I’m planning to take on an event in August that spans 7 days, covering 950 km with 18,000 meters of elevation. After doing some rough calculations, I’ve realised just how much riding it’s going to require, which means I’ll have to significantly increase my training volume leading up to the event.
After researching how best to prepare for such an effort, I decided to do a training camp in May to simulate the event.
I thought I could use TrainerRoad’s Plan Builder to help me prepare for the camp, gradually increasing my volume. I selected the stage race plan, added 7 separate stages of 4-hour moderate rides, and generated the plan.
The problem is that TrainerRoad is recommending only 7 hours per week throughout the entire plan, which seems far too low for the demands of the event. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts where TR folks advise trusting the software and avoiding adjustments to volume and intensity from the start to prevent burnout, but I can’t help but feel that 7 hours a week is nowhere near enough.
Is the plan supposed to adapt over time and increase the volume on its own? Or is the plan builder simply not there yet when it comes to prepping for multi-day events?
That’s pretty old thinking. With PL (progression levels) and RLGL (red light green light) it’s difficult to “burnout” unless you are aggressively ignoring all the TR recommendations and personal/mental cues for months. IMHO it’s difficult to burnout from volume and rather easy to reach non-functional overreaching from too much intensity. So unless you’re adding additional intensity to your TR plan constantly, I wouldn’t be concerned with burnout. Too much volume (added endurance hours/rides) typically just leads to fatigue and an inability to hit your key intensity workouts. TR if anything has become too conservative and if you have years of structured training experience you may be frustrated with the slow progress.
It will not increase volume and plan builder is not going to do what you want it to. If your goal is to compete and not just complete, you are right to question your volume. You will have to alter the plans and volume based on your experience and knowledge.
It will adjust volume based on how many hours you tell it you have available. It will just take a bit to collect data and match the amount of hours youve said you have available.
Its doing it for me, right now. At the beginning of the season I told plan builder i had 2 hours, 5 days per week. After about a month of being served shorter workouts on some days, it is now matching my 2 hr availability ever day. Not sure how that works with 4 hr rides though, as I believe indoor compliance with workouts over 2 hours is low.
Last 4 weeks were 15h, 2h (sickness), 8h, 10h, and 12h.
My assumption was that TR would analyze all of my recent workouts, then propose an easy start AND slowly ramp the hours up, but as i understand the latter is not true and i’d have to do this manually.
If that’s the case, is there any benefit of using the plan builder instead of just building it by myself from the available blocks? If i have to adjust the hours manually i might as well adjust the blocks
When building the plan, what availability did you input on the Training Schedule page?
The plan’s volume will be capped by that availability.
It might be that you decide plan builder isn’t the right option for you. Even so, I do think it is worth looking at the plan. You don’t have to even put it on your calendar, but looking at it might give you some ideas that you decide to incorporate into whatever plan you end up using.
Yes i understand that, i didn’t input anything.
I went with what it proposed which was 7 hours (based on my recent TSS i assume?).
I only changed it to the masters plan, because i don’t think i need 3 intensity days, so i’d rather swap that saturday hard workout for a long endurance ride.
I also tried to adjust the hours just now, but i won’t let me go above 10 saying the load would be too high (fair enough, maybe it would let me do it over time).
My main complaint is that it asked me all those questions about the event, let me add all individual stages, including expected intensity and time to complete, but then it doesn’t seem like that information is used for anything.
I don’t see any noticeable difference between the stage race plan and the plan for an single race of the same type, at least at the glance.
It is up to you of course, but I would be interested to see what the plan looked like with the input that I had 12 hours per week to train and allocated it across the days I was available.
You’re correct that Plan Builder makes a plan based on your recent volume/TSS. As mentioned by @gally24 above, you could try changing your plan’s volume to something higher (based on the time you have available), and, as you increase your Progression Levels, longer/more intense workouts will start to fill out your plan.
You can also use Workout Alternates to find longer (or shorter) sessions on any given day.
As for training for the stage race itself, we’d recommend choosing a target discipline that you want to focus on the most for the stage race. If, for example, there’s a TT you want to crush, you could choose “Time Trial” as your target discipline.
Do be aware of how you feel physically and mentally as you work on increasing your volume, though. If you start to feel run down, don’t be afraid to back things off for the sake of extra recovery. Consistency is key above all else!
Hope that extra info helps you out. Feel free to let us know if you have any other questions!
