Thanks, Nate.
I haven't heard back from support yet but I am sure they can work it out.

I'm looking for some guidance from my fellow Slowtwitchers on how to structure my next training cycle.

This weekend I wrapped up my sustained power, high volume build. I did a full, mid-volume traditional base program before this. My goal event is 18 weeks out, a full distance triathlon--my first full. I'm a bit lost on what to do next. Most coaches would recommend completing a full base, build and specialty cycle, but I think it would be hard to fit this in the 18 weeks and not the most productive. I feel ready to get crunching on the bike again after last week's recovery week. I came up with the following options myself:

1. Do two weeks with some V02 max intervals sprinkled in to get some new stimulus. Repeat the sustained power build, followed by the full-distance speciality plan.
2. Do two weeks with some V02 max intervals sprinkled in to get some new stimulus. Do the full-distance build, followed by the full-distance speciality plan.
3. Replace the V02 intervals in option 1 and 2 with some base work.

I originally opted for the sustained power build work over the full-distance build because I prefer to spread my training load over more workouts. I extend my long weekend workout depending on the weather.


Some background; this is my third winter of structured training and I rarely miss a workout (less than once a month). I'm currently at +-4.75 W/kg and have very little weight to lose.

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Pain is temporary.

Hi Chad,

thanks for the quick answer! I guess much of the progress is because I'm pretty new to structured training. Anyway, I'm very glad with the process.

Regarding the specialty, I have another question, which is basically, when to start and which specialty to choose.

My A race will be in mid-August. Because of some business trips and vacation plans, I have about 14 weeks for training after my return from the current trip in April. A specialty only takes 8, so the first question would be what to do with the remaining 6 weeks.

I guess this also depends on which specialty you recommend. The A race will be a ~200km race with roughly 4500m ascend (3 mountain passes in the alps), where I'll have to deliver reasonably high wattage for sometimes 2 hours straight. The recommendation for pacing seems to be about 70-80% FTP on each of the ascends to a mountain pass. The usual training recommendation seems to be to do a lot of longish (20-30 minutes) intervals, pretty much like, e.g., the Golgota workout in TR.

So, my situation is that I have 3-4 days per week where I can get on the bike, and I can do so for 2+ hours, so I'm not really limited to 1 hour workouts there. To me, the century mid-volume specialty with combining the two weekend workouts on one day makes more sense than the road climbing race specialty. Would that be a good choice? Also, would it make sense to replace some of the VO2Max units with more 2+ hours sweet spot work of roughly the same TSS? I really do not care much about my strength on short hills or tempo changes.

So, to sum up:
1) Which specialty would you recommend to me, and what changes should I maybe apply?
2) What should I do with the remaining 6 weeks?

Hi again,

You could use those 6 weeks to repeat either SSB I or II if you think your higher-end endurance could use an extra boost, or you could perform a Re-Build where you repeat either the early or later 6 weeks of whichever Build plan best suits your needs, probably Sustained Power in your case.

Then, your Specialty plan could be either the the Climbing Road Race or Century (probably a better fit in your case) plans depending on which workout selection seems more interesting, which counts for more that a lot of riders recognize, and which is better suited to your event's demands.

And you're always welcome to modify workouts depending on your personal needs. For example, I often make my VO2max workouts a little longer overall and more dense and I also vary their intensity from set to set just to keep things engaging and because I've learned that my body responds well to this sort of workout alteration. Same thing with longer rides - if I feel up for it, I'll take on more miles/hours seeing to it that subsequent workouts don't begin falling short or my level of motivation isn't falling due to ramping things too quickly or too high.

Along these same lines, you may find that 95% repeats cook you inside of 3 or 4 intervals while 92% repeats or recoveries with an extra minute or two allow you to lay down more volume and better cater to your individual rates of adaptation & recovery.

I know it sounds like I'm trying to shift some of the design burden to the athletes, but the fact is, these training manipulations are all part of the process of becoming a better athlete from season to season - trial & error/dose & measure will forever be a part of this process if you want to make the most of your training time. ;-)

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Head Coach at TrainerRoad
Co-host of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Hey Chad - any estimate on when you'll be releasing updated Specialty tri plans with swim/run workouts included? I remember hearing you're working on them. Speciality phase just started for me today, so I'm trying to figure out how long ahead I should write my own workouts. BTW - world of difference this year with those being put in the plans - especially on the running where I've struggled to see improvement for a while, but following your plan I'm seeing my averages dropping fast!

Chad's finished them and they've been released to development to put in the database! They could possibly be released today. That's the "super special behind the scenes for Slowtwitch special".

Just understand that if we find a problem in the plans (wrong workout Ids or something) it could take us a few more days.

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CEO at TrainerRoad
Co-host of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Awesome - thanks for your answer, Nate! Perfect timing for me and for many other racing in May. You guys continue to beat my expectations.

Apologies if, as I suspect, this is a recurrent question.

Every time I use TrainerRoad, I open up the application, navigate through the menu hierarchy to the training plan I'm on, think back to what the last workout I did was and hence what week I'm on, and then find the next workout and load it.

This seems bizarre to me: I'd have thought "start this plan" functionality with tracked progress and hence a big "load next workout" button when you open that application would be (in the grand scheme of things) pretty straightforward.

Am I missing something, or does this functionality really not exist? Are there any plans for it?

When I open the workouts and filter by plan, the workouts appear in order with the ones that I have done highlighted in green. I just scroll to the next unhighlighted one and there I am. It probably helps that I've done very few workouts in total, and no repeats.

Te plans are up but I think there is a mismatch there. The Half Iron High Volume plan bike workouts should belong to the Olympic High Volume training plan and vice versa. However, the run workouts seem to be correct. I'm not sure what else is wrong there but I'm affraid it's not just a straight swap.

Probably a dumb question, but I just signed up for TR in anticipation of my trainer coming.

Do you "sign up" to a training plan and it knows your workout each day or do you just go into the plan each day and pick your workout based on where it's at?

The old app did this, the new one does not according to support.

Support mentioned a "calendar" feature is coming that will handle this.

Nate: I know ground up rewrites are hard (I work in Software) but less clicks are good, so the new one should launch into your prescribed workout like the last one almost did. :)

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2014 P3 DI2 - RT6, CXR80, Power2Max S, 820, Fenix 3 HR. (gone)

Right now you cannot subscribe to a plan but the guys at Trainer Road recently stated that it's a feature that's coming very soon.

Nate-
The new update this morning. . . the keyboard features ... awesome! honestly only used it because I was so happy to not have to try and use my track-pad on my lap top for this stuff anymore.

its the little details like this that set you guys apart

Noticed that for the Half Distance Mid-Volume Plan, the long rides on Saturday have been dramatically decreased. Is this right ? For example, Week 3 on the old plan called for 180 minutes (Ptarmigan) on Saturday and now it only calls for a 80 minute ride (Ragged).

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Matthew

http://mattpatt75.blogspot.com

I might be noticing the same issues spotted by others. I came on here to ask the reasoning behind 4 hour rides for the Oly plan, but it appears some of the workouts were mixed up during the uploading process. If not, wouldn't mind hearing from Chad regarding such long endurance rides for Olympic distance prep.

I just contacted them about this and they are fixing it later today.

Chad,



I have completed 7 of the first 8 rides in the Half Ironman Specialty mid volume plan. With the new specialty plans now up, should I switch to the new plan or stick with the one I started? It appears the new plan drops the long (er) weekend rides. Why did you make this change?

Thanks

On week three of the 40k TT plan and it's brutal as hell, but i expected that as I've done some trainer road before.

It's an 8 week plan but when i started my local A race was 12 weeks out, I think i'll just start the plan over after week 4, probably do a FTP test as I'm getting used to brutal intervals now. The first week was a struggle, set my FTP at 227 or so and was failing intervals, dropped it to 215 and still struggled a bit to start with but I'm now feeling strong.

I'm feeling strong enough at my current FTP that I think i might be able to complete Old Rag, anyone who has done Old Rag will know it's a bitch and it's my nemesis as I've never completed it.

I'll let Chad answer whether you should switch to the new plans or not. Regarding the long rides, see our discussion before your post. There is a mistake in those plans which I already reported to Trainer Road and will be corrected soon. The long rides will be back.

flynnzu wrote:

I might be noticing the same issues spotted by others. I came on here to ask the reasoning behind 4 hour rides for the Oly plan, but it appears some of the workouts were mixed up during the uploading process. If not, wouldn't mind hearing from Chad regarding such long endurance rides for Olympic distance prep.

Hi,

Many of the mix-ups have been set straight, but the long rides on the Olympic plan were fully intentional. One of our developers (who is a very competitive half-distance triathlete) asked this same question, so I'll basically cut/paste that reply. ;)

These rides are what makes the plan high volume - longer, aerobic efforts. It’s hard to jack up the volume with other forms of training since it greatly elevates the risk of burnout or injury. And 4 hours doesn’t have to be done indoors (frankly, I don’t expect anyone to do anything over 3 hours indoors, but plenty do and I applaud them), but those odd-week long rides do a lot for maintaining and improving, even at this late stage of training, fat metabolism/aerobic efficiency, slow-twitch fiber hypertrophy, race confidence regarding shorter distances/durations, and plain ol’ toughness.


So they're not about matching the exact demands of the bike leg so much as conditioning your body/muscles to handle the bike leg in a faster, stronger, more adept manner much like VO2max work or even Sweet Spot work; neither of which are directly applied during competition.


I'll also add what we commonly tell athletes in reference to those longer, steady-state aerobic rides which is that they often amount to 1.3-1.7x the amount of work you'd otherwise get done outdoors. So we average this range to 1.5x for ease of use and remind riders that, for example, a 3-hour ride done on the unrelenting, no tailwinds or downhills, no traffic lights or road undulations almost uphill all the time nature of riding a trainer is more like 4-4.5 hours were you to ride outdoors with all of the aforementioned distractions and training stress interruptions.


So if you really don't want to ride indoors for 4 hours - and I can't say I blame you - log the same time, or even more, outdoors doing your best to keep your work steady throughout. And if your training schedule simply won't accommodate rides this long, trim them to whatever works for you. There's still plenty of benefit in a 2- or 3-hour aerobic endurance ride.

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Head Coach at TrainerRoad
Co-host of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

It's probably best to stick with your current plan since the new plans progress different types of workouts rather rigorously and jumping into a later week might subject you to a workout you're not quite ready for. And the old plans are still solid, they were just a bit more bike-centric than the new ones which include far more detailed swim & run workouts. Seeing the total stress of all 3 disciplines led to a fair amount of changes in the bike workouts, as you can see.

The longer rides fell victim to the process of making a distinction between mid- & high-volume versions, but that's not to say you can't scrap the odd-week Sunday intervals workout in favor of a longer ride if you'd rather go that route. Both have merit, both are effective to similar ends, but in trying to offer something that's more midway between the low-volume & high-volume options, cutting that long weekend ride and thereby choosing quality over volume made the most sense.

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Head Coach at TrainerRoad
Co-host of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Chad,

I've been battling with patellar tendinitis for about two months, so running hasn't been an option for me, but I've taken that time and put it all on the bike and pool. With that said, I'm on the bike seven days a week, currently doing the Olympic Base plan and adding in additional rides where there are off days. But, what workouts should I add on those days?

Right now, the plan has Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I put 60 mins of Z2 on Monday and Wednesday (Pettit) with a recovery ride (lazy mountain) on Sunday. Is that sufficient or should I switch up the plan or jump plans all together to a cycling specific plan? I'm balancing this with rehab/strength and conditioning(3x/wk) and swimming.

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@floathammerholdon | @partners_in_tri

Does anyone else service their drive-train especially for FTP test day just to make sure that you're getting every last Watt that you can?!

No? Just me then...

No, I like to leave myself an excuse when I don't see the performance gains I'm hoping for.

If I service the drive train then thats one more excuse out the window.