Alright, after using TrainerRoad for three years and recently dabbling with other training apps. I’m taking a chance and deciding to do my own thing. I understand progressive overload and increasing TTE plus general training periodization.
I’m 40 years old. I’ve been riding bikes, my whole life but only seriously training for maybe 5 years.
After listening and reading some of the Forum users comments, I have a general idea of how to approach planning out my training.
I’m going to use the masters, mid volume plan as a blueprint of what energy zones to work on each block. Below I’ll sharing a picture of my first month of base1.
Basically, my goal is to increase time in zone for sweet spot and threshold the first two months. Also increasing time on the bike every block if I can, then kind of go from there.
I’m looking for any advice on things to look for or things I should change up by using one of the TR plans as a blueprint.
Once I get to base3, they start adding short short VO2 max workouts, which I might not choose my own, but let AT decide what todo since it’s “base”. I do plan on choosing my own threshold workouts for that block to increase time in zone. For build, I was planning on choosing longer VO2 workouts and increasing time in zone through the two blocks while also increasing time in threshold zone. Then specialty I might not change anything but keep volume up as much as I can.
Any advice is appreciated and if possible please roast my idea. Thanks 
My advice from your screenshot is if you find yourself struggling with your SS or TH work, don’t be afraid to reduce the intensity of the Endurance work. There’s nothing wrong with doing that Tuesday workout at 55-60% instead of 65-70, if it helps you nail your more intense workouts. Also, I’m older than you, but I find I perform better if I take a long easy warmup rather than diving right into the SS/TH efforts. YMMV. Finally, make sure you allow yourself to recover after that C race, and if needed, shorten or skip the day before (and personally, I would lower the intensity too. No need to be a hero on Friday. Save it for race day.). You’re going from 3 hours to 5, and from 425ish TSS to 725 in one week.
Yes it is a big change in volume, that event is more of a meet up group ride and less of a race. They can get spicy so we’ll see what happens, thanks for the advice!
I would think that the Tuesday endurance ride is WAY to intense if it has the SS and threshold sessions book ending it. I like Phoenix and the other 70-75% endurance workouts but only during base when I’m doing no real intensity - like now (all I do is one 30/30s session for 30-45 mins on the evening of my weight training day) the rest is all endurance and running. How about Townsend or Andrews -1 instead?
Yes I would normally choose an easier endurance ride, I can recover pretty well with 60-70% z2 rides. I haven’t changed them yet, I basically put the masters base plan in and picked my own progression for the hard days.
Without knowing your Z5 PL or experience with it, jump from Mount Goode -4 → Lamarck might be little bit brutal. 95% vs 100% of FTP might sound tiny but it can be very fatiguing. Maybe try Kaweah -1 first?
I try to keep week-over-week zone progression within PL += 0.5 with my own plans.
I agree on the challenge with bookending a mid-week z2 ride with interval sessions.
Severals years ago someone here mentioned shifting intervals from Tues/Thurs to Tues/Fri with Wed/Sat/Sun as z2. I also do z1 / recovery on Mon/Thurs now. I found not bookending a z2 ride in the middle of the week with interval sessions resulted in a higher quality second interval session and I could also sneak in a little extra volume on the mid-week z2 ride.
I do too, but at a low intensity. It’s more Z1/2 than Z2/3.
Yep - I would certainly be on the bike between intervals - just maybe not at 70-75% FTP, more like 60-65%. Actually in the winter I would most likely be running but it would still be at a very easy pace.
That all looks pretty reasonable to me. If this is the start of base (ie- month 1 of a ~6 month plan), I’d personally start with a little less Sweet Spot and Threshold with more Z2. And that’s mostly just a mental thing for me. I know if I have a plan that has intervals 2+ times a week for ~6 months, I’ll be getting a little burnt out by the time my A race rolls around. If you have the hours available, there is nothing wrong with starting base with almost all Z2 and then rolling in intervals as you progress. That said, I’d probably stick with SS/Threshold if I only had ~1 hour on Mon/Wed to train.
Thanks everyone, I am going to try my own planning for 2 -3 months to see how it goes. I don’t want people at TrainerRoad to see this and think all the changes made aren’t good enough for me. I’m just doing my own thing and it has nothing to do with their product at all.
I think this is what TR does by default on their plans, as well.
Couple more comments about own plans:
- if you need to peak for specific event, look for “residual training effect”
- be careful of progressing too fast, you may end up in weird situation where FTP does not increase fast enough but PL does. It means that after FTP AI detection, corresponding zone PL does not lower sufficiently and you have to keep going with very taxing workouts. It happened to me: pushed SS PL very high, yet FTP increase was not sufficient, PL remained high → had to repeat every week 4x30min or longer intervals. While I could complete them, it is mentally quite exhausting. That’s why recommended to keep PL increase around 0.5 per week. See also Minimum Effective Dose: How Much Should You Train To Get Faster? - TrainerRoad Blog
Good luck!
this makes zero sense to me, sorry. FTP wasn’t sufficient because sweet spot isn’t the stimulus the body needs to increase FTP. I actually get almost nothing out of doing sweet spot as far as FTP increases. Yes there are benefits as far as time to exhaustion and such, but there is absolutely nothing to rate of increase of time in zone and ftp changes.
Yes, it pushed my TTE really high, could do 2x40min at 98% or 1x120 at 92% and yet my FTP moved with very tiny steps i.e. after FTP detection, had to basically continue exactly as from before. It is not a problem outdoors but indoor those intervals are really exhausting 
That’s why pointed out “minimum effective dose”. Of course, you can always go with “maximum recoverable volume” instead.
EDIT: I am actually still at this point. That’s why from next year will return to TR plans – more frequent SS but progressing with smaller steps