Yes - I have an A event in, so was assuming it was timing. I was early on the masters plan, but now the weather has turned I’ve decided I’d rather than the option of a hard weekend workout anyway (basically confirming the whole thing of people not wanting to do longer endurance inside!)
Anyone using the General Base programs since the re-do covered above? They are now a 3-phase program with 3:1 Work to Recovery ratio, and some other tweaks to the programs.
I just finished the last work week in Mid Vol of phase 2. Feeling good overall but wondering what people think about one detail. They have apparently really dropped the time & TSS for the recovery weeks. It seems they now run the Recovery weeks about 1/4 the TSS of the Work weeks, in contrast to roughly 1/2 per the older versions of their plans.
After doing the first recovery week after phase 1 and heading into phase 2 I felt good and nailed all the work weeks. Felt great overall and never had any “Very Hard” rated workouts. I pretty much followed AT directly with a few swaps for the Sunday workouts to what I know works for me (3hr 7+ WL). This mixes in my AIFTPD value that feels about right per the Threshold workouts, so I think that is close enough to right, but had to mention it at least.
Just curious about this lower recovery week strategy since they had used the 1/2 level for as long as I can remember. Anyone else experience the new plans or have thoughts?
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It got implemented while I was in specialty phase for cross–it was a big enough change that I asked support about it. Because of some scheduling changes, I only really experienced it between the week of my A races (weekend before Thanksgiving) and the last races of the season (first weekend in December)–so Thanksgiving week 4 very low TSS rides, then Tuesday anaerobic, Thursday VO2 max, then Saturday/Sunday races. FWIW, felt good on the workouts, and had my first ever podium on Saturday, just off on Sunday. Just starting week 2 of Phase 1 build now, so looking forward to see what happens in a few weeks.
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Never been a fan, even before new plans. My feet used to get twitchy by Friday. Now I usually substitute Friday with short Z2 but with bursts, Saturday some lower PL intervals from zone that current block progresses and Sunday long Z2.
Also, running AI FTPD after the Saturday, so intervals are done with old FTP.
- … of TR recovery weeks in particular?
I know there have been numerous discussions about recovery weeks in general with people having different takes and personal needs. Plenty of people I have seen do more and get back to work earlier than the TR prescription. Most seem to be those using Low Vol, but I have seen others too where people get into harder stuff earlier in the week vs keeping the whole week at low intensity.
Many in years past for me felt “hard” with lingering fatigue in the first couple “easy” rides of the week. This current implementation feels dead easy for me and is part of why I’m curious if others like them or are boosting above and beyond the lower TSS scheduled.
Yep, TR recovery weeks in general. First half is good, definitely need those low intensity short rides.
According to intervals.icu fitness graph, unmodified recovery weeks shows like this:
- off day on Monday hits grey zone
- by Thursday, it goes already fresh zone
- and then I get weird
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I’ve been adding Z1/Z2 volume to my recovery weeks so that the TSS is half of the third work week, but I have no idea if this is actually beneficial over doing the easier prescribed recovery week. I will say I feel plenty recovered after doing a 50% TSS week with no intensity so I may as well do that to keep my CTL from dropping so much.
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What’s with the masters program not following the times set in the block? I have it set to 90min for my weekday rides and it switched them all to 60 with adaptations today.
You will probably get a faster and better answer via support@trainerroad.com since we can only guess here.
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They sorted it out. Thanks! My plan was a bit broken behind the scenes and they fixed me up. The plan was giving 1hr workouts in place of 90 nd prescribing 2 vo2 when it should be 1 so I’m glad to have it fixed lol.
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For the Custom Workout Duration feature can you switch it mid plan? For example I set all my LV Masters workouts to 90, but just had an extended work trip and want to do a few weeks of 60 min workouts to get back into it before I go back to 90.
Is there a way to do this without using alternates for each workout?
My experience with the custom duration settings have been confusing. It seems if I set the limit at 5 hours for Sunday then AT prescribes 5 hour workouts every Sunday. The same for other days of the week as well. I thought the plan would use these durations as the upper limits rather than the desired length.
It can and does offer lower dutation, but is PL dependent.
I set my Sunday Endurance to 3 hours max and have gotten 2:45 duration workouts so I know it doesn’t always max out.
My guess is that your longer 5-hour limit along what I’d guess is a very high PL, and the AT goal of “progression” week to week are related. It may be pushing TR to make suggestions equal to or greater than your prior completion, whick means looong endurance.
This is a somewhat common complaint against AT for endurance workouts specifically.
My endurance PL is only 4.0 currently.
Oh, interesting.
File a support ticket with TR so they can dig into what is happening. Might be a bug
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Here is the response from support-
Thanks for reaching out to the TrainerRoad Support Team about this. I’m more than happy to help out here!
For Plan Builder Custom Duration, if there is an available workout that fits the duration selection, it will go with that duration. If there are no available selections for Adaptive Training/Plan Builder for that date and duration requirement, you’ll then see workouts of different lengths. Sorry for any confusion there!
So if I read this correctly if I plug in 5 hours and there is a workout designed for 5 hours it will populate that workout. Seems like AI would adjust the duration to match your PL level and overall goal.
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Curious because that hasn’t been my experience. It seems like I “suggest” workout durations, and TR puts in workouts that roughly match my suggestions. I put in 1:15, it puts in a 1:30 workout, etc.
Isnt that exactly how support says it works?
There arent as many 1hr15 workouts as there are 60 minute or 1hr30 workouts so you are very likely to get one of those as there is a good likelyhood that there isnt a 1hr15 workout that fits the plan (workout type and PL)
I’m a bit disenchanted with the Custom Workout Duration at the moment. For this phase, I am 60, 75, 90 (rather than the default 60, 60, 90 LV plan) and the first workout of the second week is 75 minutes. I asked about it and got a response that it is “75 minutes due to a gap in our workout library” – but the default duration us 60? How can there be a gap? I mean, if there is one then there is but it makes no sense to me.