You can email him directly at his website. He has answered several questions for me. Usually very quickly.

I use his plans, and then refer to Allen and Coggan's "Training and Racing with a PM". Table 3.1 "Power Based Training Levels" (on page 48 of the 2nd edition) lists %FTP based on duration of ride or interval.

For a long ride (they list 1 to 5hrs or so), A&G suggest 56-75% FTP (Level 2). I think a foundation ride would be <55% (Level 1). I think the A&G levels are actually more helpful in figuring out %FTP targets for intervals and tempo rides.

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Proud Member of Chris McDonald's 2018 Big Sexy Race Team "That which doesn't kill me, will only make me stronger"
Blog-Twitter-Instagram-Race Reports - 2018 Races: IM Florida 70.3, IM Raleigh 70.3, IM 70.3 World Championships - South Africa, IM North Carolina 70.3

I honestly don't understand why people buy into Matt's schedules. It must be about marketing and packaging - it's certainly nothing to do with performance or qualifications.

Do some research on his results.

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My Blog

Couple of critiques of your critique...

I don't think coaching and performing are necessarily mutually exclusive. People can be better coaches than they ever were performers.

What kind of performance results did Joe Vigil get? How about Mark Wetmore (the best running coach in the US IMHO)? Terrence Mahon? Frank Gagliano? How about Ray Treacy? Jerry Schumacher? How about Jack Daniels (he didn't even compete in the sport he's coached Olympians in...He was a modern pentathlete)? How about Phil Jackson?

Why do people buy into Brian McKenzie's philosophies? That guy is a kook and doesn't have personal performance resume worth the stack of stuff by the toilet, AND he doesn't have a resume of athletes that appear to have accomplished much of anything, and he's nearly as prolific as Matt!

Matt Fitzgerald is a prolific author and deacon of sound endurance principals and philosophies (80:20 rule...varied intensities, proper periodization, taper, etc.). It's not sexy...he doesn't have any quick fixes or gimmicks and he might be a bit conservative. He's coached countless KQ and BQ athletes. Does he coach any top-level pros? Perhaps not, but for a canned plan, there's not really much out there that's better. It's easy to understand and will prepare you well...Do some research on HIS ATHLETE'S results.

To answer OP's original question, sometimes it's a bit of a dance between new and old-school coaches. Even really data hungry guys like Steve Magness have written about their personal preference of not running with heart-rate monitors or GPS watches...he prefers nothing but a simple watch and runs by time and RPE...His coaching style is a bit different though.

The RPE scale (or Borg scale) happens to be a VERY good approximation for your anaerobic threshold. Here's some of the research on the matter:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22954509


The gist:

"Borg’s RPE seems to be an affordable, practical and valid tool for monitoring and prescribing exercise intensity."

If you really want to use your shiny new power meter, than you can scale accordingly...OR, as stated early, drop Matt an e-mail. He seems to be quite responsive (which is an essential quality in any good coach).

Following Matt's plan at 51 I Ironman PR'd by over an hour.

To OP I sent you a PM with the Training Intensities that were part of my program.

Good Luck

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

Thanks for the input. I was thinking about shooting him an email. Sounds like the best plan.

Cheers!

I'm not defending Matt, but just thought I would offer an opposing view.

Using Matt's plans I've qualified for the IM 70.3 World Champs at both IM 70.3s I raced (without a rolldown), and qualified for Kona at my first Ironman. I probably could have done that with a different plan, but to say that his plans are just about marketing and packaging is a bit unfair.

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Proud Member of Chris McDonald's 2018 Big Sexy Race Team "That which doesn't kill me, will only make me stronger"
Blog-Twitter-Instagram-Race Reports - 2018 Races: IM Florida 70.3, IM Raleigh 70.3, IM 70.3 World Championships - South Africa, IM North Carolina 70.3

I KQed using his plan last year and have used them for the last 6 IMs I've done. They are solid plans IMO. Can't beat the price either.

Just to pile it on I've used his marathon plan as well as his sprint and Olympic triathlon plans. They all are solid plans, and as someone else said you can't beat the price.

The success of Fitzgerald's training plans has absolutely nothing to do with his physical capabilities.

What's the difference between his Plan 6 through Plan 10 all for the same distance.

Just progressively more intensity and/or time. I try to follow level 10 (the highest), although I tend to do less swimming and more biking than is in the plan.

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Proud Member of Chris McDonald's 2018 Big Sexy Race Team "That which doesn't kill me, will only make me stronger"
Blog-Twitter-Instagram-Race Reports - 2018 Races: IM Florida 70.3, IM Raleigh 70.3, IM 70.3 World Championships - South Africa, IM North Carolina 70.3

So I bit the bullet and signed up for Training Peaks and dropped in Matt Fitzgerald's Level 8 70.3 plan. Coming from Strava as my log and a loose hand written plan. Digging both TP and his plan. I made some tweaks here and there, but his design is still the same.

Very detailed workouts for swim, bike and run. Wow. No just run or ride type workouts with 10 minutes of Z4 at the end. It's a bit different from what I have done in the past (way more interval work) so the change in training is also welcome. I train with power and HR so it's easy to track on TP the performance.metrics on the intervals. His bike workouts are easy to replicate on my Wahoo Kickr too.

Anyway, I'm pleased and thought I would follow-up for others that search.

Apparently this book contains all the tri plans from level 1 to 10, even if it's a bit older:

http://www.amazon.com/...420753877&sr=8-1

Not sure how TP can justify 80 bucks per level.

I saw that but wanted to get away from paper plans like I've done in the past. What you are paying for is it fully loaded for you on TP with the flexibility to change/move stuff around at will. One could argue you could save money by going regular free TP and just type in the plan but I wanted it all loaded up front. It really helps with my planning. No way I would type in all those notes on my own. It would take hours.

I know what you're saying, I've his book and I'll be using one of his plans starting next week. I'm currently converting everything to SportTracks (TP Free doesn't support workout schedules) and is a PITA, particularly the swim workouts.
That said, I still think his plans are overpriced over TP. However, if I consider the time I'll be spending on writing everything over SportTracks, it's not that expensive....

Hi,

I'll be using Matt IM Plan starting this week. For RPE > FTP I'm using this: http://viewsoftheroad.com/...est-erg-spreadsheet/
I've set the Recovery Power to 55% and Maximum Power to 120%, this way a RPE of 8 is equal to FTP. Haven't tested this values yet, will do during the week.

By the way, I also had a doubt with the plans and sent an email to Matt ( his email it's on the first pages of the book) and I was really impressed how quickly and detailed his answer was, +1 for Fitzgerald!