starting over with trainerroad

This is my understanding of the process,

Base is used to maintain fitness and teach the body to hold a lower intensity pace for a longer time. This pace should increase from year to year, for example my current FTP is 241, and the recent base WO has been ranging in intervals around 5-7 minutes long at 215-220 watts. Then the longer workouts (3 hours) was down around 170 watts. Last year these numbers would have been lower, FTP around 225 and the interval targets would been lower compared to that.

Build Phase is used to increase FTP, so a lot of short intervals at high wattage, for me right now that would be 270+ for less than a minute.

Race specific phase is as it sounds. Concentrate on your target race pace to get used to that output, probably somewhere between your base and build targets.

again this is my understanding of how it should work and I could be off, but as each year goes by the effort goes up in each specific phase and you become a stronger cyclist.

Great question, I just started over with Trainer Road last week. I really slacked up over the summer and just worked overtime and ran. I started on the base and did the 8 minute test. My FTP actually dropped 9 watts. I figure I have all winter and I will just go with it and see where I am in a few months.

Which base sessions are you doing? It would be good to see how we both improved in a few months or so.
Joe

I went on the High Volume Sweet spot base plan which puts me on the bike 5 times per week for a total of 8+hrs per week. The intensity is low but I guess its supposed to build endurance, all I know so far is that 3:15 on the trainer is a lot

Wow, I logged on tonight to pose just this question. I used TR last winter, but then completely fell off the wagon over the summer (busy at work, bought a house, etc). Figuring my FTP has dropped with 8 months of inactivity, I tried to do an 8 minute test and crashed out halfway through. Wasn't expecting that much of a fitness drop!

I'm thinking of doing the low volume sweet spot base once I can get a half decent FTP test done.

The sweet spot base is a good plan, I am following the mid-volume version so about 5-6 hours per week. Should be enough to bridge the gap to the true off season plan that is going to be a hole digger! And I agree 3+ hours on the trainer is rough, the wife walked in over the weekend asking if I was ever going to be done....still had another hour to go!

In some ways, yes you will have lost some fitness, in other ways no. Your ability to sustain high intensity will have dropped, but your overall aerobic fitness should carry through to the next season. It is always good to take a little time off between seasons and then start back over at the Base phase. That is the foundation to everything else you do in the sport, so you want to rebuild that base. As another person posted, your FTP will be a little higher than this time last year, so the workouts will be at a comparatively higher wattage. What you are doing is building an even wider/ stronger base so that as you progress through the stages of training you can come to an even higher peak than last year.

Interesting that TR just posted an article about this on their blog. Seems like this question is on a lot of people's minds right now.

http://blog.trainerroad.com/can-i-skip-base-training/

One of the biggest misconceptions amongst endurance athletes is that you always have to be "going hard" in order to be getting faster. In the short term, this is true, but in long term (like over the course of an entire racing year) this is a sure way to actually get slower and burnt out. The body can only handle about 2 months straight of high intensity training before a plateau is reached, and rather than reacting to the stress of training by getting stronger, you actually start getting weaker.

This is where base training comes in. Especially during this time of year, it's great to take some time off, and then get back to base training. Base training prepares the body for the long season ahead and allows you to get the most out of the big efforts down the road and help avoid plateaus. Say you took 3 metaphoric steps forward in your fitness from 2015. Sure, taking some time off now and then getting back into base training could be interpreted as 1 step backwards in fitness (simply because that top end won't be as strong as it was during your high intensity work), but you're still 2 steps ahead. And now, that one step back will allow you to take another 3 steps forward in 2016, whereas without it you would have been stuck and slowly fading backwards from your 3 steps in 2015.

The article posted above is great, but I also like Coach Chad's post on training between 'peaks', which explains better what I was trying to get across above. Check that out here: 4 Ways to Train Between Cycling Peaks

Wow great explanation! That really helps! Trainerroad is so hard physically and mentally that I could see how you could only handle a couple months of really high intensity work. Thanks for your input!