How far in advance do you plan your exercise / training?

Or your thresholds haven’t adjusted to the current level of fitness.

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High level plan for the season figured out in Q4, and tweak as races get signed up or things change

Detailed plans every six-eight weeks

Swap things about weekly as work/family/fatigue dictates

Got my plan built all the way through to Kona Oct 21. It’s subject to review/change based on a few things.

Based mainly on TrainerRoad bike, but I write out all the TR sessions into weekly plans and can then adjust for events, personal stuff etc.

Couple of days of lockdown used up so all good :smiley:

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Don’t know if still does it, but think @Matthew_Spooner used to like a strategy of not updating his threshold values in-season as he liked to use TSS as a comparison. Eg see doing more work in June relative to January, rather than an actual physiological training load which would be likely more stable.

Not as extreme as Poet, but like to plan similar to few others. Counting back from an Ironman would like to have planned recovery weeks, and progression of a couple key sessions like the long ride/run.
At that macro level most days would be detail of ‘FTP intervals bike’ or sweet spot session or Z2 run etc for each day.
Might fill in the details of how long or hard they’d be a few weeks before or just the Sunday night in advance to get an idea of total weekly volume and where sessions fit in.

If you looked back at the 20 weeks at the end you’d see very little strict pattern in terms of every Monday being rest, every Tuesday being am swim, pm turbo etc etc. Starts that way at the macro level but end up reorganising every week to fit sessions in with work/life.

:+1:

I have an eight year plan, but its just races;
8 yr plan

1 Lanza - May, Switzerland- Jul (2019 done)
2 Barcelona - Oct (2020)
3 Roth - Jul
4 Frankfurt - Jul
5 France - Jun/Aug
6 Copenhagen - Aug.
7 Wales - Sep
8 Austria - Jul—Italy - Sep

I suppose I could structure that to reach Kona…hmm:

2020 <14 (M45-50)
2021 <13
2022 <12
2023 <11
2024 <10
2025 Kona (M50-54) :tada:

Bonza.

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“it depends”

Boo hiss

Hey! Cheat, you didn’t mention me :adult:t3:‍:probing_cane: :wink:

I tend not to move sessions around, if I miss one, it’s gone.
That’s it. No catch ups.
Just try to miss the “filler” sessions and not the “proper” ones :rofl::see_no_evil:

So say you have a planned swim Tuesday morning, bike tuesday night, run Wednesday night. And the week before hand you know you’re going to need to be in work earlier the Tuesday morning, you wouldn’t just move the swim to Wednesday? :thinking:

So ‘a few minutes in advance’ to ‘8 years’… that’s a bigger spread than I imagined even for Tri Talk :grinning:

Under normal circumstances I run for an hour on a Tuesday evening and swim for an hour on a Thursday evening with clubs. Wednesday is my day off so I’ll get a run or ride in. At the weekend I’ll throw in a 90 minute run on Saturday or Sunday. That’s a basic skeleton of about 5 hours of training most weeks.

Monday is often a no train day. Can usually squeeze a short run out on Friday and another swim on Saturday for another hour or so. So that’s my basic 6 hour, run-heavy (or technicaly swim-bike light) week. Recently chucking in a bit of Zwift too, great for a random 30 or 40 minutes of leg spin here and there.

But this is mainly for bants, enjoyment and fitness. A friend who is much fitter runs for 1 hour every single morning at 6am, except at the weekend when he goes long. Think that’s how I’d do it if I really wanted to have a fast season, and wasn’t a lazy sod.

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Not a chance.

On both counts.

I’d never need to be in work earlier.
And I wouldn’t move the swim.

All thresholds up to date on Training Peaks… well saying that my FTP is set to 335 as 350 that I got on Zwift is just not representative of my real outdoor FTP.

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I have a weekly template for the winter months which is simple if repetitive

Each day has the same combination of sports/gym work. With 2 workouts a day most days

3 weeks on, 1 week recovery

Once the clocks go forward and I venture outside on the bike, then mostly just the weekends change to include longer rides outside, sometimes with a group ride

I am such a creature of habit, but it allows me to fit training around work and my costuming exploits

Also I’m a sad loner

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Aren’t we all…?!

I’m getting worse as i get older.

Like your plan mines similar including the double sessions.

Rest week every four is on the money too!

If only I had your heart !

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When I was super motivated to train (5-8 years ago) it was pretty much a case of slowly building up mileage and swim distance - I knew I wanted about four 100-milers in the bank before an Ironman and I built up week by week to get there. Same with running. I never followed a schedule and the only structure that really sat in my diary was a parkrun - which was either at the end of a long run, or as a fun blast around the park.

I think I was just fortunate to be able to push myself when I wanted to, and was able to push myself pretty hard at times in training - but I never planned more than about 2 or 3 days in advance - and it was purely based on the weather forecast.

I worked from home and was flexible with my hours so could do a long ride on a weekday for example so was very flexible. Pretty much 99% of my training was done on my own.

Having no real structure worked fine for me. But everyone is different and some love to follow and be accountable to a schedule set weeks/months in advance.

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Some really interesting replies on this and it is clearly a very individual process.

I now write my own plans based on TSS 1 week in advance. I was doing a month in advance but because of the low level of fitness I was at I was looking too far ahead to focus on what was important NOW.

I am learning a lot about my body and now I can handle a 500-580TSS week without a lot of running but when I get over that my consistency starts to struggle. This probably means I’ll never hit the heights of 100CTL and stay there but I think I can manage the balance of family/training/work happily now.

My CTL was 12 in April :open_mouth: and is 62 today, pretty much without running and zero swimming as the weight comes off. Now I’ve lost 10kg the running is starting to come back so I need to balance that. I think I’ll still stick to planning 1-2 weeks in advance though as it is keeping me consistent.

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I seemed to have plateaued with my CTL having progressed steadily over lockdown - the most consistent 3 month training block I have ever done - mostly running with occasional bit of cycling/yoga/strength

Now sticking in the 70’s for weeks

Guess I will have to up the volume and/or intensity to progress further

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you will either need consistent weeks of around 600TSS for a few weeks or some bigger weeks with rest weeks planned.
This is the point that I get tired a lot so sleep and nutrition are key.

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So fingers crossed Helvellyn is on and no cancellations.

Wrote myself a 5 week training plan.

Built it with one OW swim per week - 4 bike sessions - 4 run sessions.

Only around 10 hours per week with one rest day each week trying to incorporate hills into my running and outdoor rides.

Only things in the social diary to juggle are a weekend at the in-laws and then a long weekend in Edinburgh. The in-laws is a great excuse to get 160kms+ in which will be split over the weekend with a long trial run on the local ranges. Edinburgh trip will be trickier so I’ll just stick to running and not be an anti-social bastard and disappear on my bike. Hopefully get an OW swim in at a beach (Portobello?) it’s the weekend before the race so wouldn’t want to go too mad anyway.

I’ll try and stick to it but if a quick club ride comes up and I can work it in I will deviate!

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