Hi there, I signed up to TrainerDay at the beginning of this year. I am just coming to the end of a 12 week block of training. A few questions / advice is needed:
Strava history - I do not share HR data with strava, based on this I am wondering when you pull in my history from Strava you are not getting the TSS data so you don’t have the full insights? I am asking this as I feel the intensity of the block I have done has been too low?
Fitness / durability - Whilst I have enjoyed the workouts and the block of workouts I feel I have lost fitness. I live at the top of a steep hill, on the Sunday club rides I am finding I struggling at the end to get up the hill which I have not before. Could you advise which training plan type (e.g. crunched power, the serious italian, etc.) I should be using, or should I increase the intensity?
Gravel riding - Similar to the above, this year I plan to attend gravel events where there are timed stages - any advice on which type of training plan I should follow?
Sorry to ask some of these question, I do like TrainerDay and I just need some help and input so that I find it works and rewards me.
About me, midpack type rider, sadly a bit on the older side (50), loves cyclocross and wants to improve fitness, strength and the ability to power and recover (hence the reference to durability).
Where did the FTP number that you have in TrainerDay come from?
If you haven’t done one already, consider doing the TrainerDay ramp test to set your FTP
If that number turns out to be higher than the FTP you were working on previously, it will go some way to explaining why you think the workout intensity was too low.
Was this first training block that you completed a base block? Generally base is lower intensity work. If your next block is a build block, it should feature some higher intensity workouts too.
Is this your first experience of structured training? Or have you done something along these lines before coming to TrainerDay?
Your questions are excellent. Also complicated to answer. One of the most critical elements is if you’re keeping consistent and you’re doing low intensity, let’s just say zone two, you feel like you’re losing fitness. And from an FTP test perspective, you are losing fitness. But what you’re really doing is you’re setting yourself up for future gains. So if your goal events are more than a couple months away, the current focus is just to set you up for your next period or phase or block. So today’s focus is not to make you as strong as possible for today. Today’s focus is to prepare you for tomorrow.
Many people such as yourself, or even most, feel that there’s an optimal intensity for improving their performance. And that optimal intensity is based on what they think it should feel like. So trying to estimate what a workout should feel like to a user is not always so easy and frequently harder than probably what they should do, unless you’re getting closer to a peak period. So you should start out fairly easy and build towards very hard. That period of ramping should occur over something like six months with the last couple months or last month especially being very hard.
So we’re working on trying to optimize intensity better. One, for matching how a person wants their workouts to feel, but also more dialed in for how hard they should be. So that said Coach Jack requires human intervention. So depending on when your first A race is, you might have to dial up the intensity, especially if you’re starting a plan now and let’s say it’s in three months. We have an intensity slider there. You could dial it up so that it starts out moderately hard and by the end it will be hard.
If you want to give more specifics of dates and what your first event looks like or your primary event, we could give a more accurate assessment. So the most critical thing for event focus is making sure that those last two months are very event-specific types of training. So if your gravel races are long days, a weekly long ride is the most important thing you’re going to do.
I would suggest for most people right now doing a serious Italian and probably starting at level five, intensity level five, and doing that for a couple months and then switching to a peak period plan, something like dynamic force, and doing that for a couple months and starting that out also at level five to level seven.
Serious Italian and dynamic force give the variety that most people need to make gains. Especially in gravel where I’m assuming you’re getting some steep, short hill climbs and need some power, short-term power. But mostly it’s that long-term sustainability.