TrainerRoad – STW approved sessions

I’m really pleaseD to see this. In my 3rd and maybe final year of being coached, next year without a coach Trainerroad with a plan assist would be my go-to but it really needs to integrate with Zwift for longer rides / boredom relief.

Run TR on a phone and Zwift on the computer and turn off the controllable bit on Zwift.

Ramp test on Christmas Eve to start Base and lost 6watts. Putting it down to tiredness etc. If I’d got through the last step I’d have been 5 watts up so I’ve gone with that as it seems more realistic. I’ll adjust as needed. Normally I fail almost immediately on a new step rather than 10 to 20 seconds in.

@13thfloormonk – I’d seen this mentioned on the TR forums but hadn’t looked at it until a thread popped up enquiring about logging Time in Zones – https://intervals.icu/ If you’ve got your TR account linked to Strava then it will pull the power data from there and give you your TiZ. Not the easiest method but it seems that it’s about the best for the moment. I’ve only just started looking at what it shows you.

Well that was a tough three days!

Mills on Wednesday, Dawin yesterday and Mary Austin -1 today 😳

I’d postponed Mills due to riding outside, I found the VO2 Max intervals hard especially the descending target part, good job there were long recovery valleys. Darwin then got put back a day because its slot was taken up by Mills. Pretty much bread and butter for me. Which leaves Mary Austin.

That was hard! I think I’d prefer the old 20min FTP test to that. Maintaining power on the back side of each peak required a lot of focus and determination. In a lot of workouts I’ve exceeded the target power by five to ten Watts during intervals, so could have raised the intensity by a few percent. Not this time! I was mostly 1 Watt above, so basically target Power.

Did the ramp test this morning. Changing from TR virtual power to a real power meter for the first time. Unsurprisingly there was a massive change (downwards!); but it means I’m no longer elite level on Coggans scale and instead top end of Cat 4 which is more reasonable!

Being time constrained I did it as soon as I woke up; figured it was so short it wouldn’t matter but I wonder if I’ll get a better number in a few weeks if I do it at a better time and better fueled. Doesnt really matter as I just needed a number to work on for a week or two of CX type on-off intervals before my last race and I’ll re-test after that before starting base.

One thing i noticed is my power is much more variable on a real power meter despite adding 2s power smoothing (on virtual I had raw). Will have to get used to that or add a bit more smoothing in.

If you plan on doing your rides fasted and on wake up then it may be sensible to stick with that FTP. If not you might need to bump it a bit if you find the workouts too easy (but that is easy to do).

I did Jepson yesterday morning at 5am. That was pretty tough but I made it through. I took a gel between the middle intervals but that might have been more mental than anything. I have got palisade over the weekend!

I noticed a huge drop when moving from virtual power on TR to Powertap pedals. Much more realistic number now! All academic as long as you’re consistently using the same tool.

The variability takes some getting used to as well, especially on the road.

@ferrals – The variability on a real power meter is because it’s logging power closer to the point of input, your foot/leg, than virtual power which is working it out after it’s gone through the pedal, cranks, chain and wheel. Ultimately it’s just a number. If your workouts are too easy then bump it up, too hard the drop it. So long as the value puts you in the right ball park for each workout so you get the desired benefits then it doesn’t really matter how you get there – see a couple of paragraphs down.

This week’s workouts were Spencer +2 (VO2 Max), Lamarck (Sweet Spot) and Leconte (Over/under threshold). All felt hard!

The first two were my eleventh and twelfth days in a row – not all indoors – so I was pretty weary. I’d moved Lamarck forward one day as I needed to make use of the fine weather on Wednesday for some work. I also moved Leconte back a day and just as well that I did – the valleys in the over-unders were really tough especially the ones just a couple of Watts below FTP.

A few weeks ago I bumped my FTP from 242W to 250W. I sort of guessed at the increase based on how I felt the over-unders had felt. The in-workout notes for Lamarck say to average the power for the four intervals as a good approximation for your FTP. Doing so gives 252W so my guess wasn’t too far out.

@robbo1234biking – Palisade isn’t too bad, probably one of the easier over-under workouts as there’s a good rest between each set. Leconte (and Mary Austin) drastically shorten three of the rests to just a minute so you don’t fully recover for sets 2, 4 & 6!

Near the end of Sweet Spot Base Low Volume 2, just the recovery week to do – I’ll probably swap the workouts for something with the same TSS but a bit more interesting. Then it’s General Build Low volume. After that I did have XC Marathon but I’m thinking something more suited to long distance, multi-day stuff.

@whitestone, robbo, thats my general thought… also all my planned workouts till I finish my season are vo2 max orientated where whether I’m actually doing 120% rather than 130% is neither here or there so long as I feel the burn.

Looking forward to making use of the ‘ride outdoors’ feature when I start base in mid-late feb.

I know you’re not but first few weeks of base can feel to easy. Week 4 and 5 tend to be hard. Bumping up the first 2 weeks potentially makes the last 2 weeks really hard.

Palisade done. Was pretty tough but manageable. Training for Mountain Mayhem and Jennride. Ideally want to drop 40 to 50lbs before then so my focus is on weight loss as there will be more benefit to that than increasing the ftp.

I am trying to fuel the workouts but periodise my nutrition to allow me to complete the workouts but still have a calorie deficit.

Had a jam sandwich on the bike today. A quarter of a sandwich in each rest between the intervals. Had a big bowl of oat bran a couple of hours before hand as well.

I am doing a low volume plan concentrating on base and build as per plan builder but adding a 1 hour z2 ride once a week as I can handle more volume. This is a early fasted ride so should help the weight loss.

Well last week consisted of the following:

Mills
Colleseum-2 – additional workout I added in to add a bit more volume
Darwin
Mary Austin-1

They all went OK really – definitely much tougher overall and I was close to giving up on the last peak on Mary Austin but it was mostly psychological I think. This week I have got the last week of SSBLV2 (Spencer+2, Lamarck and Leconte) before a recovery week.

I used plan builder but I want to play around with it a bit once I have finished this block as I think I will get more benefit from base and build blocks of training than I will from any speciality phases.

I am trying to fuel the workouts but periodise my nutrition to allow me to complete the workouts but still have a calorie deficit.

Willing to bet large sums of money* you listen to the TR podcast. They sound like Coach Chad’s words.

I’m on a forced break from training at the mo. Have had a play with plan builder, and I do like the fact that when I do start to get back to things, I’ll be able to plug my goal event in and get a plan that will do the job.

*£1.28

@stevious good call but it kind of makes sense. I don’t need to eat a load on days that I am not riding. It is also in the Sufferfest document ‘Eating to Suffer’ and I have also been reading the Endurance Diet as well.

Got a paypal address for the £1.28 😉

Got a paypal address for the £1.28

I’ve got the coins right here. They’re yours minus p&p (£5 for signed tracked delivery, obvs).

With plan builder if you don’t put an event as a target (or put it a long way away) it cycles you through Base and Build. Make any events b or c and it won’t target them also.
I think when I played with it anyway.

Usually do a few months of trainerroad around this time of year. Pondering giving the sufferfest a go instead this year and do the 14 day free trial. Wondering if it can be used offline as per trainerroad as my shed is too far from the house for a WiFi connection.

Shortbread I’ve got a free month code if you want to drop me a pm.

My ftp has gone up from 242 on 2nd Nov to 300 on 2nd Feb. So I know its working! That’s on low volume training and no sleep!

right, im in, Hammers 8 as an A event, just feel i have long ride endurance that will suit, lets get found out, local cx series does not start until a week after this, so fitness will be carried through, happy with this, been top 2-5 depending on who turns up, want to push more to the front, always a local hero who wins, can i get closer?

did a good month of sufferfest Vo2 prior to the Hope MTB Marathon in September and got around in a decent time despite a huge crash and a smashed shoulder, so im ok with training,

time! ever an issue, work 25 hours, mid 1st year degree, so not a massive issue this year, work load is low, (old student), young family (9,7,5,3) so its also an exercise in time management which I’ve pissed away for a while, to be fair, i needed it

so low volume plan, lets not over reach, but fit other workouts/outdoors in, Monday i can do, uni is at 12, school run 9 so i can do an hour/hour half, in between, no issues, Wednesdays, looking at my rota going forward, yup, no issue, mostly clear, Fridays, which is generally the longer one at 1:30, hmmmm hit and miss,

should i sub in the longer Friday ride for earlier in the week when i know i can get it done, squeeze in a shorter one on tighter days,

off days, volumes volume for the first few weeks surely? as long as its not massive efforts?

ramp test a couple of days ago gave me 281w, that off maybe 10 rides in the last 6-10 weeks, 2x outdoor at pace, (Dalby Red 1:58 & Sherwood, touch under 0:40) – weight at 83kg (mrs on 12 weeks paid slimming world funded by work, i know slimming world is bullshit, however if she’s eating better, it will knock on, so hoping for a few kg off at least)

plan builder says taylor -2 for tomorrow, that seems unfair 😆

I’d see how you get on with the workload before adding anything too big. The efforts get harder as you progress through the plan so even though you think you can handle things it’s possible that you’ll overdo things. No reason to step outside the plan unless you have specific reason to do so.

The Wednesday workouts are Sweet Spot, depends how you get on with that target zone, you could do Monday, Tuesday and Thursday if that fitted your rota.

Shortbread I’ve got a free month code if you want to drop me a pm.

PM sent – cheers.

Week two of SSB1 at the moment. Things dont seem as tricky as I remebmered, I seem to remember even things like carson (todays workout) being a bit of an effort. As it, I’ve completed this weeks workouts so far without issue and no real feeling in my legs afterwards. Wondering whether to bump things up by a few watts. Don’t want to be training inefficiently and I guess upping the wattage won’t be detrimental unless I can’t complete workouts.

I’m picking TR back up after a January of no training and general self abuse.

I’m going to do SSB1 again – I did it before xmas and it real did improve my fitness.

But before I scheduled the 6 week block I thought I would dive back in and try a couple of workouts.

Tried a sprint workout called “Wynne” yesterday, it nearly killed me!

I like Wynne, I find it mentally more acheivale that some of the other high intensity workouts!

I think I found SSB1 not too bad but by the 4th and 5th week was glad I left the FTP where it was.

Adding notes to all workouts is very handy for future reference. I often struggle on the second set of V02max intervals and having that noted previously means it’s just a bit mental work to get into the second set then it’s plain sailing as I tend to be flying on the 3rd set, albeit on the edge of cracking but it’s nearly over.

I broke my collarbone a month ago so have been totally indoors since then (well since I started back on the trainer after ten days or so), but given the weather and particularly the wind, I don’t think I’m missing much. I did some steady endurance/tempo workouts at first then last week I sort of picked workouts that I liked the look of. Let’s just say Broken Finger -2 is hard!

I’ve just started Sustained Power Build Low Volume, did Carpathian Peak yesterday and have Mount Goode tomorrow. Surprisingly my FTP didn’t really suffer but Monday’s Ramp test only saw a 4W increase since the end of SSBLV2.

+1 to adding notes to the workouts. I put things like how well I slept the night before and whether I ate during the workout.

@ferrals – I’d leave the FTP where it is for now, things do ramp up over time. I take it you are doing the Medium Volume plan if Carson is 2nd week – see how you feel after Tunnemah as over/unders will give the best indication of whether your FTP is correct, i.e. you should feel a burn during the overs and be able to recover (slowly) during the unders.

Did Disaster-1 on Sunday as weekend plans at BPW had been rained off by Dennis.
Getting towards the end of Specialty – XCM Mid Volume and the legs and lungs felt okay, but 3h20 was a long time to on the turbo. Even getting out of the saddle between the various blocks wasn’t enough.
I don’t know how people can do the unabridged 4h15 version!

cheers @whitestone, that was what was stopping me, I had a feeling it was a slow burn thing that builds up over time.

Put everything in the calendar up to early Oct cx season. Looking forward to starting to tck the weeks off and hopefully get backa bit of fitness ocmpared to the last couple of years.

I’m picking TR back up after a January of no training and general self abuse.

I’m going to do SSB1 again – I did it before xmas and it real did improve my fitness.

But before I scheduled the 6 week block I thought I would dive back in and try a couple of workouts.

Tried a sprint workout called “Wynne” yesterday, it nearly killed me!

Coming in cold to a VO2max turbo sesh is brutal – personally I can’t do it, maybe as a younger man. But Wynne with your turbo legs underneath you is easy peasy, so you’ll kill it as part of a structured block.

Been sat on my ringpiece the past month since cross finished, figure it doesn’t hurt to sharpen the saw every once in a while. Getting back on it now for timetrial season, going to try and legit complete the powerbuild block, which I’ve always struggled to do with cycle commuting.

I’ve begun SSB1 again too. Found the first few workouts pretty tough compared to the last time I did this plan. This is after doing the ramp test which hopefully has given a better representation of my FTP. Legs have felt better on the last few workouts so maybe there’s a bit of turbo adaptation needed as well.

Did Disaster-1

animal 🙂

Heehee. Thanks @dirtyrider.
I did chuckle about the “turbotrainer of desperation” in FGF today. Definitely feeling that with 3 weeks until the main event.
Great to see so many people on here using TR. I’ve found it really helpful, though I’m looking forward to some unstructured, outdoor riding come May!

short update,

used plan builder end of jan and loaded in XC Marathon for like 12 weeks time, first up was some SSB LV2 workouts, not been outside, not had time, and quite frankly, its awful out there,

ramp test, then first 9 workouts, missed 1 (Clark), subbed one (Palisade, for a similar intensity ride up the AduZ), and did a 30 minute Darwin instead of 1hr earlier this week, just done Mary Austin -1 – tough, but nothing awful,

onto Sustained Power Build next, doesn’t seem to be a recovery week at this point in the plan, just a ramp test scheduled on Monday/Tuesday

ramp test after Threshold work? will be interesting to see how it goes,

been eating better as a result of the mrs eating better, and tracking it with my fitness pal job, down approx 2kg, need to do some strength work as well

@dirtyrider – I started Sustained Power Build Low Volume last week. Only done two of the workouts so far – Carpathian Peak and Mount Goode – they feel a little harder than the workouts in Sweet Spot Base, most are fifteen minutes longer so you’ve a bit extra stress there.

Not sure why the Plan Builder hasn’t put in a recovery week, I haven’t used it myself yet as I’d sorted out what I wanted to do a couple of weeks before they released it. If you only started with it a couple of weeks ago then it might have decided that there was no point in a recovery week, that’s assuming that you didn’t tell the program that you’d actually started SSB X weeks previously.

I got myself a bluetooth HRM this week and Mount Goode was the first workout I used it. (I’ve an ANT+ HRM but it won’t work with the iPad so I had to get another) I was interested in my aerobic coupling/cardiac drift, how your heart rate varies during intervals, anything over 6% seems to indicate that you aren’t fit enough. Glad to say that my values were under 4% so it seems that I’m aerobically “adapted” but quite how I use that info I don’t know.

Not sure why the Plan Builder hasn’t put in a recovery week,

found this under the week 5 notes

Coming into an FTP assessment fresh may seem requisite with regards to measuring improvement, but the fact of the matter is sometimes you’ll carry a bit of fatigue into a reassessment workout. But don’t worry since most of your workouts will be performed with some level of fatigue in your muscles since many workouts are performed with residual effects carried over from recent, previous training. Try to be fresh but don’t sweat it if you’re not 100% recovered from recent training stress.

so it seems as design, don’t expect much, if any increase based on the last 4 weeks,

did 285w (Quarq) in September and 281w (Neo) January

Re. drift, always took it as 5% or less on a steady state Z2 workout would indicate your base is good…so perhaps ready to enter build phases depending on your periodisation.

@Haze – wasn’t sure if it was 5% or 6%.

As I said I hadn’t got a suitable HRM until last week so I’d already started my build phase. I’m going to do Boarstone, not sure if this link https://www.trainerroad.com/app/cycling/workouts/20749-boarstone is public, today as a 2hr Z2 workout which should give a better idea.

This Training Peaks article https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/aerobic-endurance-and-decoupling/ describes aerobic decoupling but not really how to use that information other than:

When heart rate and pace or speed are coupled (less than 5% decoupling) for the goal duration then aerobic endurance fitness is considered to be optimal and you are ready to move on to the next stage of training-the build period.

suggesting it’s something to target during the base phase only and then it’s a case of maintenance. Maybe it’s a matter of monitoring and noting whether it starts to rise which might indicate the onset of illness.

5%\6% neither here nor there for me really, if I’m around that figure then I consider it a fair indication.

But mostly it backs up what I probably feel anyway and adds the confidence that things are heading in the right direction.

I’ve not thought about using it as a possibly sign of illness but it’s something worth looking into maybe with HRV…could just as well use it as a sign of fatigue, need for recovery etc.

I did Boarstone today. My first “steady state” endurance ride since I’ve swapped out similar workouts for somewhat more varied ones.

At 15mins the app on the iPad froze. Had to quit it and resume the workout. Only did it the once. Annoyingly this meant that when the data was exported to Strava and Intervals.icu only the first fifteen minutes was exported. One of the reasons to do a workout like this was to figure out my aerobic decoupling on longer steady state rides in intervals.icu so I’ve had to work the values out by hand.

The average power values in either half of each “interval” were within a couple of Watts of each other (I’m on a dumb wheel-on trainer) so no great disparity to through things off.

Seven “intervals” with decoupling of: 4.7%; 0.16%; -0.17%; 0%; 0.33%; 0.5%; -2.39%. Yes there are two minus values and a zero in the series.

I don’t think I need worry about being aerobically adapted! I’ve really no idea whether this is typical for me but I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s good coupling as I’ve the best part of fifty years’ worth of activity, walking, running, climbing, biking that’s basically been endurance zone based.

Does anyone run a smart turbo off their power meter on the bike? (power matching is the term wahoo uses). I can set this up OK on my kickr but erg mode is very different – using the turbo power erg mode is really precise, output is a flat line with no variance, but using my power meter (a bepro pedal) it’s much more oscillatory around the target power and the erg mode feels more vague.

Not sure which I prefer – I like how the turbo erg mode is just take brain out and pedal, but dislike how it ramps up immediately on an interval which can be harsh on the legs. With the bike power meter it feels more natural but you need to concentrate to keep the power on target.

Prefer ERG personally, need to stay on top of your cadence and definitely helps to be spinning just above your target for the interval when it kicks in. I try to build up around 20 or 30 seconds before.

Can concentrate on form/drills a little bit too knowing that power is taken care of.

Never tried power matching but may have a gander when I get around to it, would be interesting to compare.