Transitioning to TrainerRoad

 

TrainerRoad Calendar Interface showing the start of my plan

With 6 of 8 weeks of the ChatGPT training plan (which I'd named Lateralus) complete, I once again found myself caught between a few truths.

1. I am goal oriented; I keep my best accountability with a structured plan.
2. However, I do need some flexibility.  The available free plans in Zwift aren't tailorable to my limited time budget.  Nor do they have much flexibility when hard constraints pop up like a work trip or a vacation.
3. I can ignore the Zwift plans and build my own, but I often end up winging it from the login screen. While my intent is to consume Zwift events or make use of extra time, this feels sorta random, and triggers a feedback loop of doubt that can be an off ramp from the plan (if not the platform).

Expanding on these a bit, #3 first. The past few weeks of Lateralus I've been like "Oh, this event is up, I'll just do that."  But was that the optimal thing to do that day? Am I progressing?  I also don't have a great way to add micro adjustments to progressive load the way that even simple structured plan like Build Me Up does, so it's hard for me to gauge whether I'm adding too much and usually err on the side of adding too little.

Re: #2 - the lack of "give" in the Zwift plans has been a killer in the past.  A couple of bad weeks and I'm off the plan with no good way to get caught up and end up canceling the plan. There are also fun events in Zwift with swag and badges and the gamification of Zwift is also a strong pull - while on a plan I feel like I'm missing out.

What I need is a coach to offload these decisions to, get some advice, and continue to provide structure within the looser framework that I need. TrainerRoad's Zwift integration caught my attention when it came out, but I avoided it because of a) cost, and b) wasn't sure that my neck would play well with the bike.  I committed to doing Lateralus first before adding paid plans/platforms - but alas I caved last night and signed up 2 weeks early.

So far, I'm impressed. In the setup, TR pulled the 350 or so events from my Strava history for reference. It calculated an AI-based ftp of 164 (which seems about right) and then offered to build a plan of my choosing (overall duration, end goals, and available time).  Now, the power of the platform is the ability to adjust. On the fly. Skip a workout, add a workout, change a workout, the rest of the plan reshuffles to adapt to what you chose to do.

This morning I did a 90 minute workout tempo workout to try some of the features.  So far so good. The actual 12 week FTP-gain plan begins Tuesday.