Newbie with adaptive training questions

Training and Performance Fundamentals
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I am new to training(not new to cycling) and I have some questions. I am training for the Go Pro games hill climb in Vail CO. the race is a 9.7 mi, 1650ft uphill TT. It has always been my dream to compete in this race, and I have made it my goal for June of 2027.

I have read that adaptive training is extremely important to make sure that you are still making progress, so you don’t miss out on any potential gains.

Question 1. I set up a coach Jack training plan with my event next year. I’m hopeful that my FTP will get better as i use this training. Does Trainer day adapt, or take this into consideration as i train longer? Do I need to do Ramp tests every month and change as necessary?

Question 2. I use my Garmin watch to tell me my “Training Readiness” it keeps an eye on Sleep metrics, Recovery time since last workout, HRV balance, Training Load, and recent stress. What is the best way to adapt my training if it tells me to take it easy on a training day?

Question 3. I was trying to use Chat GPT as a coach before this, and decided that i needed more of an educated program. It had me at the begging of my build phase and coach jack has me starting on my base phase. Should i use this time to continue to build a base, or switch to the AI model and have it start at a build phase?

Thank you in advance and my apologies if these have been answered in another chat!

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Give us an idea about how often you plan to train and how many hours per week that works out as please.

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My summers are pretty busy so i am currently only able to do 30 min/day 3 days/week, but starting in October i am moving up to 45min-1hour 3 days/week.

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OK. Forget about adaptive training, it doesn’t matter at this stage of your training and forget looking at the training readiness on the watch for now too. You are ready enough to manage 30 mins x3 per week, whatever the watch says.

Here is the key takeaway at this stage: Get on the bike 3x per week, every week and pedal reasonably hard for those 30 - 60 minutes. Sometimes pedal really hard for a short time too.

Whatever plan you get from AI, or a coach, or an anonymous poster of a forum, that is the shortest summary of what you need to do.

For now, it is all about the base.

Coach Jack is a good choice: start with base for a few weeks, then go onto base plus.

If you want to recalibrate with an FTP test each month, add that in as an extra to your 3 workouts.

As a newbie to structured training, you will get pretty decent gains in that time.

A specific build phase comes later - just like building a house, the groundworks and foundations need to be done first.

FWIW, if it was me, I would start with a 12 week sweetspot base phase and, if it was my plan, it would look very boring:

90% FTP intervals to fill the available time (with a bit either side for warm up / cool down), growing the intervals in duration out towards, say, 30 minutes.

Every third workout would have three 20 second all out sprints in it, somewhere near the middle of the workout with, say, 3 minutes recovery between each one.

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So if you have been consistently riding or returning to riding right now with a june goal a base period is a good idea. If that drives you crazy you could modify the plan to be more fun for you. I agree 100% with what @Ivegotabike said.

30 x 3 that is seriously the minimum to be “competitive.” I would do everything you can to build to 6-10 hours a week by late may for most people the more the better up to the 10-15 hour mark depending on your recovery skills. This will by far make the biggest difference then specific workouts. Also slowly build intensity to June, going very hard and very specific April/May. Don’t start hard now or you could burn out by then.

Adaptive is mostly over rated unless you know exactly what you are looking for. Usually it is just marketing.

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One other question is do you have outdoor power meter? One thing is in TT is optimum pacing. Best bike split is the expensive complex option but you can upload your route here and do some estimates on how much power you should aim for. I could actually build a simplified TT pacing calc that is more direct but you might get what you need here.

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@Alex @Ivegotabike Thank you both! It’s so hard not to over think these things with all of the information that we have available to us. I’ll let Coach Jack do his job lol.

That calculator is super cool, I will definitely play around with that today!

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The advice you’ve received is good in my opinion.

If you’re using a smart trainer what about periodically doing virtual climbs alongside your training that would be similar to your event?

If I’ve reviewed it correctly 1,650 feet over 9.7 miles is 3.2% grade.

TrainerDay has a slope feature and you could set it to 3.2%.

Zwift also has many climbs. The Volcano climb is 422 feet over 2.4 miles and has the same 3.2% grade. If you climbed the Volcano 4 times it would be equivalent to your event. Note that Zwift by default sets “Trainer Difficulty” to 50%, I think if you did this you’d want it to be 100% for your purposes.

Beginner version - one ascent up the Volcano climb
Intermediate - two ascents
Advanced - three ascents
Ready for your event - four ascents

Loopin’ Lava would be the most direct way to get there:

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Or… if you have some great outdoor climbs around you then maybe do periodic hill repeats on those?

Dave

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I wonder if the actual route is on fulgaz or rouvy?

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I think biketerra is better for just importing a route and riding it. We should build a feature like best bike split has that allows convert TT route to ERG file. You could even break it into pieces. Generally if you are doing something where you will be riding above FTP managing w’bal is critical to max performance, especially important where you have to manage times between > 35kph sections and hills. You want to pedal harder on the climbs where watts to speed is linear, unlike aerodynamics where watts to speed is exponential (the wrong way). So your energy is best used on the hills. Races with drafting changes the rules… more complex.

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Biketerra is pretty awesome. I don’t currently have a subscription as I’m more/less using Zwift for everything apart from work creation/plans that I use TD for, but you can do a lot with it.

Ride creation: Ride The Ups and Downs is an event here in Illinois, USA. I’m too much of a chicken to ride the course in person, but it looks awesome if you have the talent to deal with the hills. I created a virtual route for fun with a GPX they supplied, but haven’t ridden that either :frowning:

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Example graphics: I skipped ahead to a steep part.

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Dave