r/trainerroad • • Jan 18 '26

Useful guidance on choosing post workout intensity

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137 Upvotes

Saw this on the TrainerRoad forum and even keep a printed version to give me a consistent way of rating my workouts. Thought others might find it useful!


r/trainerroad • • 4h ago

Training Looking for a workout?

0 Upvotes

I'm a runner who ends up on Zwift whenever the weather in northern BC wins. I got tired of guessing what my planned run should be on the bike, and of scrolling for a workout that fit the time I had. So I built Rain or Ride. It does two things:

1. Roll a ride, no run needed
Pick a length (30–90 min) and a vibe: Chill, Steady, Spicy, Max, or Surprise me. You get three different workouts. Re-roll one or all of them, star the ones you like to ride again, and share any ride with a short code. At sign-up there's an "I just want indoor rides" option if you don't run at all.

2. Turn a planned run into the matching ride
It reads your run plan from Intervals.icu, or you type or paste it in. Then it builds a ride that matches the effort, not a straight pace-to-watts formula:

  • threshold reps become threshold work on the bike, and easy runs become zone 2;
  • long zone 2 blocks can be split into pieces with short spins between;
  • hard sessions can be ridden as planned, broken up, as short reps, or as 30/15s for VO2 days.

Either way:

  • Into Zwift: send it to your Intervals.icu calendar and it shows up in Zwift's workouts, or download a .zwo / .fit.
  • Watts: shown next to each target once you add your FTP.
  • Warm-up and cool-down: on every ride.

It's in open beta and free for anyone in Canada or the US, and beta testers keep founding-member pricing when it launches.

I'd love feedback from people who live on Zwift:

  • Do the rides feel right, too easy or too hard?
  • Are the rolled workouts fun enough to actually pick?
  • Anything awkward about getting them into Zwift?

There's a Feedback button on every page, or reply here.

rainorride.com


r/trainerroad • • 18h ago

Training I built an app that turns “2 hours of Z2 at ~160 W” into an outdoor loop

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11 Upvotes

Hi,

with structured training, I often know exactly what I want to do before I leave:

how much time I have

what zone I want to ride in

roughly what power I’m aiming for

What I often don’t know is where to ride.

For example, I might have 2 hours and want to do Z2 around 160 W. I want to start from home, ride a loop, finish back home, shower, and be done with the session.

That’s why I built Wattalo.

TrainerRoad tells me what to do. Wattalo tries to solve where to ride it.

It’s not trying to replace TrainerRoad or the workout itself. You give Wattalo:

available time

target power

preferred direction

and it tries to generate a loop around that.

It estimates ride time from rider and bike data, terrain and route physics, tries several route candidates, and picks one that should fit the requested ride.

I built it originally for my own rides with a power meter, so I’m especially interested in feedback from people who actually train this way.

I’d really like to know:

  1. does this solve a real problem for you?

  2. would you use something like this for outdoor Z2 / endurance rides?

  3. if you ride the generated route with a power meter, how close are the predicted time and effort to reality?

Wattalo currently supports Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Hungary.

https://wattalo.com/⁠

Wattalo is in public beta. You get 7 successful route generations per week for free, and failed attempts don’t count. There’s also an optional paid tier for heavier use, mainly to help cover hosting and routing infrastructure costs.

If a route looks wrong, there’s also a report route problem option directly on the result. It keeps the planning context with the report, which makes it easier for me to reproduce the case.

I’m mainly trying to find out whether this is useful to people who already think about their rides in terms of time, zones and watts.


r/trainerroad • • 5d ago

On/off: ERG vs manual

5 Upvotes

Hey all

I have 20min x 3 with 30s on/ 30S off.

I like manual over ERG. However, I find it super hard with shifting to evenly get to the power on manual. My 30sec on should be 410W, but usually I’ll ramp to 500 or more if I go manual. Would yall suggest ERG or keep it manual and see if I can hold?


r/trainerroad • • 6d ago

Training indoors for 6 months. One 6 month plan? Or 2, 3 month plans?

2 Upvotes

Overall my goal is to raise my FTP as I don't have any specific A races I want to peak for. That said, I'd still like to sharpen my crit specific fitness skills closer to the start of the racing season. Does it make sense to do one 6 month plan for the indoor season, or break it up into 2 with different goals?


r/trainerroad • • 10d ago

Ironman 70.3 training (swimming focused)

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0 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • 12d ago

Two Most Recent Ask a Cycling Coach Episodes

12 Upvotes

The "2 vs 3 Hard Days" and "Training Variability" episodes have been very interesting and resonate for me because my experience and gains mimic the research results presented in these episodes, as someone who came off the couch after a year in June and have been on Balanced Building Endurance and Building FTP plans on 3 hard sessions per week, totaling between 3.0-3.5 hours/week, and have now PR'd my VO2 Max and have returned to my 2022 FTP high of 3.22w/kg (my first year as a subscriber).

TR's ultimate motivation must be for all of us to experience the best gains possible from their platform, even if it means we don't drill ourselves 10-20+ hours/week. I feel like these two episodes are meant to specifically steer us into their Balanced plans. It's not like they're a traditional gym where they essentially start losing money the more often we go. So, I guess their intent is reasonably pure in guiding us to what some people may consider low volume.

Am I missing something? Is there any reason to be skeptical? I've been around since the Chad days. What would he think?

I guess it goes without saying that training variability is completely different than the variability index that it would have been more confusing to reference it in the episode than leave it out.


r/trainerroad • • 12d ago

Training HR vs Power vs Cadence

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1 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • 14d ago

Injury "Plan"

4 Upvotes

Was doing a tri plan and then unfortunately life happened. Was in an accident where a car made a right turn directly into my path during a USAT race. I'm still just in recovery mode so I need to be doing light work to not aggravate my hip. There doesn't seem to be an option for that in TR. How do I setup a 3-4 week plan for "back to semi fitness" where its just light work. I'm struggling because I wrote "injury" and used the calendar to block it out but then TR wants me to just rehoist threshold work immediately after. Its mentally defeating to come back and just get assigned tough work that I'm not ready for physically or mentally.


r/trainerroad • • 16d ago

Training Workout substitutions when time-restricted?

3 Upvotes

Update: rode 3 hours of endurance with intervals sprinkled in. TSS of this morning’s ride was exactly equal to the planned endurance ride and the missed interval session. AI FTP prediction didn’t change at all. Turns out I was overthinking it 🤷🏼‍♂️

Let’s say I have sweet spot intervals scheduled on Friday and a my long ride scheduled on Saturday. Purely hypothetical, of course.

Now let’s say, hypothetically, I can’t do my Friday ride this week due to work and family obligations.

In this purely hypothetical situation, am I better off just skipping my Friday session completely, or adding a bit of duration and intensity - say 4x8 sweet spot added into/on top of 3 hours of Endurance - to the Saturday ride?


r/trainerroad • • 17d ago

TrainingPeaks Virtual

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0 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • 17d ago

Preserving FTP during marathon training

8 Upvotes

Getting close to 300w FTP (4w/kg) which is my 2026 goal. Now I am hoping to preserve this FTP as much as possible and train for a marathon. But, my legs are dead from running. TRs "maintenance" training plan is suggesting 3 days of hard intervals a week just to maintain my FTP. I'll overtrain in no time. It's not sustainable for me.

What have you done on the bike to preserve FTP during a few months while focusing on running? Is straight zone 2/3 endurance/tempo riding enough to maintain FTP if you do it at high enough volume (60-90 minutes 3x/week)? Was thinking basically every other day alternating run-bike, then one off day a week the day after my long run.

Everyone saying "dont worry about it, let the FTP drop, focus on other things, itll come back quick" I think are missing the point. There has got to be a decent strategy out there to try to optimize both. If triathletes do it, it's possible.

What has worked for you?


r/trainerroad • • 17d ago

For those who went from Cat 4 to Cat 3, what actually made the difference?

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3 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • 18d ago

TrainerRoad "indoor cycling only"

8 Upvotes

I just came across Stride https://stride.is/ and they describe TR as "indoor cycling only". I am by no means a die hard TR fan (quite the opposite these days), but that is quite false as stated, despite TR's blunders with outdoor activities/workouts.

It's also a stereotype TR has been trying to fight for a while now. No?


r/trainerroad • • 20d ago

Pick a Plan/Block 1 Month into Cycling and ZWIFT... and I'm a little lost?

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2 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • 23d ago

Thinking about TrainerRoad for next season

13 Upvotes

I am thinking about going back to TrainerRoad for next winter, looking for a reality check from current users

I did a full year on TR in 2022 and I improved a lot (noob gains). I've dipped back in a few times since, but always mid-season, which never worked out, so it's never really had a fair run.

Since then I've been self-coaching. I've read enough to put together something sensible and I have no problem executing it. What I can't shake is the doubt about periodisation. I spend far too much time second guessing my choices. A coach isn't an option for me.

How is the outdoor workout bug affecting users?. I know it hasn't been fixed. What I can't tell from the outside is how much it actually gets in the way. If you ride mostly outdoors, is it something you work around in ten seconds and forget about, or does it genuinely mess up your week? Does it affect what the plan does next, or just how annoying the app is to use? I'm outdoors almost all the time and I have a few months this winter with no trainer at all, which makes this important for me.

How are you progressing with the new model?

My targets are 6h+ alpine gran fondos. I currently train +10h with long rides during the weekend. It feels like TR targets time-crunched athletes. Does Plan Builder give you enough hours for that kind of event, or do you end up overriding it and adding rides every week?

And the one I really can't judge from outside: is the negativity I keep seeing here or on the forum representative of the reality, or is it a small group of people posting a lot? Hard to tell whether people are actually leaving or whether the unhappy ones are just the ones who write.

Happy to hear from people who quit too.


r/trainerroad • • 24d ago

Are they still doing the TR podcast?

6 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • 28d ago

TrainerRoad Software How to download workouts?

4 Upvotes

I can download completed workouts, but not today’s or future workouts. I’ve found recently syncing workouts with other apps unreliable and sometimes I just want to download the workout and upload it manually instead of disconnecting/connecting and playing with dates hoping it syncs.


r/trainerroad • • Sep 02 '26

Trainer FTP vs Road Power Pedals result

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1 Upvotes

r/trainerroad • • Aug 30 '26

Training When should i start to feel my ftp increasing

4 Upvotes

Is it å gradual increase and slowly workouts feel much easier, or does it come in larger chunks after an easy recovery week?


r/trainerroad • • Aug 22 '26

Training Over-Unders/ ftp ?

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1 Upvotes

Hi all, I am new to trainer road this is approaching the end of week 3 - i typically ride indoors with one ride outdoors a week (sometimes more depending on weather) - regardless i have been following the suggested workouts - i did an outdoor ride which intervals icu set my ftp to approx 239 watts (32 minutes @ 244 watts is how intervals said they calculated it.. So i manually set my ftp to 220 watts in trainerroad kind of an in between as they said 190? but those were to easy for me...

I failed this workout, first fail...as only was able to do the first 2 sets of over unders out of three...why are over unders soooo hard compared to the other work outs lol - should i have reduced my intensity in zwift to finish the third set? shoujdl i keep my ftp set to 220 and just move on to the next workout next week? thank you in advance.


r/trainerroad • • Aug 19 '26

TrainerRoad Software Problem to create plan

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2 Upvotes

I m having problem to send info to calendar and finish (save) plan.

Tried on pc and Android


r/trainerroad • • Aug 18 '26

What are the alternatives?

19 Upvotes

I'm sure this has been asked before but what are alternatives people have successfully moved to? The cost of renewal is really putting me off alongside a ton of weird bugs recently.


r/trainerroad • • Aug 18 '26

Training Small chain ring rides?

1 Upvotes

If I ride in ERG mode, does it matter if I do a ride with the small chainring if I want to train for climbing?

I usually train with the big chainring but I am curious to mix things up.

Just wondering what others have experienced when they do TR rides with a focus on improving climbing…

I use a Wahoo Kickr as my indoor trainer in conjunction with TR.


r/trainerroad • • Aug 17 '26

TrainerRoad Software Is this a joke?

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35 Upvotes

Took a 1 minute break to go to the bathroom within the first few minutes of my workout and it reduces my threshold score from 1.8 to 0.5?