[Closed] Following a training plan but fitting in real rides. How?

Use intervals.icu. It will log all your rides from Strava and build up a picture of your work, fatigue etc. There should be an estimated tss against the rides in Zwift. Actual rides are harder to estimate. I use TrainerRoad rather than Zwift as the workout progression is much better. It also allows you to out all the planned rides in and estimate a tss for you so you can get an idea of your training load. I have a free month if you want to try it (you can use both side by side). TrainerRoad allows a lot more flexibility in the plans and to shift them day to day whereas if you kiss one in Zwift you can’t seem to do something different which I found frustrating.

Intervals.icu is free by the way and a very useful training tool.

But let’s say, that on a day, or during a week, when I’m supposed to be taking it easy, I go out and do an epic mountain bike ride because the weather is good, how should I adjust the training plan to compensate?

General speaking you'd likely be too fatigues to carry out the next days training - depending on what it was - so you're compromised for that day.  A good training plan is as much about appropriate rest as it is interval.

Drop that session and move on to the next one.

As with rob I use Trainerroad and intervals.icu with both connected to Strava. Power and HR for Trainerroad workouts, HR only for outside rides.

TR have their calendar and plan builder which allow you to be pretty flexible. I imagine Training Peaks do something similar but I've not used that.

Here's the TR blog - https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/ and their Youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUEgvvBLzofhVioM646L6Yg (in fact robbo1234biking is on one of their featured athletes podcast).

Thanks Robbo:will look at intervals.icu

Thanks Kyrton: I feel like I never factor enough rest in but when I compare my riding to my buddies, it doesn't seem to make much difference whether they ride a lot more than me or a lot less than me. So I'm at a loss to figure out whether I don't ride hard enough when I do ride, or whether I don't get quality rest..

Anyway, turbo trainer season approaches and I tend to get more focusses in winter!

Presumably a decent FTP build plan will still have some elements of endurance work in there? I'd be looking at swapping your days around in the plan to compensate. Swap out your endurance day with a different day's session.

This is always the issue with off-the-shelf plans really - they're not very flexible!

{Stealth advert}

Talk to a coach who'll do you a 'consultation' and build you a bespoke plan?

😉

I’m not targeting a particular result or event, so “real life” riding takes priority over religiously following a training plan.

You've answered your own question! (with some help from Kryton).

You just need to add a couple of days to your plan e.g planned session - real life ride - recovery day - maybe another recovery day - next planned session.

Your 'plan' will now be two or three days adrift so won't deliver the promised gains in the specified time, but who cares if you're just targeting general fitness. Plus of course the real life ride will have contributed to your gains, just less 'efficiently' than planned sessions.

A bit more info - I was in the midst of making tea before.

I do the Low Volume TrainerRoad plans, this is just three fairly intense workouts per week. I augment this with whatever weekend rides I fancy, usually a long Z2 solo ride one day and a similar ride with my wife the other. The three workouts are usually Monday, Tuesday & Thursday but depends on work, etc. If the weather is really pants at the weekend I'll do a longer, steady turbo ride. For one part of the process I moved to the Mid-Volume plan and it was just a bit too much for me and I began skipping workouts or failing to complete them - a fine line to tread.

It takes a while to see the various patterns in the progressions within the plans ( a full set of plans from beginning to end: base; build; speciality, takes 28 weeks which is quite a commitment), there's typically four different ones going on at once.

There's always some endurance aspect to any workout, obviously sprints don't do much. Sweet Spot work gives some benefit but TR themselves admit that it's potentially brittle in that it won't last long unless you also have a solid endurance base. Basically the longer you spend getting a fitness level the longer residual effects if you ignore it for a while.

Flexibility: the plans at first glance are one size fits all but there are plus and minus versions should you want more or less training stress. Using the calendar you can move/replace workouts and move whole weeks forward or back, insert extra recovery weeks, etc, it's really quite flexible but as with any tool it takes a bit of learning to get the most from it.

With all these tools you do need a reasonable amount of data to be able to see patterns: I failed on an event in August, it was only doing a similar lead in to an event six weeks later that I could see that I was extremely fatigued for the earlier one: things like struggling on short VO2max intervals and my HR being a full zone higher for the same effort. Without that historical (and at the time future) data I wouldn't have been able to see that. What neither TR nor Intervals.icu do particularly well is being able to compare the same workout across time, they are good at the overall picture but if you do workout 'X' today and want to see how you performed the last time you did it you have to open that workout's data in a new tab/window in your browser.

A good personal coach who monitors your efforts and offers constant feedback is obviously the gold standard but it costs a lot of money. Something like TR gets you most of the way for a lot less, you just have to put a bit of thought into it yourself.

Worth having a look at Xert. It takes into account everything you do and is as flexible as you want. You can also take workouts with you wherever you happen to be riding, including Zwift and the outside world

Thanks Whitestone... appreciate your input.

Another thing which confuses me is base and build.

I don't have an "off season" as such so I retain a reasonable level of fitness year round. Its very rare for me not to have at least 3 rides a week even in the shittiest weather. Those could be a mixture of two/three hours Z2/Z3 road rides, one/two hours mountain bike rides, an hour of easy road commutes or 30 minutes HIIT Zwift session or 45-60 minute Zwift races.

Do I still need to build base fitness? If not, would I be better choosing a training plan with no/little base build component?

Think of things as a house:

Base is your foundations, without them you can't build the walls and roof.

Build is the superstructure, you need this before ...

speciality - the fitting out and painting and decorating.

TR has two parts to their base phase. Generally you only do the first part once as it's a means of introducing you to the techniques of turbo riding. Base part 2 gets you up to speed and is very general, Build is the stepping stone to Speciality so is fairly general but has event/riding style specific workouts, Speciality is "sharpening the blade" to get you ready for your event.

Another building analogy: think of the phases as tiers (very topical) in a pyramid, if you over-do one of the upper tiers you need to go back and work on the lower tier or tiers to support that work.

whitestone has done a good description here.

I take a slightly different approach and use the mid volume plans at the moment but I will shift things around. The Thursday night Zwift TTT is like a threshold workout so I will substitute that in for the equivalent TR workout. The Sunday Hills zwift meet-up replaces the longer Sunday TR workout but if it isn't happening then I have a workout ready to go.

Sometimes a few of us will meet-up on Zwift and do individual workouts with the elastic band feature on so we stay together in Zwift and can chat etc so you maintain the social element.

I am not riding outside much at all at the moment it is either TR or Zwift as it fits in with the way life is at the moment.

Once you get used to the training plans you can still progress by adjusting them yourself but still doing other stuff. My FTP has increased 60+ watts this year following TR but supplementing with Zwift.