Great to hear it's working for you :)!

Yes, the Windows app will be updated. The windows app with training plan selection was actually going to launch first, but we found a sync bug. Once we get that fixed and tested we'll have a beta out for it. I'm thinking that will be this week. Probably pushed to the main production app sometime next week as long as we don't find any major bugs.

Right now the windows app defaults you to your plan view and scrolls you to the next workout. We're going to add a feature later so that it actually opens that workout, but for now we're going to put all of our efforts behind getting our updated Mac app and new Android app out.

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

Oh man! Sorry for the appendectomy!

I feel your pain man. I just had a tonsillectomy and sinus surgery..I also got thrush...and now I've got a sinus infection! It looks like it will be three weeks off the bike for me. I also lost 12 lbs in this process.

We'll see what Chad says for you, but for me this is the plan we worked out:

1) Find out what my FTP would be at the same power to weight with my new skinnier self.
2) Drop that number by 5% to reflect the missed training
3) I'm in the middle of mid vol build. I'm re-doing the recovery week half way through. After that I'll finish my current plan.

This totally sucks though. This recovery is way harder than I thought it would be...but at least I'm skinnier! :-D

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

So Nate already detailed the specific plan we devised for him, so I'll just elaborate on a couple generalities.

First, 2 weeks won't see much of a setback in anything of consequence in the Base phase. Both your strength & aerobic endurance capabilities won't fall off very much at all, and you'll reclaim what you've lost pretty quickly. If you were in your Specialty phase, I might recommend lowering your race expectations a bit, but that's not the case here.

Second, I don't see any issue in just diving right into that SF Build since it kicks off with an FTP assessment and will account for any slight slip in fitness. I do recommend doing a workout or two prior to your assessment since doing an FTP test after a layoff can yield some pretty misrepresentative (low) numbers.

Basically, prime the pump with a bit of work prior to your assessment, e.g. a day of Tempo/Sweet Spot work like Mount Field or maybe even a lighter VO2max workout like Gendarme 30 the day before - nothing too taxing or depleting, but something that reminds your body & mind how to hurt a little.

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

Thanks for the input from both of you. I'll do a few rides prior to ftp test and then jump into sufferfest for a few weeks.

This was a recovery week for me anyways so timing couldn't be better, just looks like it will turn into a recovery two week period!

Thanks guys, love the podcast as well.

Is there a way to select the Dropbox folder Trainerroad syncs ride files to?

Thanks.

When you allow access for TR to sync your rides to Dropbox, it automatically plunks a TR folder in there. So the original folder that the rides will be synced to cannot be changed, but you can move that TrainerRoad folder out of the 'Apps' folder and plunk it into a folder of your choosing. :-)

I think this is done solely to ensure we only have access to the one TR folder.

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Get Faster with TrainerRoad

Sorry to ask on Slowtwitch Nate, but couldn't find any info elsewhere. Is there an 8 Days of California this year?

I took part in 2013, 2014, missed the sign up emails in 2015, and haven't seen anything for this year.

ha! i was just logging in to ask the same thing.
I can't even find the 2015 workouts anymore. Don't know what happened to them.

Yes, looks like it may not be on this year. The Ride Feed is full of everyone doing previous year's 8DC rides, with the exception of the 2015 event. Bummer.

There's no 8DC this year. The old 8DCs are still in the feed and you can do those if you'd like.

8DC took Coach Chad literally a month to do, plus a bunch of dev time.

So instead of that, Coach Chad is working on something we call "Training Camps". This will be week(ish) long blocks of training that will focus on improving a limiter. The stress and intensity will be similar to 8DC or what you would get at a training camp that you'd travel to.

You'll be able to start these at any time of the year and we'll give guidance on how to fit them into your training.

Not only will Training Camps be hard to do, but they will also have a ton of science behind to make sure we're stressing you in the right ways to encourage maximum training adaption.

We felt that in the long term this is a much better approach and that everyone will get a lot more value out of this.

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

Thank you Nate. Although sad that there's no 8DC for this year, I think the Training Camps sounds like a wonderful idea, I look forward to those. I can only imagine the time and effort required to put the 8IDC together, so thank you for doing those in the past, they were tough, but fun.

the training camp idea sounds awesome. can't wait to guinea pig those ;)

any chance you can re-release the 2015 8DC workouts to the workout library? They seem to have disappeared.

Done. There are no thumbnails at the moment, but we'll fix that shortly. ;-)

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

Chad,

I just finished my first IM and have been training for triathlon for almost 1.5 yrs now. Before that, I didn't do any s/b/r.

I put in a lot of volume for the IM and have been training pretty hard the whole 1.5 yrs, but was spreading my efforts between the 3.

I've gotten my FTP up to a reasonable 280, but would like to now move into a focused bike block of training to really get strong on the bike.

I'm thinking bike focus through September, then move into a run focused block for the winter. I usually ride with a race club on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

I just ordered a wahoo kickr and signed up for trainer road.

What plan or sequence of plans would you recommend? How should I incorporate the race club rides into my weekly plan?

Thanks,
Sean

Hi Sean,

If you feel like your aerobic power is already pretty high, start with Sweet Spot Base. But if you feel like you can lift your aerobic efficiency a little higher, i.e. do more work while still keeping your HR relatively low; and you have time to keep the volume high, start with Traditional Base.

Then, Sustained Power Build is going to be your best bet before moving on to the 40k TT plan. How you weave in your swim/run workouts is up to you, but this will give you ample focus on your bike fitness and should still leave some time for the other two disciplines.

Best of luck!

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

Thanks Chad

I sent a note to the trainerroad email but figured I post here as well.

I was looking at the 8 week training program for the Ironman distance and was wondering what is the best way to stretch it to 14 weeks? Can I just repeat weeks 3-6 instead of moving right on to week 7, then resume so weeks 7 and 8 are weeks 13 and 14?

Thanks!

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

Hi,

Yep, that could work but you'll want to consider progressing those extra weeks such that each workout is a little harder than the ones in each preceding week. Then you'd also want to progress the workouts in weeks later weeks too but probably keep the taper just as it is unless you feel better served by a harder taper based on your training history

Alternatively, you could insert a 4-week block of endurance training where you focus on Endurance through Sweet Spot sort of work (with a single VO2max workout on weeks 1 & 3) and get away from high-intensity for a short while. This could be done mid-plan, but you might be better off doing it before you begin your Specialty plan.

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

Chad,

Was putting together my plan and it looks like I couldn't progress all the way through both SS bases then sustained power build, then 40k TT by the time I'd want to swap to run focus for a marathon.

Which one of these should I drop?

SS Base 1
SS Base 2
Sustained Power Build
40k TT

Thanks,
Sean

If you're coming into this with a reasonably good level of aerobic fitness, you can bypass either of the SSB plans. Skip SSB I if your endurance is already decent and you want to jump right into some VO2max work or skip SSB II if you want to start with workouts on the slightly gentler side in order to ramp up your ability to sustain steady, higher but still sub-threshold watts.

And if your base is relatively the weakest aspect of your fitness, skip the 40k TT plan and just work on the basics (SSB I & II and the Sustained Build) since you'll revisit the hard stuff in your Tri specialty plan.

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

Awesome, thanks.

Excellent, thank you. I heard back from Evan at TR and he suggested repeating weeks 3, 4, 5 & 6 one time each. (e.g. Week 3, Week 3, Week 4, Week 4, Week 5, Week 5), which sounds like what you've described.

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

Close but not exactly. I don't think there's a need to repeat the recovery week so I'd lean more toward the approach I've detailed.

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

In the middle of Oly High Volume and Plan calls for Makalu. Two questions:

Question #1, specific question
- I have no time this week (or desire to create time, to be completely honest) to do a 3.5 hour bike on the trainer. What would be a good substitute for this ride that's a bit shorter, say 2-2.5 hour? Could Koip be a good substitute? The same goes for Longfellow in Week 5.

Question #2, general question
- As I was prepping for my IM-distance last fall (I think I did Sustained Power Mid-Volume as my race approached), I never did a ride on the trainer as long as Longfellow or Makalu. Any particular reason why those two are placed in the Oly plans, or is my exposure just limited to all the workouts and plans, that I'm asking the question out of partial ignorance?


EDIT: Did Beehive this morning instead of Makalu. Could I do Big Squaw instead of Longfellow? I just have no desire to ride 4 hours, but don't want to completely skip the workout.

Thanks!

Sorry for the delay here man! Coach Chad is out for the week, so the coaching questions will have to be postponed for a little while. He's been pretty swamped too with those new training camps that'll be rolling out pretty soon - but they're going to be sweet! :-)


I'm not a coach, but just based off some of my observations of the plans...Considering the nature of these workouts, there's nothing really wrong with replacing those longer workouts (Makalu and Longfellow) for those shorter ones (Beehive and Big Squaw). They're both workouts that'll demand the endurance and tempo work that this particular day of your plan is scheduled for. It's these aerobic endurance workouts that are meant to widen and strengthen your aerobic base. In doing so, you'll slowly make physiological adaptations that are inherent in long, steady, low-intensity riding. This ultimately makes for improved fat metabolism, energy delivery & glycogen conservation. Further, lower HR/higher aerobic power, and improved neuromuscular efficiencies.


Having all that said, there's something that you may not be able to get from the shorter workouts, that you can only dial-in from the longer efforts. Generally, only by riding for these increasingly longer periods of time, will your endurance muscle fibers become ever-more efficient at utilizing fat for fuel, while sparing sugar stores for those more intense efforts. But again, we get it, people have to make some changes to their training plans to accommodate their busy lives. The plans target specific events, so these longer efforts are just to prepare you for what may be demanded of you in an event. And this doesn't mean a personal coach may be able to find an alternative workaround as well (you may even be able to find an old post in here where Coach Chad's addressed it).

In a nutshell: you just have to keep in mind the demands of the event your training for; if you're training for an event that's going to require a 3-4 hour bike leg, you may want to put in the extra time. ;-)

Hope this helps!

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Get Faster with TrainerRoad