Road and TT bike training combined - how?

Training
1

Hi all,

I’ve used TR many years ago and obviously things have changed dramatically in that time.

I’m a time trialer by nature and tend to ride the TT bike in the week whilst riding outdoors on the road bike on weekends for endurance.

My TT FTP is circa 10% lower than road.

With the adaptive trainings etc, is there a way to manage this without interfering with the intention of the software?

E.g I imagine if I decrease intensity by X% during the week it’ll interpret it as me being unable to complete at prescribed intensity.

Thank you ! Interesting to hear how others approach this.

1 Like
2

Hey there and welcome, there was a debate many years ago on the forum about the ftp for different positions you might be able to find in the Search.

And the outcome was pick the one that matters - for you and me thats the FTP in aero on the TT bike, this lets you measure training and racing efforts.

I have a preference for hard workouts (vo2/race efforts) on the TT bike, but you don’t need to be rigid about it. After a few years I saw no difference in road and tri FTP anyway.

3

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it!

Was thinking that the outdoor rides on the weekend may ‘inflate’ what is subsequently recommended to me the following week? Particularly if I give it the beans on a climb here and there.

Also the auto detect FTP is likely to pick up my road max efforts. Maybe I just need to give it a go for a month and work through it.

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4

Interesting point - maybe more reason to do different workout types consistently - eg your outdoor road is always endurance, your TT always sweet spot or whatever.

Back then you could choose to ramp test or 20min test in the scenario you were training for.

I suspect it won’t make much difference either way.

5

Are your weekend rides outside workouts or just long rides at an endurance pace?

If structured, how do they feel vs. the power output required for your indoor rides?

Also, many of us experience being able to hit higher numbers outdoors vs. inside. They “why” of this is continually debated (cooling, motivation, inertia, etc) but in the end, it may not matter much. Most of your FTP gains will come from your threshold, VO2 max and very high intensity workouts. If you are doing those inside, and they feel appropriate, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

6

Very similar situation and differentials. I just reduce intensity by 10% and then tell the survey “i didnt struggle” when it says why were you not able to complete.

Its imperfect however

7

If you ask me this is one of the biggest weaknesses of TR. I don’t care how fancy your ML/AI/staistical model is, if the model is missing an important explanatory variable the predictions (i.e. , your training plan) aren’t going to be very accuarate.

When I am focusing on a TT, I pretty much only ride the TT bike, so it isn’t too bad because AIFTP detection will dial back my FTP. If you are riding both bikes sort of equally, then maybe the best thing is to overstate the difficulty of the road rides so it doesn’t progress your TT FTP and workout levles too quickly.

8

I do think that TR should address this by being able to state what position you are in - I also have around a 10% drop in FTP when on my TT bike.

I manage this by doing threshold and above workouts in road bike position and sweetspot and below in TT position.

This means that my SS progression level is lagging behind where it probably would be - but I havent noticed a significant hit on AI FTP.

Although if i were to do a 25mile TT with power on my TT bike I’d be tempted to exclude that ride from AI FTP detection using the option on the calendar just in case.