Using trainerroad during IM training

How well do you recover from the higher intensity workouts? Something I see is that while sweet spot tends to be lower intensity than the other two, the volume goes up considerably for it to be effective. The training load from those rides tends to be higher and not sure that would be so good if you're planning a long ride the next day.

What I've done in the past is M: 2 x 20, Tu: Sweet Spot or shorter Low Z4 intervals, Th: VO2 intervals or 1 x 20, Sat: long ride. I think I would have been ok if I'd moved the Tu & Th workouts to Wed & Fr, but I could recover well enough from the VO2 if I kept the overall workout short. I could run hard on Friday. Hence the question on your ability to recover from them. Not the same day, but by the next day.

Hey Japewang,

Most of the current plans at TR are day on/day off intervals during the week with 1-2 weekend intervals and/or long rides, so you could easily take one of the Build I plans, Int or Adv, and rearrange things a little bit.

Choose one based on your weekly hours, and gradually determine if the stress is something from which you can adequately recover each week since 3 days of intervals is rigorous to say the least. Some riders can tolerate this, others overreach too far when adding that 3rd workout - if this describes you, make the 3rd workout a recovery ride and sprinkle some short, random intervals into your long weekend ride. 

So you could use the Int Build I plan and simply do the intervals M/W/F instead of T/Th/S and then shift the long ride to Saturday. Similarly, for the Adv Build I just omit the Wednesday workout (or better yet, do a short recovery ride, you'll benefit vastly), shift the rest of the workouts to your selected days, and then make the Saturday workout a non-intervals day since you'll be coming off of a Friday workout and I don't think Sunday would be sufficient recovery coming off of back-to-back interval workouts (your following week/s would pay the price).

You're planning a lot of time on the bike in addition to your swimming & running workouts, and while I admire your ambition I just want to preach responsive training, i.e. go hard on the days you feel up to the task and back off a bit (or entirely) on the days you feel flat (terrible), and don't hesitate to alter your training plan if things aren't headed the direction you want.

Best of luck!

Since more and more BT members are using trainer road, any chance in the future there will be tri specific training plans. At the very least a HIM and IM. Alot of us like to be told exactly what to do. I tell everyone I know that cycles about trainer road.

Thanks for the feedback and the idea.  I'm actually doing the plan I stated right now, but my long rides are not long at all right now.  Doing Jorge's plan on MWF with a 2-2.5 hour ride on Sat.  So far so good in the recovery dept. 

Thanks a bundle for the advice Chad.  I actually was looking at doing exactly one of what you recommended with the build plans.  Will be mindful of watching the recovery.  I would echo the sentiments of others that some tri specific plans that are mindful of bike and run for HIM or IM would be a great value add to the TR product.  Keep up the good work and thanks for providing a great training tool.

Do know that this was still rather challenging. What I did to help balance things out was make sure to hit the 2 x 20 and the hard Thursday workout up where I was supposed to, as those are very targeted workouts towards specific intensity levels. I varied the intensity and volume of the other days, pushing what I could but still be able to make targets on the Mon & Thurs workouts. The Tues & Sat rides were more for generating lots of aerobic stress, so there is more freedom on what can be done there.

Good call.  Sounds like I'll need to use some trial and error to see how I recover from my intervals as my long rides/runs on the weekend get longer.  Then I can think of juggling the weekday workouts around.

Question...given this is an IM plan, how much value are those supra-threshold/VO2max/Z5 workouts? 

I could see doing them occasionally, but not as part of a regular weekly training schedule for an IM.  Sounds like a lot of recovery cost for limited (if any) benefit.

Mike,

Actually what I've read online in articles in research is quite the opposite.  That high intensity intervals during the week coupled with your long ride serves to raise FTP and allow you to hold a higher watt output in your endurance/tempo area where you need to race the bike leg in order to bike faster and have "fresh" legs for the run.

Table 2 over here might help to see benefits of various intensities. Try to look at it more as improving overall bike fitness, especially in an aerobic sense. Some aspects of performance are trained for more effectively by spending some time working at the harder effort levels. It's not so much going hard to get used to going at that level, but in promoting a response of some part of development. The chart shows that the lower zones (like 2) does push on some aspects, but only very little. With those aspects, it takes a LOT of training to promote a response there. Especially as one improves, the volume of training needed to keep on improving can become astronomical. By working at the higher intensity here and there, one can generate a much bigger response more quickly so those areas do not become limitations.

The chart does have a lot of things, probably more than most want (or need) to remember. It should be fine to simplify it down to threshold work, VO2 work, and lots of basic aerobic work. I do, and it's much easier to work with. Do know that the harder intensity work is still very much aerobic, so that's where the variability on the other workouts in an earlier response of mine came from.