How did you calculate your FTP?

Was your FTP calculated on the road or using the trainer. FTPs can vary indoors vs out.

What about adjusting to low volume plan?

How intense was your 20% of hard bike work before? Threshold, sweetspot and Vo2 on TrainerRoad is pretty killer, but it yields results.

FTP doesn't vary, PE does

My first thought is that OP's FTP is set too high. Re-test on Trainerroad just for posterity.

My FTP was done using the ramp test on trainerroad.
My intensity on intense days in the past was, admittedly, not too intense.
I considered going low volume, but I want to improve, and I have the time to meet the mid-volume requirements for the bike (~3-4 hrs/week).

I have the ability to push to a crazy limit when competing or when something is on the line. I absolutely killed myself for the ramp test. One of my concerns is that the FTP is not sustainable for regular training.

On the other hand. Maybe its just that my biking is weak. I can do hard day after hard day for running and swimming... Could it all come down to conditioning and that I should try and get closer to the Trainerroad scheduled workouts over the next few weeks/months?

You can bump the intensity down a couple %. If you find the workouts tough, but do-able, then adjust your FTP accordingly. This is what I've always done with Trainer Road and it's worked well for me.

I am a good competitive cyclist and have been using TR for several years. A few general thoughts. TR is very hard, they focus on the correct intensity, duration of intervals, and cumulative time in desired zones to obtain maximal benefits. For many, this is new. Even those who have been training regularly, this can be a pretty big adjustment. I always suggest giving TR a one month cycle to allow your body and mind to adjust to the training (real training !). In that month you can lower your FTP by 2-5% to make the workouts tolerable and adjust as needed. For your case, lower your FTP by 5% for this week and report back.

Not everyone responds well to this amount of intensity. I certainly don't. Listen to your body and adjust your plan before you end up like me and create thread like I just did for seeking help for overtraining: https://forum.slowtwitch.com/.../?page=unread#unread

This. Don't skip the ramp test. Don't 'think' you know, find out.

I'm not sure what to make of your post. "Two weeks" of sprint mid-volume means you've done a ramp test and had 5 scheduled workouts of 45-60 minutes? You say you can complete the workouts with a "few days of recovery beforehand." Have you actually tried to follow the schedule and failed a workout? Or did you skip/delay workouts because you didn't feel up to it on the scheduled day? I can't tell if you've really given the program a proper chance.

Any program that's going to be effective on ~2.7 hours per week is going to be challenging. But you get a recovery week every 4th week. So it's a ramp test and 8 kinda-hard 45-90 minute workouts in 19 days which isn't exactly ball-busting. Then it dials back a bit for a week. If you really can't make the workouts as prescribed and scheduled, you may be one of the outlier cases who's ramp test results aren't indicative of your true sustainable output. If that's the case, you can manually adjust your FTP, which is the baseline that all workouts are programmed around. Drop it 5-10 watts and try again.

On the technical side, what are you using to measure power? Do you have a power meter on the bike, a power meter on the trainer, or are you using "virtual power?" The latter can be finicky for wheel-on trainers. You have to be sure you have the same tire pressure every ride, and the same amount of tire deflection.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Thanks. I was hoping to hear something like this. I'm going to drop my intensity and keep it going. Ill report back in a week or two.

Oh man, thats crazy. Thanks for the warning. I feel like my mere 4hr/week makes it much less likely. I was considering dropping my intensity 5% and riding today, though I feel totally wiped out. Not so sure anymore...

Answering in order of questions quoted above:
1. I couldnt finish the 4th bike workout (week 2, day 1). Since then, if I feel like I'm too fatigued, I push the workouts a day out.
2. I think this might be me... regardless, I'm going to manually drop my FTP 10 watts (~5%) and see how I feel going forward. Seems like many people have stated they needed to get "used to real training" on TR.
3. Garmin Vector 3.

When you chose the Sprint Tri plan, were you targeting a particular event?

Sounds to me like you need more base fitness before adding the intensity.

I would switch to the Sweet Spot Base plan ASAP, and once you've completed that, select your next plan based on what events you're targeting and when they are occurring. You could do Sweet Spot Base Mid Vol I --> Sweet Spot Base Mid Vol II and then Sprint Triathlon Mid Volume Base --> Build --> Specialty which would get you through basically this whole season, or Sweet Spot Base Mid Vol I --> Sweet Spot Base Mid Vol II --> Sprint Triathlon Mid Volume Build --> Specialty and cut out the 4 weeks of Sprint Tri Base.

You were already saying you’re biking a low amount and then jumping into TR. TR workouts are pretty tough, and as you get above the sweet spot work I think they get even harder.

Almost unrealistic percentages, but people have said % of vo2 are different for all people so you don’t have to follow it exactly...I think you have to get adjusted to the added work volume. Going from 4 hours a week where 3 are like zone 2 or 1 to TR where those four hours are going to be jammed with more intensity is something your body won’t be used to. Make sure you keep it in check and don’t go overboard. It’s easy to do when things are all laid out for you.

They talk about this a lot on the podcast - just because you have the time to do a higher level plan doesn't mean that you are capable (now, or ever).

I would highly recommend stepping back to the low volume plan and see how that goes as it sounds like the mid-volume is just too much TSS for you (at this point in time). You can still follow the mid volume run/swim workouts, and through in some endurance workouts like pettit if you have the time and desire to add a bit more volume.

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Practise doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect!

I'm sorry, but it would be pretty near impossible to "overtrain" on the Mid-Volume Sprint plan unless you were coming in completely untrained. Might it take some adjusting to if you're cycling training has been mostly Tempo-Intensity and below, but it's roughly 8 hours a week, all-in (swim/bike/run) on average, with a recovery week every 4th week.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

From most of the advice I'm getting its time to lower my intensity until I get used to TR. I'm seriously considering your advice.

I have 3 sprint tri's this year and am trying to podium. Its my 5th year racing, but first ever training. I came in 4th and 5th in my age group last year and thought "hey, if I trained, maybe I could win".
I have an event in 11 weeks, enough for 6 weeks base sweet spot low 1 ---> 4 weeks of build tri mid. then one week of recovery before the race. maybe doing a specialty block before the next race (17 weeks).

I'm curious why you are suggesting to do the sweet spot base vs the triathlon mid base with 5% reduced FTP (as most others suggested).

For me it was the Half Distance plan and was training about 11 hours. But I think it's possible on all plans, without plans and just in general. If life and/or work stress increase additionally and you still continue to hit it hard, I'm pretty sure it's possible for a lot of people. Of course, some respond well to high intensity and recover well from it. Others don't and would profit more from doing long z2 workouts.

Have you looked at the differing demands of those recommendations? Sweet Spot Base Mid Volume I average weekly TSS is 347 and SSBMVII is 399. He's struggling to keep up with Sprint Tri Mid Volume Base which is 184.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

I've been doing tri for 10 years now, running 20 yrs prior to that(!). Typically finish sprints-HIMs in the top 15-20% and am usually on or right off the podium in small local events.

I started Trainerroad Oly mid-vol plans last Sep, and did the Oly Base and Oly Build.

The TR Oly base plan was 'ok' hard for me. I used their ramp test for FTP at the start of the plan, and then a few points during. I finished nearly all the workouts but had to borderline dig on a few of them. Disappointingly for me, I only gained 3 watts on my FTP after then plan, which may have been more due to effort than actual improvement.

The TR Oly Build plan I thought was HARD, sometimes very hard. It's 3 hard workouts per week (Vo2max, tempo, then long SS or race pace) each of which puts you right on the edge of your bike ability. It was hard enough even with a big run decrease in volume, I was barely surviving the workouts past the 2nd week. I ended up doing nearly all of them as prescribed, but it was definitely TOO hard for me in retrospect. I haven't rested my FTP (got a cold right at the end of it unfortunately, knocked me out for a week), and my bike split in the next Oly was 40 sec faster than last year but it's hard to directly compare due that cold interfering in the taper. Unfortunately, my run split worsened by a whopping 2 minutes, so I actually did slightly worse than last year's time in the same race =(. I'd guesstimate my FTP has gone up about 5-7watts, but I'd be shocked if it were greater than 10w.

All in all though, I feel that the TR Oly plans (and likely the rest of their triathlon plans) was too hard for me at M40-45 who has already realized a lot of my bike gains in the past 10 yrs of tri. They might be good if you are already a strong cyclist or an ex-competitive road cyclist who was doing more volume than the TR plan and thus can thrive on the increased intensity but lowered volume. For anyone else though, I really think it's too hard (would love to hear from folks who disagree though!).

I'm opting to NOT doing the TR Oly Race-specific Plan (even MORE intensity! Ack!) in preparation for my summer races, as my run losses far outweight my bike gains, plus I just felt tired, tired all the time from all that bike hammering. I'm mostly choosing workouts from TR Build a la carte as needed and filling the rest of the bike with selected workouts depending on what I feel my body can handle for that day and the upcoming load, which of late has been choosing much easier workouts.

I do hope the TR guys can jump on this thread, and share some data about how the completion rate in the TR Triathlon Build and race plans (not the base plans) is, and whether they see a higher than expected dropout rate in them. Obviously, if the ramp test just overestimated my FTP in particular, I'd find the plans too hard, compared to had I used an FTP test that pegged me lower. (The ramp test seems rightfor me though - I raced at pretty much the expected %FTP of the ramp test and my outdoor efforts line up extremely well off that FTP.)

So you failed one workout, and are now punting rides if you feel "too fatigued" and proclaiming that the intensity is "too darn high?" This may come off as harsh, but maybe you just need to HTFU a bit before writing off the program or making adjustments.

You really haven't given it a fair shot, IMHO. Those Tuesday workouts are supposed to be soul crushers. It's the only day you're over FTP, at least in Base and Build phases. They're designed to take you to the brink of, and possibly beyond, failure. Thursday and Saturday rides are all Sweet Spot, which is still tough, but something you should be able to recover from fairly quickly. I'd try to keep with the schedule, even if you fail on Tuesdays. If you can still make the Thursday/Saturday rides, maybe you just need to dial back the peak interval intensities on Tuesday. If you're also failing Thursdays &/or Saturdays, then your baseline FTP is probably too high. But I'd say it's too soon to be making alterations either way.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"