More generally, my descriptive training levels should not be treated as prescriptive training zones. That should be evident from everything and anything I have ever said about them.
TL,DR: Always, always, always consult the original source.
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FYPFY.
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I’ve just had a look at my last 2 outside rides (a 3hr & a 5hr) and based on this latest info I’m going to have to check my FTP as they both appeared to be Level 1 (Recovery?) rides despite them feeling anything but.
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What was the AP as a percentage of FTP?
It’s a combination of time and boredom, but mostly time. If I’m going to ride during the week for more than 90 minutes, it usually has to happen before the kids wake up. So if I have any hope of getting a 2 hour ride in, I have to get up at 4am. And that sucks.
I’m fortunate to live in a place that has rideable weather most of the year and several great trail networks within 10-20 minutes, so when I have the time for a 2+ hour ride on the weekend, I’m going out on my mtb for fun and not worrying much about training zones. It might not be the “best” thing for my training, but I’m not going pro anytime soon 
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To the original point of this thread, my (uninformed) gut feeling is that TR’s progression levels are too tightly targeted and workouts don’t provide enough PL bump for the levels below the one that’s targeted.
Example: The OP’s PLs being at 9.9 for VO2 but 1.9 for Threshold seems intuitively impossible. I can’t imagine a scenario where an athlete could do L9 VO2 workouts but would struggle with L3-4 threshold or SS work at a given FTP.
Weirdly, looking over the PLs for various workouts, this mainly applies to VO2 and anaerobic zone workouts. Higher level VO2 gives you no progression in the lower zones. Here’s Birks, which it seems like should surely improve threshold performance somewhat:
Conversely, SS and Threshold workouts DO seem to provide a substantial bump to lower zones. Here’s Norman Clyde, which gives you a nice SS bump as well as the targeted Threshold level:
Is there a reason for this? Does VO2 max work not impact SS/Threshold performance significantly? My own experience says that’s not the case, so I’m confused as to why the PLs are set this way.
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VO2 work definitely affects threshold and SS performance but I think its a good thing that the PLs are specific to the workouts. If you are following a TR plan you should be doing SS, threshold, and VO2 workouts and improving all of those PLs. OP has obviously been doing a bunch of VO2 workouts and not much else which is why the other PLs are so low.
5 HR ride 52% Variability 1.31, 3hr 58% Variability 1.31
No disagreement from me on this point. My question is why it seems that workouts at or below FTP (so Threshold/SS) do bump progression levels for lower zones, while those above (VO2, anaerobic) don’t.
I see that now, that is an interesting observation. I’m guessing its because its harder to extrapolate how well you could do on longer sweet spot or threshold intervals based on your performance in shorter VO2 max intervals. I think the true threshold PL for the workout you shared Birks is definitely a lot higher than 1.1 but TR doesn’t want to risk overestimating it and is assuming you are going to be doing threshold workouts as well
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I’ve been doing a TR plan. The only thing I changed was using alternates available to me and letting it do the adaptations.
I don’t see the issue? The second ride fits in the 56-75% window. The first is just below, but then again, it was 5 h, so…
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Are you doing a specialty plan like the criterium specialty? If you are in base or build your endurance PLs should be ramping up similarly to your others. If you are in criterium specialty that could explain why you keep getting harder VO2 workouts and not harder endurance workouts.
I used the plan builder. Was that not the right thing to do?
Plan builder is great, and if you are in specialty phase right now getting ready for an event there is nothing wrong with that. I was just trying to make sense of how your VO2 progression level got so high relative to everything else. If you want more focus on endurance, sweet spot, and threshold I would suggest doing a base block next. Since you used plan builder you should be able to see on the calendar what block you have coming up next
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I’m not in a specialty phase. It did force me to choose a discipline, even when I said I wasn’t training for anything, so I picked rolling road race. The only thing I set it for was a 2 month expiration, as I’m going on vacation at the end of Jan and wanted it to wrap up before I was off for a whole week.
@The_Cog so, my takeaway here is that a 1 or 1.5 hour indoor “endurance” ride with an IF of, say, .6 to .65 isn’t good enough if training stimulus (as opposed to a recovery ride, or just spinning the pedals for the sake of it) is the goal of that session. Is that correct?
PLs never worked for me either with VO2. I’d usually have an 8 or 9+ VO2 level with SweetSpot or Threshold in the 3s nad 4s. Hitting a PL 10 VO2 wasn’t unheard of, and even after raising my FTP, my first VO2 workout would usually be like a 7. I don’t have TR anymore so can’t check, but something like 6x3 was a PL 7 or close. I think PLs just don’t work well when tied to FTP like TR does.
An interesting thread.
I haven’t spent any time looking at the IF or % of my ftp that I do my z2 rides at. Mostly I just go on what I consider to be m z2 hr, and work out backwards from there. Of course this has a tendency to shift depending on the duration of the ride, where there is some drift upward as duration increases.
This seems to correlate pretty well with the idea of a flat % of ftp zone and an IF based upon duration being fundamentally different things, which I hadn’t considered. I love the idea of the fluctuation of outdoor or unstructured riding having an impact on IF and that being a better description of the effort. Very cool.
Generally my z2 / 3 crossover is somewhere in the mid .70s, especially if you go off what I consider a more accurate FTP than the TR AI version. Given that gap TRs highest IFs are actually lower by value than I’d expect but in pure watts pretty accurate for the z2 % I am comfortable riding at.
I’ve just come back to TR and what I’m hoping to do is simply push the endurance alternates until I get closer to a z2/z3 crossover hr that matches my expectation, both for durations I want to ride at, and intensities that make sense for those durations.
I think a lot of the struggle is getting into the slipstream of the TR model as it were. I’m hoping some early hand holding (and occasional corrections) will lead to a smoother experience in a few blocks.
Here’s hoping for the best in 2024. 
Correct, it’s too easy, at least for anything less than probably a 5+ h ride.
For anyone who wants to dispute that statement: let’s toss out measurement of power, the notion of FTP, etc., and just think of it in traditional terms, i.e., relative to VO2max.
In that realm, anything less than about 55% of VO2max would be considered low intensity exercise, too low to induce significant physiological adaptations, at least/especially in an individual who is already endurance trained. Relatedly, Seiler places his “lower pole” around 60% of VO2max. Yet, on average an IF of 0.60-0.65 corresponds to only 48-52% of VO2max, because the average trained cyclist has an FTP of about 80% of VO2max.
If somebody suffers from cumulative fatigue from doing their “moderate intensity filler workouts” at an IF of 0.75-0.85, odds are that they have either overestimated their FTP and/or their diet isn’t high enough in carbohydrate.
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