others looking for variety in tempo and sweet-spot at this time length?

2 Likes
2

Look for the More Sweetspot team and you’ll find SST workouts of pretty much every length you could ever want :wink:

4 Likes
3

Couple of options come to mind short of TR offering new stuff:

  1. Use the TR Workout Creator to make whatever suits your preferences. You can many endless version at precisely the length you want.

  2. Pick longer workouts that are more of the style you want, but end them early.

2 Likes
4

Link for quick access:

1 Like
5

I agree with this. Stands out especially after the big increase in workouts with the adaptive training launch.

I’m begging the question somewhat, but if you include threshold workouts in your search for 45 minute workouts, and sort by intensity :arrow_up: there are a couple of extras that might fit the bill. Lolita-1, Rendezvous, Piute family are maybe something different but in the same high-end aerobic spirit as SS/Tempo intervals.

1 Like
6

Thanks so much! How do you think ending workouts early interacts with the surveys and FTP estimation? It’d be nice to have a finer grained library at 45, but if I were still able to take advantage of the AI tracking stuff ending rides early, that’s not a bad way to go.

7

Thanks! Optionality can also be added by changing intensity in ride, but I am unsure how that interacts with the FTP estimation and surveys.

8

With respect to surveys, you can chose the “short on time” or whatever option, which I think then gives you the normal 5 point survey. I have not used it myself yet, so am going off what TR and others have mentioned. Could be worth a try at least one, unless TR or someone else can share direct experience for sure.

9

Peavine -1 here I come.

10

@dfcar I give strong support toward @mcneese.chad recommendation:

Workout Creator is a great tool for creating your own supplemental workout library. To show you its power (see screenshot below), once you create a single interval (e.g. 10min @75% followed by 2mins RI), you can select and repeat it as many times as you want. And once you create a single workout, you can duplicate it and make group edits (e.g. increasing/reducing #intervals, power levels, etc). To make search easy for me, I have labeled all of them for easy searchability. See screenshot and you will get a sense of the simplicity (and power) of such.

image
image1992Ă—1154 266 KB

2 Likes
11

Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.

1 Like
12

BTW: You are not alone in this thought process. In addition to those on schedules that are of lower volume, included may be any recovering from an injury (my current situation) or those coming from extended time off.

TrainNow is currently only useful for TR workouts, and given your goals, it may not be as useful as it could be. However, it would be easy to imagine that it could be expanded to analyze one’s workout library to provide improved suggestions.

13

Thanks for the feedback on this thread! I took your recommendation and used the custom workout tool. I put together 20+ interval workouts ranging from 75% to 100%, with 28 - 30 mins spent at target / 3 min breaks.

Helpfully, TR applies a progression number to all these!

Here is the link to the team in case others want to use these.

1 Like
14

why not just follow the time crunch 30 or 45 plan?

1 Like
15

Yeah, I think the intensity of the time crunch plans (no sweet spot, but features threshold 3+ and VO2 3+) would be something to build up to. I made these 45 minute intervals to address what I saw as a gap … for the, ahem, lower end riders like myself.

1 Like
16

I’m a few days late to the discussion but I have done this a time or two when I just wasn’t mentally into the ride. I just indicated it was a time issue and then I get the normal survey. No issues.

1 Like
17

Good deal. Thanks for confirming the outcome :smiley:

18

You could be a beginner cyclist starting at 0 and overperform on the ramp test by 10% and TR with adaptive training will still ease you into any program if you answer the surveys honestly.

Before joining TR in winter my cycling would consist of commuting 2x/week 2x35min mostly high end tempo/low threshold ie sweet spot and that really didn’t help me maintain my summer fitness, the time crunch HIT workouts probably would do a much better job maintaining

1 Like
19

Just do 1x45 @ 88% and call it a day.

1 Like
20

Just remember the PL numbers TR gives to custom workouts are not always accurate and cant necessarily be compared to the standard workout library. There are a ton of examples out there and TR has confirmed this multiple times.

2 Likes