Plan Builder is a tool that creates custom plans tailored to you and your goals. Building a custom plan with Plan Builder for your triathlon is easy– and once built, your plan will automatically be applied to your calendar so that you can begin training and your plan can start adapting to you.
Plan Builder Walk Through for Triathlon
Plan Builder takes you through a series of steps to build you a fully tailored custom training plan for you. In Plan Builder, you add a start date, set goals and events for your schedule, and customize your plan schedule. After Plan Builder builds your plan you’ll have the option to review it before adding your new plan to you Calendar. Customizing your triathlon plan is super easy, so let’s jump into it!
Step 1: Sync Your Training History
TrainerRoad can pull runs, swims, and cycling activities from your Strava or Garmin Connect acccount to TrainerRoad. To ensure all of your activities are in one place during training You can sync your activity history from Garmin Connect or Strava.
How to Sync All of Your Garmin Connect Activities
- Log into TrainerRoad to access your Account Profile.
- Select “Activity Sync” from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
- Click the option to “Connect with Garmin.”
- Authorize TrainerRoad to access your Garmin Connect account by selecting “Agree & Connect.”
- In Garmin Connect, authorize TrainerRoad to access your Garmin Connect account and data.
If you would like a more detailed walkthrough, check out this article: Garmin Connect
How to Sync All of Your Strava Activities
- Log into TrainerRoad to access your Account Profile.
- Select "Activity Sync" from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
- Under Strava, click "Connect."
- Read through how the TrainerRoad-Strava integration works and click "Agree & Connect."
- Enter your Strava login credentials.
- Authorize TR to connect with your Strava account.
If you would like a more detailed walkthrough, check out this article: Strava
Step 2: Choose your Goal and Start Date
First you will need to let Plan Builder know if you are training to prepare for a specific event or if you would like a training plan to train for a general fitness goal.
Once you have done this you will be prompted to choose the start date of your plan. You can start a plan at any time in the future, as long as plans do not have overlapping start/end dates with other plans.
Step 3: Add Events or Goals
Once you have chosen your start date you'll be adding your events or choosing your main goal and discipline! Select the options below for more information on adding events or choosing a goal and discipline.
To Prepare for an Event
This is where you will add your goal events! These can be added at these three different priority levels:
- A Events are your most important events of the season. Your training plan is designed to have you at your best for these events. As such, you can only have a few A events in a year. These events have a full taper before the event and recovery week after. A events should be ideally 12 weeks apart in order to be in peak form for both.
- B Events can be seasonal objectives in their own right. They allow you to try different race prep and strategies to see what works for you and your body. B events receive a taper in the week of the event.
- C Events are great practice and experience, but the outcome of these races should carry little value. C events will not change your plan. You can treat them like a hard workout.
If you are unsure what races you are doing or what your final schedule is this upcoming season, no worries. You can always add events to your Calendar after your plan has been built and your plan will automatically adapt around the new additions.
With that said we do recommend adding at least 1 “A” priority event to your plan, when you build your initial training plan! Unsure of how to prioritize your races? Check out this blog article for more information.
General Fitness Goals
If you've chosen General Fitness Goals first you will be prompted to choose the length of your plan. You can choose between a 1 month, 2 month, and 3 month plan or opt for another duration!
Once you have done this you will prompted to choose your plans main focus by selecting your primary training discipline and your training plans primary goal:
Step 4: Plan Volume
Next you will choose your training plan volume! There are three options; Low Volume, Mid Volume, and High Volume. We recommend choosing the plan volume that you know you can consistently maintain.
Step 5: Schedule
Here in the schedule step, you will have the opportunity to customize your schedule! You can customize your training schedule in these five ways:
1. Dragging and dropping workouts:
You can drag and drop workouts in the weekly schedule to the days of the week that you would prefer to complete them!
2. Changing the duration:
You can change the duration of your planned cycling workouts using the time drop down for each workout
3. Changing the workout type:
You can change your indoor structured workouts to TrainerRoad Outside Workouts, Group Rides or Solo Rides from the drop-down menu
4. Make it a Masters Plan
You can make your plan a masters plan by toggling the switch to green in the Masters Plan. Masters plans are for any athlete who might a bit of extra recovery in their training plan!
If you like to tinker you can also reduce the duration of workouts, or change how many intense days you have per week to get your
Step 6: Name your plan and Review!
You will see a breakdown of your custom training plan with details of your schedule and an overview of your plan phases and when they start, before you add the plan to your Calendar
Your plan will be composed of these three different phases:
- Base Training Phase is where it all begins. It's the foundation of cycling and triathlon success, developing resilient aerobic fitness and laying the groundwork for higher-intensity, discipline-specific training later on. The Importance of base training can't be overstated.
- Build Training Phase builds discipline-specific fitness on your aerobic foundation, pushing you out of your comfort zone to Increase your sustainable workload and make you faster.
- Specialty Training Phase Focuses your training on the specific demands of your goals and/or events. This is a demanding discipline-specific final block of training.