TrainerDay got me through!

Training and Performance Fundamentals
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Hi Alex - I wanted to throw out a big and public THANK YOU to you and the team at TrainerDay.

When I started training in March for an 84-mile ride in August, I had not really exercised much in… well, in years. While I have been a regular hiker/backpacker and cross-country skier, and was not in TERRIBLE shape, I was definitely not in cycling shape, and was possibly at a nadir for me in terms of cardiovascular fitness.

I tried making my own plan, but was clueless. I tried TrainerRoad, but couldn’t make it work with my bike setup (Echelon EX-5 with QZ-qdomyos-zwift running on my phone as a bridge to the bike). TrainerDay to the rescue. Not only did it work with my technical setup, it synced to Strava without a hitch (so my outdoor and indoor rides could all be in one place), and I was able to customize a Coach Jack plan to my parameters (mostly - toward the end it had me doing 3x 2-hour weekday rides on the Echelon, and I just didn’t have time for those long sessions, so never managed more than 90 minutes or so).

Throughout the plan, I could feel the impact from week to week as I got stronger. Finally, on August 2, I completed an 84-mile event (not a race; just a ride), and I did it faster, stronger, and more confidently than I imagined was possible. Essentially, TrainerDay and the Coach Jack plan, combined with a goal, took me from sedentary to riding scores of miles with ease. I have even felt the impact during hiking/backpacking season. I’ve been less sore and tired in the days after my hikes than I would otherwise have expected. For me, an average human being, TrainerDay has been absolutely fantastic, and was critical to my success.

While I still have a few small issues to iron out that seem related mostly to how QZ and the bike talk to each other and how best to use cadence / resistance / power targets, I’m pretty sure that’s just me not understanding the tools and how cycling training should work.

I am excited to continue using the system, and Coach Jack plans, to get ready for whatever is next. My first goal is to maintain the gains, and come up with an “off-season” training plan to get me in better cycling-specific shape (I’m thinking of a particular very hilly ride in February) and prepare me for cross-country ski season.

  • Marc
2 Likes
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Marc,

Congrats on your achievement! What plan did you use and how many hours per week did you end up at?

Dave

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Wow!!! Congratulations Marc, I love these stories. Makes my day.

I have an idea… If you would be willing to work with me, we are getting to the point that we are ready to add more direct integrations, meaning I could add your bike so you don’t need QZ and should be an overall smoother experience. Let me know. Hopefully it should not take too much of your time to get it working. My guess is it would not be more than 1 hour total. Your bike is by far the most popular that I hear of so it’s a good first add and can value other people.

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That’s excellent Marc! Congratulations. I also would love to know the details of the plan you used to achieve your 84 mile ride. I am working on the same type of thing, so I would really appreciate it…

Gerry

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Hi @dthrog00 and @Gerrymc my plan was a customized Coach Jack plan starting from the Big Days template, since my goal ride was a long single ride. I was riding 3 days a week for 17 weeks. It started out with a 12-week “build” phase with a variety of rides based primarily around building endurance, with some anaerobic HIIT workouts and a few tempo workouts (but those were the outdoor rides, and I didn’t have my old cadence meter installed when I first started, so I was really just … riding, focusing on increasing distance and time a little each week). Weeks 6 and 9 were “recovery” weeks. The indoor rides gradually got longer and the power outputs higher. Weeks 13-16 were “peak” weeks that, looking back, were all about cadence rides on Tuesdays and sweet spot blocks on Wednesdays (both of which I loved). These weeks were where I really had trouble putting the time in, because the indoor rides were all 2.5 to 3 hours, which I just couldn’t make time for. Instead, I increased the power targets and rode harder for shorter periods (at most I got to 2 hours a couple times; who has this kind of time during the week??? I think it was a failure of my planning imagination, and I could have ridden four days a week instead of the three I assumed).

I liked the ability to add planned days off around family travel and other non-cycling weekends. I did a couple of FTP tests to try to gauge my fitness, and I think I initially over-estimated, and then under-estimated, where I was, but the whole thing was based on an FTP of 160, which in the end was probably conservative since I was able to increase the power targets for each workout by 10%.

I’m not sure how to share the plan… or whether it would be useful for anyone else. Looking back, it seems pretty intense in terms of time commitment, and I know for sure I did not put in the weekday hours the plan suggested. On the other hand, I did manage to complete the ride (note: a lot of it was downhill!).

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Hi Alex - yes! That sounds like fun. I didn’t want to mess with my setup during the training, since consistency of data was more important than accuracy (I have no clue whether the readings provided by the bike/QZ were “true,” but they were consistent) and a working-well-enough setup was critical. Now that I’m done with the big event, I’d be happy to be a guinea pig. I’ve never done physical software testing before!

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Super cool let me get a bit farther and I will ping you. Accuracy is irrelevant unless you have a power meter outdoor and trying to compare or do estimates, or brag to your bros. Consistency is all that matters. I am not sure how soon but I won’t forget.

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Sounds great! And completely agree – what mattered most to me was consistent readings across the indoor workouts. Since I don’t have a power meter on my bike (and am unlikely to shell out for one), I mostly ignored Strava’s wildly variable estimates.

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Marc,

Thank you so much for sharing all this detail. It’s really invaluable. There is nothing like real experience. I am doing “the serious italian” at the moment to boost my general fitness. But, next i want to increase my endurance. In my part of the world, winter is not conducive to long outdoor rides, and I’m not sure I could spend 2 hours on an indoor trainer. So I will take your experience and see if I can shape it into something that works for me…

Thanks again

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