Similar to the current “Extend Warmup” and “Extend Cooldown”, it would be great if there was an “Extend Recovery”. That is, if I’m doing 4x6 minute intervals at 105% of FTP with 4 minutes recovery between intervals, and I need more time between say the 3 & 4 interval to recover, I could hit “Extend Recovery” and I would get 30 seconds or a minute longer recovery.
This would help where I need a little more recovery between intervals for a specific workout, and still allow people to use ERG mode and do the full intervals / follow the workout.
Funny… I just completed Spanish Needle this morning and thought it would be handy to extend my recovery. Sure, I got off, stretched, filled drink bottle etc which helped but there were times where I just needed a little more time.
In the past I have put workouts in the workout creator and extended the recovery phase. But to have a way to just extend the recovery on the fly is a great idea!
I would like to see this feature as well. I use the pause now, but it would be better to track the extended recovery in the app rather than having to watch a clock separately.
Yes, I could get off the bike / stop pedaling and take some time, but that at least for me is not as good as pedaling easy at recovering. Plus if TrainerRoad can figure out a way to identify “failed” vs. successful workouts, having this would help.
It would be better to know, and track, that I can do 3 6-minute intervals at 108% FTP with only 4 minutes rest, but to do the 4th interval, I need 5 minutes (or 6 minutes) rest. And then track over time if / when I can do all 4 as originally prescribed.
The plans will work you up after an FTP adjustment. Just do a 10s backpedal if you really can’t keep up. The workouts are supposed to hurt towards the end and giving you an escape hatch is counter productive to getting stronger. The brain is the weakest part of you more often then not. It doesn’t need any help sabatoging you.
Good suggestion. Add vote. I’ll often do a variation of the workout for this very reason just to get a minute or two more recovery between hard intervals. Some of us older riders just need a wee bit more time to recover between hard efforts.
I feel like this would make it too easy (mentally) to use and could take away some of the intended benefit of the workout. There have definitely been times when I could have used a little longer recovery but I refused to pause and just got on my horse and rode instead of “giving up”. If there’s an easy button right there to extend the recovery it would feel like there is tacit approval from Coach Chad to use it and maybe we wouldn’t get the desired adaptations from the workout as originally designed…
I like the idea of extending the rest period between sets but not extending between intervals
For instance - if you’re doing English (Log In to TrainerRoad) you couldn’t extend the 50 second recovery valleys but you could extend the 8 minute break between the two sets
If you can’t recover fast enough your intensity is too high. Do some base work and get that cardio tuned up.
I disagree with this statement. It very much depends on where you are in your training cycle, as well as what type of athlete you are. Athlete’s that are more anaerobic for example may very well take longer recoveries between sweet spot intervals. They still get just as much benefit from the workout. But it’s all about adapting to the individual.
Better to keep pedalling in an extended recovery period than pause the workout, the latter of which always makes it harder to get started again, even if it’s just a minute extra.
Agreed, I have been waiting for this for ages. There are workouts where extending the recovery valleys between sets has no impact on the intended gains (ie. threshold overunders, sweet spots), they are often short just because the workout has to fit in 60 / 90 / whatever minutes.
I’m sure this is zero to negative zero research that shows 4x6 minute above threshold intervals with 4 minutes rest between intervals is superior to doing the same with 5 minutes rest or 6 minutes between intervals. Or a combination of 4 & 5 minutes rest. So to assume that taking an extra minute of rest is somehow detrimental to the workout is just that: an assumption with no information backing it up.