Newbie with adaptive training questions

[Mikewhe0421]

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!

[Ivegotabike]

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

[Mikewhe0421]

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.

[Ivegotabike]

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.

[Alex]

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.

[Alex]

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.

Cycling Calculators

[Mikewhe0421]

@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!

[dthrog00]

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:

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

Dave

[Ivegotabike]

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

[Alex]

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.

[dthrog00]

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

Example graphics: I skipped ahead to a steep part.

Dave

[Mikewhe0421]

Thank you everyone for the ideas! I appreciate how supportive this community is. I’m glad I chose this over trainer road!

[jmuzyka]

I’ll throw in my support of what’s already been said in regards to adaptive training for your needs. You don’t need it.

I was a collegiate cycling coach and sponsored rider. I have my fair share of 20 hour weeks in my past.

30 minutes of cycling training three times a week is less than the bare minimum you need to drive performance unless you’ve rarely ridden a bike. 30 minutes of cycling training three times a week is basicly a step above sitting on the couch.

100% before you look at anything “adaptive” try to increase your time to two 1hr sessions and one 1.5-2 hour session. Make the two 1hr sessions hard and the third session “easy.” Make sure there’s a day in between sessions that you’re not riding.

Here’s a simple plan:

3:1 cadence of weeks. Three weeks “on.” One week “off.” -

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - For your first cadence or two make this Sweet Spot. After that make this Threshold or V02 Max.
Wednesday - Strength Training
Thursday - Sweet Spot session
Friday - Rest or Active Recovery
Saturday - Z2 ride for 1.5-3hr. You should finish this ride feeling like you could ride a lot more. If you can’t do 1.5hr then just do 1hr easy. Whatever you can fit.
Sunday - Stength Training

At the end of your rides you should feel like you put in work but you shouldn’t feel like you murdered yourself. Like an RPE of 7 for the Tue/Thur rides and an RPE of 4/5 for the long ride.

Your strength training needs to be some sort of full body training. You don’t need to train like a power lifter. There are some good videos on Youtube with bodyweight training to help you become a more rounded human.

Pilates is really good for this and make sure you’re doing some sort of core and back work. My wife is a runner and was dealing with a lot of lower back pain on the bike. The problem was weak glutes and so she started doing pilates which helps a lot.

On your “off” week do the three rides but make them all z2 rides.

At the end of the second 3:1 cadence (week 7) do a ramp test or similar ftp test to reestablish your ftp on Sunday. Go into your second off week using the new ftp.

Rinse and repeat over the winter.

Hope this helps.

[dthrog00]

I agree that 3x 30 minutes in a week is not very much, but I’d hate to put someone off on their attempts to get some exercise in and give up in if they feel 3.5-4 hours at a bare minimum is not feasible for them.

Performance means different things too. Can you win the TT? Absolutely not. Can you finish it and feel proud of yourself for accomplishing something? Yes, I think so.

Dave

[Alex]

I am with you. I also believe and could likely prove at some level that 3x30 is light years away from being on the couch from a health perspective.

When you are a 15-20 hour a week it likely sounds small but if you have ever been on the couch for long you know that 3x30 is incredible.

I love goals. So my hat is off to anyone with only 30 minutes available to set a race goal. It puts a smile on my face.

[jmuzyka]

Agreed. If 30 minutes 3 times per week is the most he could feasibly put in of course it’s better than couch and perhaps my comment was out of turn.

I wouldn’t want to discourage him if 30 minutes is all he could commit to. But he did say he would be moving up to 1hr 3 days/week in a couple weeks. Something like the plan I proposed would work well for that commitment.

I have 5 kids now (not like in my past racing days) so I can’t do 20 hours a week any more. I can commit to three 1hr sessions per week and two strength days. I try to make those 1hr sessions 1.25-1.5 whenever I have a little extra time but often it’s just 1hr and I think for short events 3-4hr/week is enough for a lot of us to get out there and have fun!

[dthrog00]

I think your plan is great for what it’s worth. 2 quality days + an endurance ride + strength training is solid.

Like you, I just didn’t anyone to be discouraged. It’s hard to know what someone’s day to day life is like.

Dave