That’d be me. I like the idea of Polarised training, but I don’t have that sort of time available normally.
I more need something that will see me get faster on 1 hour per day, Monday to Friday. Polarised sure ain’t that, judging by these plans.
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Yes, absolutely - I enjoy the duration as a challenge of sorts.
My longest trainer ride so far is 4.5 hours (Hoffman +2). Last weekend I did 3.75. I like to break it up with a very quick toilet break every hour - one of those will be a bottle refill too. It’s good to stretch out the legs for a short while.
Might be an idea to swap shorts too depending how sweaty they get and how long the ride is. Last thing you want is trench grundle. I can see ‘coping with long trainer rides’ becoming a hot topic soon.
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Well the Polarized approach is one that stresses the importance of relatively low intensity work but you need to up the time to make sure the stress response is adequate. Thats why you have such long rides. Some really can’t do that. And thats ok.
Polarized is relatively newish judging from the past podcasts and how it has become an approach only recently due to the work of Seiler and others. With more data about how people actually perform on a polarized plan and their results, I’m sure TR can give us some definitive answers about which approach (POL vs SS) works and with more a definitive understanding of why and in what context.
Ideally, SS and Polarized would be six of one and half a dozen of the other. But at this stage we don’t know.
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Not really, probably pre-dates SST, (not Threshold though) especially in running.
Agree with your later points.
Pyramidal into POL gives great results, maybe the scientific research will catch up and support what high level coaches have been doing for decades.
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Yeah, I get the reason for the long rides. As I say, I like the idea of it but accept it’s not something that will work for me.
TBH I’m completely new to structured training, so I’ve next to no idea about what to do for the best results. I’m just in SSB low volume at the moment, but at 52 years old I’ve been riding for decades. I’ve done 10 hour rides like the Fred Whitton (a hilly 112 mile sportive). Not sure I need “base” as such.
Maybe I’ll just dive into the Time Crunched 45m specialised plan and see what happens. 
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Enjoy the ride :). Do what works for you.
Would love to do the Fred Witton one day. Maybe pop over on some threads about Audax to give your tips and what not when you have the chance.
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Not sure I’d jump straight from Base to the Time Crunched plans, they are pretty intense especially if you did all the workouts each week though the text does indicate you can cherry pick them. Consider one of the Build plans first, maybe General or even Short Power to get you into it.
Looking at the VO2max workouts in the PT plans they are at quite a higher intensity than the VO2max workouts in the standard ones, they pretty much start where most of those finish: 2mins at 130% 
, the usual suspects only spend 30 seconds at most at those sorts of levels, any higher than that and it’s typically 15 second max effort sprints.
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Thanks for the advice. As I say, I’ve no idea. Especially as I don’t have specific goals other than “be faster”.
I think any plan will work but most important start with Lv and then add on endurance is you want to ride more. And have fun
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It’s tempting to jump to the desserts that are the Speciality plans but mostly you should stick in the Base pt2 and Build plans and only use Speciality once you know there’s an event coming up. I did do a Speciality plan last year but it was more “just because” and I’d never actually done one before since my previous times on TR had been winter only.
The workouts don’t look like they’ll be hard work but unless you fuel and rest properly then fatigue will creep up on you over the months. After a while you get to know what a workout will be like just from looking at the “profile” 
The LV plans swap intensity for volume so you have to deal with that - look at the final hard week of SSBLV2 - Spencer+2, Lamarck, Leconte. All pretty hard workouts by themselves let alone one after another! Part 2 of Base could almost be thought of as Build Pt1 it’s that tough.
Basically, unless you have time constraints or very specific goals then stick to the planned progression rather than try and modify it without having seen the results. I got a 13% increase in FTP last year just going with the flow.
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I do Perkins -1 every week. Glad to see it get some love finally.
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Yes, true. All sunday workouts are not visible for me on the desktop view (windows 10, chrome). In the android mobile view, I can see them. Very strange… Contacted support about that. They are already working on it…
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Thanks Trainer Road for doing this. I am especially excited for AT - the broader the set of inputs, the better for all of us. As intrigued as I am for these plans, the reason I came back to TR is for Adaptive Training. Assuming I get into the beta in the near future, is adaptive training best experienced with the current TR plans?
I started SSBMV when I joined back a few weeks ago, and it has been going good so far with the only alterations being an easy ride on one of the off days and long ride on Saturday as a sub for the longer difficult session. However, polarized is closer to how I trained most of last year with good success.
I appreciate any advice you can offer. Thanks.
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I’ve looked at the Low Volume 8-week plan.
I have to say the high intensity workouts are really balls-to-the-wall, especially the threshold versions. The VO2max days maybe a bit less so. But threshold: 2x16’ at 102% for a start, 3x16’ at 100% the next week.
This kind of follows Trainerroad’s approach to suffering. We wanted less time in hurt zone, we did get less time but in much bigger hurt 
I wonder if they could at least skip or limit the recovery week and prescribe a high intensity workout every week. Maybe with 33% more high intensity workouts (8 per 8 weeks instead of 6), these could be at least a bit easier. You’d then get 2x16’ instead of 3x16’, for instance.
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Folks would never sit a trainer for 3 hrs … right? These long rides would be outside, yes.
Either way, I agree with you. I would rather work hard for 1 hours or 1.5 hrs and the go on to the next thing.
I’ve done a 4:15 trainer ride. Long but not terrible for me. I’ve seen some 6-7 hours for others
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Interesting and I think the 100% ftp ones will be interesting. If you have time and want less intensity the TB plans from MV and up are good and have used them in the past.
I think this is due to two things:
- They’re trying to keep it as close to Seiler’s literature and what he’s said as possible, so they kept it as close to 80/20 as they could. Seiler also prescribes the 4/8/16 interval structure, as well.
- The efficacy of a 4 hour/week Polarized plan remains to be seen. I would think that little time on the bike is below the floor of effectiveness for such a plan, and I don’t appear to be alone if you check out the feedback thread Nate made prior to the launch. Below is a link to Nate’s post, which also notes the oddity of a LV Polarized plan.
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I thought those intervals were going to be at least 110%…more like 125% for the shorter ones.
There looks to be two zone 3 workouts a week. One is VO2 max and the other is threshold.
Certainly at first glance some of the threshold ones look very tough.