I’ve started trainer road, and I usually get around 10+ hours a week on my bike as I work from home. However, that often includes a midweek group ride and at least 1 long social group ride at the weekend.
Would it be better for me to select a high volume adaptive training plan as I can afford to spend a lot of time on the bike? And will the adaptive training plan take into consideration my non-structured grouprides and adapt accordingly?
Or should I select a medium volume training plan and treat my social rides (even though they can often be difficult) as bonus training?
Do Low Volume, and then do the group rides as well That’ll probably end up being enough intensity, and also wont force you to do structure when you might wanna go out and have fun with your buddies on the weekend and weekday group rides.
The volume isn’t the issue. I do a lot of miles & many hours every week.
It’s structure I’m after though. Maybe my question should have been, does adaptive training take into consideration my social rides? i.e. if I had a sweet spot effort tomorrow, but I replaced my Z2 ride today with a group ride that ended up being tempo with intervals, will adaptive training recognise that and modify my sweet spot tomorrow to something more suitable?
High volume for TR means lots of intensity. Most folks would likely do best with 2-3 hard rides/workouts and then fill in endurance to hit your volume goal.
Low and mid volume have the same structured rides. It’s literally just an hour of zone 2 added on wednsday, and a zone 2 ride on sunday. Or sweet spot sunday, but trainerroad has said the only reason sunday is sweet spot is because they thought people wouldnt do zone 2…
I would personally lean toward a Mid Volume plan and replace 2 of the workouts with 2 of the planned intensity days. This way you have 3-4 ‘harder’ days and the rest keep easy. IMO doing a LV plan and then adding these rides on top would just be too much intensity.
I dont disagree with this. But it’s also one of the reasons I dont think trainerroad works outside of dead of winter trainer season. If you replace 2 hard TR workouts in low or mid volume…you’re left with essentially a single TR interval session a week…at that stage what’s the point of clinging to TR structure at all?
TR has years of evidence and data to show that it is effective year round, not just in the “trainer season”.
Is it universal and perfect for everyone? Of course not…no training system / plan is. but to say it doesn’t work “outside of winter trainer season” is to simply ignore mounds of data.
I mean obviously there is nothing special about riding a trainer in the winter vs riding one in the summer. If you do the same rides in july on the trainer as you do in January, you’ll get the same results.
The question is - why would you? Group rides start up in spring/summer, there’s racing, beautiful days to go on long rides. And all of these conflict with the TR plan…
And…if one chooses to swear off all of those things in the summer…I’d ask what the goal is behind following a structured training plan like trainerroad?
Well yeah, that’s the trade off you make with harder group rides. They still add bunch of fatigue so you can’t just add them on top of a plan. But they won’t be a physiologically focused as a workout so you won’t get the same targeted adaptations as the workout you replaced with it.
That’s why most people I know who are seriously training and racing at a high level don’t regularly do 2 group rides a week. And if they do sometimes then they frequently get a ‘real’ workout in before or after.
Yea. That’s one of the reasons I’m leaning towards hopping in some of the more social type rides to get some bigger hours of zone 2 in, rather than thrash myself for 3 hrs…
Going to try and maintain a more serious level of moderation next year lol. Social ride during the week…hard ride on the weekend, but might even just go hard for one hour, then just drop myself and sit in with the chasers.
Time, safety, avoiding traffic, general preference for structured rides, etc.
No reason you can’t simply choose a LV plan and augment with whatever rides you want.
And let me be clear…come April or May, I rarely do the workouts on my plan. I am outside riding in my preferred groups rides or doing long trail rides. But that is me and my preferences. I am certainly not making universal statements that fly in the face of data based on * my preferences*.
Well, I would say then that it all comes down to how many people really will not do ling rides/group rides in nice weather. I would guess if’s a minority…but it’s obviously just a guess.
Regardless…the same question still stands…does TR make any sense if one wants to make use of summer riding months and get in longer group/trail rides?
The main difference between mv and lv, is that mv has longer workout’s, plus an “easy” endurance workout and a “moderate” sunday workout (as mentioned, this was originally longer endurance, but TR found people were swapping it for something more intense).
fwiw outside of race season, I do my 3 key TR workouts during the week and then do a club road spin or a social gravel spin at the weekend. I don’t go with my club race group, as that’s effectively making 4 hard workouts a week. This race season, I’ve done 2 workouts a week, plus the weekend race. Both I’d supplement with commuting once or twice a week.
i disagree, i’m no longer doing TR, but even when I was I’d do outside workouts in conjunction with longer rides, or just do long z2 rides and stick with 2 interval days. I haven’t raced all year and I don’t do group rides, but I am in the best shape of my life, being able to ride how I want and for as long as I want is enough a reward for sticking with structure, my ego doesn’t need to get into measuring contests with others.
That’ll probably end up being enough intensity, and also wont force you to do structure when you might wanna go out and have fun with your buddies on the weekend and weekday group rides.