First of all, sorry if my reply came across as harsh, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way, I appreciate your comments.
Probably that’s the solution I will go for, because while I like the training volume of the mid-volume plan, in the summer I would like to spend one day a week outside with my team mates. Plus, I have to practice things on the road that you can’t learn on a trainer (e. g. to ride more efficiently in a pack and pacing).
I understand what you are saying here, but I think the scenario I present is quite common: in the summer people want one ride outside on the weekends, and it’d be nice if TR could accommodate that out of the box.
Just psychologically, I don’t like “not doing my homework” by skipping my vegetables (my TR workout) for a group ride (dessert) 
PS The web calendar works great. I was easily able to modify my workout schedule to account for a race and a business trip. 
I reckon there are plans to bring full calendar functionality to the iOS app?
Yes, take a look at this post:
Just program the Mid volume and ignore the Sat or Sun ride that you do outside. You can then associate it to the planned ride if you wish to…
I have the same issue as you do, I will only do 3 structured rides per week but choosing a LV has less intensity/time in some of the days. So MV and ignoring the days I don’t workout o ride outside.
Could you choose the LV, and either:
A. Add the weekend outdoor ride
B. OR if not possible (weather/commitments etc.) opt. for longer workout variations, during the week?
Seems easier (and less stressful!) to build up from a solid plan, rather than rearranging MV. Potentially being more fatigued for your outdoor rides or even missing/skipping workouts on a regular basis.
Or you could do what I do: All my plans are high volume. The Tues-Thurs are the ones I care most about it. I do those at high volume. Friday I’ll try and rip around on my cross bike at a mellow pace or just spin for an hour on the trainer. Weekends are for racing or 4-6 hour rides.
That’s basically my main concern: I know that all workouts have been carefully curated, so skipping MV workouts seems like I would miss something essential. On the other hand, starting from LV would put the onus on me to create a suitable workout — which is what Coach Chad is for IMHO. 
I’d like to stay married, thank you very much 
Plus you feel like a BOSS achieving more… win win!
The core workouts are Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The Sunday workout is flexible–you can swap it for a longer, lower-intensity ride or an outdoor ride. The training plan / week notes give you permission. 
I agree more volume options would be of minimal value, and not where I’d like to see TR investing its talent. But, a lot of what the OP seeks could be facilitated with a bit of additional functionality in the Calendar feature when you add a plan.
The Calendar already allows you to pick the days of the week on which the workouts fall. It would seem a logical extension to allow a user to add outdoor ride(s) as part of this same prompt-driven process (with very simple metrics, like duration and TSS). By the same token, the user could be prompted to add in any recurring stuff (strength training, mobility work, whatever).
An additional feature could be whether to schedule recovery weeks every fourth week (the way build and specialty plans are already built) or every third week (as is often recommended on the podcast for older athletes and detailed in this post by @mcneese.chad).
None of this requires new plans, per se, just automating existing functionality in the Calendar to move stuff around and add recurring workouts. Folks familiar with the capabilities of the Calendar already do this, I’m sure, but this might be a way to help more users get the most out of this excellent calendar implementation by using it to tailor their plans.
That may be nice, but is not that much more work to do after adding a regular plan to start, then add the recurring workouts as needed. It would make minimal difference to do it within the plan selection vs after the fact.
You will end up with essentially the same number of selections (and data entry) as doing them via the current method.
I’ve been doing low volume and adding whatever the mid-volume Wednesday endurance ride is to my calendar to create my own low/mid plan.
The one “problem” I do have is I usually start my new week on Sunday nights. That throws off my calendar and some of my “weekly” charts. I don’t think there is a way to adjust the defaults of my plan to that schedule but I don’t view any of those as a big deal. I just do it manually.
That is a great idea. Another solution would be to start with the mid-volume plan and designate one of the two weekend workouts as optional (perhaps one is more important than the other). This way completionists like yours truly would feel a bit better about skipping a workout for a ride.
I don’t disagree that this is already possible, but the OP’s question shows that not all users are making use of those features in their current form. Perhaps it’s a matter of pointing it out, in forums such as this, but it might also indicate an opportunity to improve access to features through refinements to the user interface.
Sure, and this request has been made. (I merged the threads due to the overlap)
I’m not saying the request is invalid. But if we look at the time and resources required to make these, and then consider what other changes could be made, it seems to me that it is likely a lower priority.
But I have no say in the matter. I only offer a perspective that the opportunity costs are a precious thing and we make a mistaking thinking any part of this service is “easy” and should just be done. There is more to every request than we know, and the fact that we don’t know the expanded road map of TR is also limiting.
We can make the requests and hope they get them implemented. In the meantime, I offer the alternative that is already in place and easily usable (in some, but not all cases) so people can do a work around to meet their current needs.
100% this.
If you want a boutique plan tailored specifically to you, pay for a full-time coach to build you one.
TR has given us 99% of the tools to be successful without one however, without burdening them with creating individual plans for every “special snowflake” request.
If people want to pay $15/mth for all of that, they need to take some final accountability if they want to be boutique that they do some of it themselves. Otherwise, just pay for a coach to do it for you.
As a user I would far rather see TR build out more features of the roadmap they have described, than spend more time continuing to parse existing plans and workouts to address personal items (that may or may not be rooted in proper science to begin with).
I disagree, and I don’t think the request here is for a boutique plan. The difference between trainer road and individualized coaching is two-fold: first of all, there is a very broad base of users, so that a lot of care can go into designing training plans that work under a wide range of circumstances. Secondly, the individualization can be augmented by software. TR has a huge library of workouts, yes, but the choice is in some sense way too large for people who are new to structured training to make good selections. I find the choice overwhelming, and I don’t see why you can’t make use of software for smart recommendations.
In this respect, the tools are not ideal. Just try the following: select a low-volume plan, say, SSB2 LV, but you’d like to add one more day of training consistently. How do you do that? Well, you’d have to manually add workouts that fill the gap. One sensible choice is to look at the SSB2 MV, and add the “missing” workout from there. Try it. As best as I can tell, I need to navigate to the plan, remember the name of the workout, navigate to where I add a workout, search for the correct workout, and then add it. And now repeat that 6 times. Add to that that the calendar isn’t working yet on the iPad app.
Another simpler option I see is to mark some workouts in the MV and HV plans as optional (e. g. make them green), taking into account the realities of athletes — such as that we want to (and have to) ride outside. And explain that to people when you onboard them: by the way, the green workouts are optional, and you can replace them with e. g. outdoor rides. Honestly, I think this is a problem that can be solved with better software.
I find it strange that it is both so easy for the user to butcher a plan to suit, but for some reason it would be so difficult for TR to do the same.
I get the point about ‘decision paralysis’ but providing a plan that would probably fit in with a lot of users needs would help rather than hinder in my opinion: A 4 days/week plan is sorely missing from the catalogue.
Mike
And that’s the beauty of TR… been able to tweak your plan based on a prooved one. I usually start from a mid-volume plan and add some outside rides or +1 in other cases
Feature request: Fewer feature requests
Honestly guys, TR offers so much already, and now you want them to implement changes on a large scale that you could do for yourself in 2 clicks.
I have a lot of respect for the TR team and how accommodating they are to their users, but I think some people are taking advantage of that.