I am pretty sure, that this has been asked before, but I miss to find the right search tags… i think so.
I have the issue, that every time I have to do a ramp test, the week before is filled up with quite exhausting Workouts.
Monday in a week would be my next ramp test and the day before the plan says I have to do phoenix +2, a sprint tri or threshold rid + tempo run AND 48 minutes of base swim.
I can’t see any logical reason to have this high load before a ramp test?
How is this to handle? I this really wanted by the coaches, or is there a “even if the plan says it, do a recovery week before testing”. in other plans it was most likely that the day before was a tapering session, like before competitions, but 3 exhausting hours training load?
@mixtape It is normal to take a day or two of either rest or low intensity before a test. Many coaches will have you take a ramp test at end of a “rest” week. “Rest” in this case doesn’t mean completely off the bike, just low intensity endurance rides (mostly) and reduced duration the week. The purpose of that week isn’t to prepare for a ramp test. The purpose is to allow fitness adaptations to take place.
Also, it doesn’t need to be a full week. Some riders can get away with a few days. It really depends on how hard the previous weeks have been. That is going to be very individual.
If you are following a plan that has you doing that much work prior to a ramp test, the plan is ill-conceived.
Ah, sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like a know it all troll. I certainly am not either one of those things. Without getting into the recent Adaptive Training features and sidetracking your question, I think it’s safe to say that TR* would recommend you take a little time to dial intensity and load back if you feel like you need it prior to a ramp test.
One more thing. It’s important to note the history of why rest weeks are usually a week long so that you don’t get hung up on them needing to be a full week. As @anon13702412 notes, they don’t need to be.
Many coaches will have you do more than just a single test. They are trying to establish a range of values across an entire power duration curve. So for example, 5sec, 1 min, 3-5min, 30-60min max efforts.
You would obviously not want to do that on a single day/session, so they spread it out over a week.
Thats the reason why I am asking.
Imho this is way to much load before a ramp test, so why does the plan say to do this?
Or is there a written rule that say ignore the plan the week before the ramp test? Again, this is a plane generated by Trainerroad planer
It’s unclear which plan you mean with “mid distance tri plan”. But AFAIK none of the trainerroad plans do that, and all the tri-plans I had a look at just now, only have a ramp test in their first week.
If you’re using plan builder, it’s probably a bug in plan builder. Regretfully, at least for me, that seems to be very buggy still. Even though I have zero events in the plan (so the simplest possible plan), it has done weird things on plan creation, and every edit afterwards. Last edit to my plan, it scheduled three ramp tests in three days for me. Best to cross reference with the actual plan structure, that you can view via the “Training Plans” link in your account.
Yes the plan is created with the plan builder. And at the moment I am rly not sure about continuing the plan. I’ve am riding sweet spot and VO2max Workouts for weeks now. There’s no recovery week so far, just mid to high intense 0.80+ IF workouts.
That cant be right.
There are just a few base runs, but the rest is only sweet spot and hit. Thats just abnormal.
At the moment coaches say there should be 90/10 for LIT/HIT. I am far away from that
Is there a way to find out more about the plan I buildt? Or see a name of it, startdate, prob. end date? So I can see the preferences I used while creating it?
You can view all plan details, including details about each block in your agenda. Just click on the annotation for each block, or the annotation for the plan itself. It’s also possible to change the block details there.
Trainerroad plans are not 90/10 LIT/HIT. But they do have a recovery week every 4 - 6 weeks (depending on the plan/block).
The site crashes when I try this, but thats a issue to contact the official support.
Thanks to all of you for you help.
I will figure out how to handle it.
I also contacted the team and they answered that the plan, even before the ramp test is based on my preferences I set in the builder so theres no automatism that changes the plan right before the ramp test. you will have to do that on your own.
I am not very confident in that procedure, but changes are to be done, even if I dont know which way to go yet. I am not satisfied with the way it is right now. not because of the high load, but as it feels not very intelligent how the builder acts in that way.
