Why Plan Builder?
Cyclists rarely have a single event they are working towards, and the amount of time to their goal events vary widely from person to person. Training plans exist for just about every cycling discipline but only account for the ideal scenario in which a single goal event is targeted in the future. Until now, plans had to be pieced together for each event.
Plan Builder allows you to build out a custom plan leading up to your goal event(s). It takes into consideration the unique demands of your goal event, how much training stress you can tolerate, and what your schedule is like when building your plan. The resulting plan will automatically be applied to your calendar so you can start training!
How it Works
Launching Plan Builder will walk you through a series of questions needed to build your plan. These questions include how much time you’ve been training recently, what volume plan you’d like, and your experience level.
You’ll enter any goal events for the year, pick your training days, and check out your plan. Your custom plan is designed to make you as fit as possible for your goal event(s), and is easily added to your calendar so you can start training!
Note: You don't need to have a goal event or target discipline to use Plan Builder. We'll schedule you for a year of workouts based on the volume you choose.
Step 1: Training Load
Enter how many training hours per week you have averaged in the last 6 weeks. This will help us recommend what volume training plan to choose.
Step 2: Volume
Choose your training volume. We suggest sticking with the recommendation, or even going with something lower as you ramp up your training.
Step 3: Experience
Choose your training experience. This helps us determine what training blocks to add or remove so you can achieve peak fitness for your goal event(s).
Step 4: Start Date
Choose when you want to start training. If you’ve already started you can place your start date in the past and have Plan Builder take into account the weeks you’ve already trained.
Step 5: Events
Add your goal events. These can be cycling events, triathlons, or even stage races. We recommend adding at least 1 “A” priority event for your season. If you don’t have any events you are training for select “I’m Not Training For an Event”, and you can have a plan built to just make you faster in general.
Note: Unsure on how to prioritize your races? Check out this blog article to help out.
Step 6: Schedule
Choose the days you want to work out over the course of your plan. You can also choose to have your workouts inside or outside. For more advanced features and to customize each block of your training choose “Customize training days for each block”. This will allow you to change training days and/or training volume for individual training blocks in your plan.
Step 7: Plan Overview
This step shows a breakdown of your custom training plan. It shows everything from a description of why we did certain things with your plan, to the ability to look at all of the workouts you have scheduled through your goal event(s). Clicking “Start Training” will apply your custom plan to your calendar.
FAQs
What if I don’t have goal events?
No events, no problem! Plan Builder allows you to build out a plan to just make you as fit as possible leading up to the date of your choice even without a specific race.
We recommend picking a cycling discipline (E.g. Road Race, Criterium, Gran Fondo, etc.) so we can give you workouts that train the zones specific to that discipline. You don't need to pick a discipline though.
If you don’t pick an end date for your plan, we’ll build you a year-long plan.
What if I already have events on my calendar?
Plan Builder will detect events already on your calendar, and ask you to "Include" them once you reach the “Events” step of the process.
What if I need to add events later?
No problem! When new events are added after a custom plan has been added to the calendar, we’ll ask you if you would like those events to be accounted for in your plan and edit the plan to better fit that event.
Note: Events that are dated for after the end of a plan will not prompt the plan to re-calculate. We recommend deleting and re-adding your plan if you add an event after the end of your current plan.
What if I need to take time off?
We’re currently working on the ability to add in planned vacation or other time off. We don’t have an ETA for when this will be done yet.
What if I’ve already started training?
Go ahead and choose a start date when you actually started training, even though it's in the past. This will make the plan automatically start where you were in your training!
Why does my plan have me go Base/Build/Base/Build?
If you have extra time to train, consistently changing your training stimulus will allow your body to stay fresh. Switching between base and build allows your body to do this, and helps keep things fresh.