I went through a full ~20 weeks of training letting TR software pick/schedule workouts…I don’t think I ever said ‘no’ to any adaptive training recommendations…when FTP detection was available I used that.
The one thing I didn’t follow 100% was the TR suggested last week taper…which was Cadillac (VO2max) 4 days out, Lazy Mountain 3 days out, and Gendarme-6 (VO2max) 2 days out. Just thought, 'I’m not doing Gendarme-6 2 days before my A event. So I just skipped it.
Overall compliance was just ok. I completed 85% of scheduled workouts. 13 out of 87 workouts were not completed as scheduled. I missed one workout due to sickness, skipped three endurance workouts just to get additional recovery, and the rest were replaced by group rides, races or other outdoor rides (KOM attempts instead of VO2max workouts, 40k PR instead of Saturday threshold, etc).
At my event I all-time PRed 3.5hr, 5hr, 6hr power. Got a podium finish. Would not have guessed that the training I did would result in ultra-endurance sort of power PRs. I’ve been at that game for quite a while now, and I’m old, so a 6hr power PR is something I’ve had a crack at many times…I would not have expected to accomplish that in a draft-legal race.
So my experience was pretty good. But that last week taper still seems squirrely.
Vo2max intervals 2 days before your A race seems crazy. Id fire support an email as it might be a bug and would possibly help others that might get the same planned workout.
If a hard v0w then totally agree, but if an easy vo2, say 2-3 lots of 2 mins then those are basically openers. Remember it’s taper not recovery, so keep intensity and drop volume.
Gendarme -6 is a 30 minuten workout (Vo2max 1.6) containing 2x10 min sets of 30/30’s @ 120%.
Think this is a decent opener and it shouldn’t destroy or fatigue you.
As Robert describes. It’s a taper week (remove fatigue, but keep the fitness).
Sweet Spot Base Mid Volume II
General Build Mid Volume
Rolling Road Race Mid Volume
But I want to stress that I just used Plan Builder, answered the basic questions, and followed whatever Plan Builder put in the calendar. I wanted to commit to the TR tools! Just totally give TR a chance to do what I’m paying them to do & then assess whether it’s really working or not.
I don’t know. A few hard intervals would probably be OK. You know, some openers.
My thing was I was READY TO GET ON THE BIKE AND RIDE. Motivation was high. I wanted to get after it. But the legs were still carrying fatigue from the Tuesday VO2max work & it seemed like a bad idea to give myself the chance to get on the bike & do too much.
In general, my attitude about this workout plan in the 2nd half of the plan was that the plan was mediocre. (wrong) Didn’t think it was going to get me in best fitness for this race. (wrong) I only say that to give the forum a honest look at my bias during the process: I did not think this was the best kind of training to be doing for the race ahead of me. Well…the results are pretty darned good. So that is that.
Nice and thanks for sharing. Athletes like you that have national titles (yours is 24 hour TT, right?), hmm, I’m going to claim athletes like you have some natural talent and will respond well to a lot of different plans. Do you think the Feb 2021 plan updates that reduced intensity, do you think that helped? I’m hoping you have some thoughts between the pre-AT plans and the post-AT plans.
Instead of the Successful Athlete Podcast, I think we need to hear more from the not-that-successful Athletes, people like myself that didn’t respond well to an approach. Why? For starters I’d like to understand the assumptions Coach Chad baked into the plans. I’ve heard him say some things that I can draw inferences from, but no direct statements. Maybe I’ve missed a few key podcasts.
Y’all may find this line of thinking to be negative, and that I’m hating on TR. Put yourself in the shoes of a not-that-successful athlete. Yes I always see some gains from TR coming from an off-season, but I failed to get back to where I was just months before starting the TR approach. Yes that was before AT, but some athletes were killing it on the pre-AT plans.
This comment has a certain amount of irony… considering the amount to time and effort that so many around here spend looking at and sometimes replicating the training of pros, elites and other highly capable athletes
So often, people are looking to those as the beacon while this seems to cast doubt on the method in spite of itself. I get where you are going, but it’s counter to much of what we see here.
Digging in to understand how this might have worked in this case would be of interest to me too, especially if there is potential contrast to prior TR approaches.
Finally, I do think there is a time and place for looking into the less than successful experiences from TR users. IMO, there are often more things to learn from with our failures than our successes. The TR path for those that didn’t “succeed” would be of interest to me too. That said, I think it belongs in a separate forum topic and not part of this particular one.
@WindWarrior I think you deserve an answer for sure. But, let me be honest, you might be better qualified to provide that answer than the staff at TR. Maybe it’s my fevered mind generating false memories but the thing that characterized you training most (to me) was just refusing to accept training solutions that didn’t help you. I mean, you kinda figured it out in a pretty good way.
@WindWarrior I don’t know what your membership status is, but here is one thing you should try…no training commitment required. Let PlanBuilder create a training plan for some fictional event on your calendar. That’s Step 1.
Step 2, just scroll down through the plan and read the weekly notes for each week. The thing is, scheduled workouts are based on the latest TR technology. Machine Learning, AI, other catch phrases as well. But the weekly notes are still based on the old Coach Chad (and staff) generated workouts (or at least as near as I can tell).
So you can get a feel for how the workout plan has evolved over the past little while I’m not acting as a TR advocate here…not saying ‘You’ll become a convert!’ Just saying things have changed. You are a lot wiser about what sort of training gets results for you. TR has definitely changed their philosophy about what sort of plan/workouts are best for a given set of athletes…
I’m curious, have you & TR converged or are you still miles apart?
Endurance as a first principle is only in a few TR plans. That plus ‘stuff’ is absolutely working for me. Knowing that my fractional utilization is around 85% is something you can tell a coach, but is lost on AT despite the huge pile of data. Why does something like that matter? I’ll tell a quick story. Last night I did 3x8-min with another 2-min extra credit because I was feeling feisty, it was a bit above estimated threshold and both WKO and Garmin nailed it - WKO gave me 25-min above 85% relative vo2max, and 21 min above 90% vo2m, and 3-min above 95% vo2m. In other words, a good stimulus for raising vo2max. Garmin’s HR/Power machine learning (ML) stuff said primary benefit was vo2max because I spent a significant amount of time above lactate threshold. Between having a coach, and having good tools, and being able to train outside, I decided to let go of my TR legacy pricing.
Sorry not trying to sidetrack this thread. I scanned your weeks on Strava starting the first of the year, and you had some interesting extra credit work. Could have sworn you did some PD Gollnick active recovery (LOL) this year, but maybe my memory is faulty. Anyways some really impressive power numbers on a few events leading up to A event. And then the A event, wow, just wow, you inspired me to add 3, 4, 5, and 6 hour power to Sauce (Strava plugin). I’ve done some good solo work out to 2 hours, but after that I haven’t been brave enough to continue pushing hard, so the average power drops off, even though on some hard metric and imperial group centuries the NP and IF look more impressive (best was nearly 5 hours at 87% IF). Some of your events are truly inspirational.
Anywho, thanks again for opening my eyes to good 'ole PD Gollnick. You aren’t that old yet, lol, and thanks for the inspiration!
FWIW my training looks more like some of the pros on the Pro/Elite thread, the somewhat vague “endurance plus stuff” talked about on the forum. Scaled down of course, I’m more than twice the age of some of the pros that @sryke is posting training data on.
Just totally give TR a chance to do what I’m paying them to do & then assess whether it’s really working or not.
