TrainerRoad – STW approved sessions

Haha sorry Kryton! Agree with what you are saying.

Crosshair – just applied for early access to calendar. This is eaxctly what I need if I understnad the beta facebook group post right. looks ideal.

Yes the calendar is good.

Will hopefully be nicely polished on final release but very good to use.

You can add in race events which stay in place on the calendar and overlay the training programs around them and if things change pull and push weeks but the race events stay in place.

Well, at the weekend I did my first full hour on a bike since February (Baxter – 2). Stupid blinking Achilles… it is improving though. My left calf is now tiny! Still, now that I’m over the hump of being able to do stuff, I reckon I’ll be able to make good progress from now on. Bring on next summer!

Have had a play with the calendar and it seems that I don’t really need TrainingPEaks any more. Which is good, because I hated having to input my TR plan into my trainingpeaks calendar.

Not racing next year and the only thing keeping me using Training Peaks premium was the calendar.

Was hoping the TR calendar could be a good replacement so hopefully good news🤞

There is a quicker way to import TR plans into TP but since I only follow them loosely it still takes a bit of tinkering (combine with outdoors rides and shuffle everything around the masters thing of 2 weeks on, 1 off)

Still wating to be given beta access to the calendar..

Problem is if its good I’m going to want a power meter for outside riding even more 🙁

Did you tick all the boxes on both/every page to get access?

I bought a power meter last month. I’ve resisted long enough as I knew it would just be ooh isn’t this an interesting toy but having a smart turbo for nearly a year I know enough for it to be useful.

From a TSS POV it’s interesting as a chain gang club run over the same terrain using TR guesstimate of TSS was a lot different. Picking “7 Hard” gave me 120ish the power meter calc comes out around 170. I have to pick “10 All out” to get that TSS,

Power meter is probably making me ride slower on solo rides but harder when needed. Might just be because I’ve removed average speed from my Garmin in favour of power numbers for now though :0)

Of course if my FTP is wrong the TSS would come down for the power meter rides. FTP based on indoor ramp test. Power meters appear to match near enough. Numbers are similar enough for longer efforts 5min plus outdoors to indoors.

I always found that I could go harder outside than my indoor FTP would suggest. I have a decent fan but I do generally run pretty hot, so I think cooling is probably the main difference for me.

I always intended to do an FTP test outside one day, but never got around to it.

Got calender now.. its great. Exactly what I needed. Planned out my races and training till ealry December. Going to be doing a lot of turbo from now on as with cross season approaching stripiong and cleaning a bike once a week is enough!!

I’ve smashed my power records from 1 to 3 minutes outside but longer comes out about the same.

Fighting gradient and being able to stand and sprint properly helps on those efforts though.

Yes riding in a room of 18degC with a fan is certainly harder than outside but I don’t feel the FTP is too far out.

Well, that’s me done for the season, its rest pizza and beer from tomorrow.  Ended with 90 mins @200w indoor Z2.

Time now to have a think on my goals next year before discussing my winter training plan. Interesting that year 4 of actual training has ended with me doing Z2 for 90 mins 20w higher than my FTP was four years ago :D.  Some highs this year of adding 50w to each end of my Z2, improved ability and strategy for climbing, top 30 in marathons up 20-30 places form 2017, and finishing 1 place higher in Regional XCO without training for it, and despite some higher level racers at the top end of the Eastern league this year.  The lows are mostly a mental inability to be confident in myself, and throwing my toys out the pram when things don’t go right, wet camping and technical.   I can work on those.

Ciao for now, enjoy 🙂

First hard turbo session of the year last night, Dade+2. Struggled with the last set. More mentally than actually the legs, don’t really have the turbo motivation to beast myself yet. Hopefully it will come with a couple of session – sassefras tomorrow which will be vile if my heads not in it!

It’s been too nice outside but tapering for the weekend and no time to go outside so I did my first TR session for a while too.

Kern-4 which on the face of it looked relatively easy but struggled to get the RPM over 80 and it was way down by the last couple of sets. Got through it. I’m blaming the bit of illness after a big ride at the weekend.

Looking forward to switching off in a couple of weeks and going back to Base for 3 months or so.

Slight hijack – but im on zwift, so what would be a good base training approach on that? Don’t really want to spend much more than a hour though.

Do date i’ve just been logging on to whatever world is on at the time and chasing people around until i feel i cant do it any more – which is probably not the best approach.

TR is all about Sweet Spot for base training. Google it for the definition. % of FTP

I’ve not looked at the Zwift training programs since last year and they have changed. Probably pick on one of the FTP boosters as a starter.

There’s a really long thread about zwift here:

Zwift, my journey, my weight and my fitness.

I suspect that the folks on that thread will have a better idea of what zwift offers than most of the folk on this thread.

Have had more of a play with the calendar feature. I like it a lot.

Is the calendar live yet or still beta?

I noticed I can add workouts to mine but no options to copy and paste and create my own plan.

It’s still in beta I think. I seem to remember from the TR beta tester facebook page that copy/paste is on the list of things that will be added in.

Ah cool cheers, just wondering when I can drop TrainingPeaks!

I already have! Partly because I was finding the fitness/freshness graph was neither useful or healthy.

Actually like TP but since I won’t be racing next year my training will be a bit more general, I don’t feel the need to run both…the calendar is the only reason to keep Premium TP for me the moment.

Hope your year off racing is for good reasons. I’ve just had a year off due to baby arrival and watching my ‘fitness’ graph plummet all year has been depressing. I don’t think that fitness/freshness is going to help me plan my training or workload now as I’ll just be doing whatever I can fit in.

But yeah, TP is actually really good for lots of other reasons.

Grade 4 AC injury, not really sure if I’ll get back to it at 46…anyhow, will continue to train in the manner I’ve been accustomed to, may be difficult without the specific focus but it’s the only way I know.

I’m now dedicated to smashing the local training bashes!

Slight hijack – but im on zwift, so what would be a good base training approach on that? Don’t really want to spend much more than a hour though.

Do date i’ve just been logging on to whatever world is on at the time and chasing people around until i feel i cant do it any more – which is probably not the best approach.

I manually re-create my TR workouts in Zwift.  Bit tedious but works a treat.  There is a web tool called ZWOFactory that you can use to create workouts and transfer across.  Much easier than using the Zwift workout creator.

Assuming you are a TR member I just run both programs. Zwift on the computer and TR on another window and reduced view with a 2nd ANT+ dongle or on phone/tablet.

Just remember to turn off the Zwift controllability of the trainer so TR does it.

Might get going again on TR in the next few weeks. What’s the ramp test like with a ‘dumb’ trainer? I have an old frame set up permanently on the turbo so can keep the set up consistent over workouts.

I’ve a dumb trainer with power meter on the bike. I found the ramp test tricky as it always takes me a bit to get the power on target through resistance / gearing / cadence so changing every 3 minutes was hard.

It’s one of the main reasons I’m contemplating upgrading to a direct drive smart trainer.

Might get going again on TR in the next few weeks. What’s the ramp test like with a ‘dumb’ trainer? I have an old frame set up permanently on the turbo so can keep the set up consistent over workouts.

It’s ok but you do need to be quite active on the gears and cadence like sweaman says. It’s nice and quick but I find it gives me a high ftp estimate that I wouldn’t fancy using as a training basis. Depends on your own physiology, though, it could be spot on for you.

Interesting – I’ve been really struggling since doing the ramp test. I don’t think I’ve properly completed an intense work out, been a bit demoralizing but I put it down to a lack of mental focus. I guess as I (and I think you?) focus on CX, we can probably over egg the ramp test more than a more staedy state rider. I might knock 5% of my FTP and see how I go.

I use a dumb trainer and its workable but a bit unsatisfactory, especially as I only have a 9-speed cassette. It’s not the testing thats an issue but the actual workouts where you often find you are pushing an odd cadence to keep to power.

The cross VO2 max stuff is pretty hard, ferrals. I think because you can crush it when you’re on form there’s a tendency to think it’s something you should always be able to do, but not sure that is the case.

I didn’t do any serious riding July August and tried a couple of TR CX interval sessions at the start of the month to get my eye in for the season. Absolutely nowhere near completing them, even dropping ftp 5-10%. Just resolved to leave it until I’d done some racing – will probably jump back on next week and am expecting to see some improvement.

If you’ve not followed a structured training schedule and are just jumping into hard workouts then you may well have the power but not the capacity to complete the workouts.  ie. you’re FTP may be accurate, but you haven’t got the capacity to repeat above-threshold (or longer sub-threshold) intervals more than a certain number of times.

It’s not the testing thats an issue but the actual workouts where you often find you are pushing an odd cadence to keep to power.

Interested to read this as I find that this eventually has a (negative) knock on effect on my outdoors riding throughout winter when I turbo a lot. I find I end up grinding with my fluid turbo almost all of the time, and after a winter of grinding on the turbo along with heavy weights, I tend to come out of winter feeling strong but slow. If I take an outside 5min VO2 effort my RPM is around 95-110 but inside it can be 70-75.

The cross VO2 max stuff is pretty hard, ferrals. I think because you can crush it when you’re on form there’s a tendency to think it’s something you should always be able to do, but not sure that is the case.

Probably true, I tend too look back on a couple of years ago when I could ‘happily’ do any specified session and only crumbled if actually ill but then I a) had raced (and trained properly for) the whole regional XC series and the whole national XC series b) had a lot less other commitments meaning I could rest better and train at an optimal time. Perhaps not surprising I’m struggling after less training and when trying to do sessions after getting up at 0545, scoffing a bananna and jumping straight on the turbo!

If you’ve not followed a structured training schedule and are just jumping into hard workouts then you may well have the power but not the capacity to complete the workouts. ie. you’re FTP may be accurate, but you haven’t got the capacity to repeat above-threshold (or longer sub-threshold) intervals more than a certain number of times.

Thats exactly where I am, jumped straight into speciality mode after a (relitively speaking) lazy and definitely unstructured summer. Having said that, first cx race of the year a couple of weeks ago my average HR was the same for the first 8 laps and only dropped 3bpm the last lap which is super consistent for me. I was also only 20s off a top 10 which would have been a good result for me when fitter too. So either my race craft is geting better or I do have the fitness but am not able to monopolise it on the turbo for some reason. Whether thats a lack of mental toughness or a slightly wrong FTP I’m not sure.

I find I end up grinding with my fluid turbo almost all of the time, and after a winter of grinding on the turbo along with heavy weights, I tend to come out of winter feeling strong but slow. If I take an outside 5min VO2 effort my RPM is around 95-110 but inside it can be 70-75.

I’m the reverse – spin much more on the turbo than in the real world.

Realised yesterday that my rear tyre was semi-deflated, ~25psi lower than when i did test, which might be a reason why i was struggling so much with workouts as I guess rolling resistance would increase.

I used to do this as well, I introduced a workout focused on cadence drills between hard midweek workouts which sorted it out.

So Monday would typically be a rest day, harder workouts on Tuesday and Thursday with form and/or cadence drills on Wednesday. Developed some good habits this way.

Another vote for cadence drills here. I’d do them as part of a very easy ride every week.

Oh, and when I’ve tried to do Speciality Phase workouts without good prep they’ve gone terribly. Even mid-race season with good form, I think it’s a really different kind of hurting on the turbo and I certainly need to train the mind and body to get used to it.

The calendar is now on general release but also a price rise is coming on the 8th October.

Sign up before then and you get the old price.

https://blog.trainerroad.com/introducing-the-new-trainerroad-calendar-forum-kits-and-pricing/

I’ve just renewed my TR subscription. I’ve gone from riding 5+ times a week with regular 18 mile each way daily commutes to doing next to nothing for the past 3 months.

I’ve got a week in Mallorca on road bikes with mates in April so need to get back in shape for that.

If I go for a 6 week base plan followed by an 8 week build then an 8 week speciality then I should have started a couple of weeks ago so that won’t work!

Would I be better just starting now and knocking a couple of weeks off the end of the speciality plan?