Between your job, family, and other daily obligations, how do you have time to train?
One of the biggest benefits of TrainerRoad is quality over quantity. Perhaps the greatest barrier to becoming a competitive endurance athlete is the time commitment that we used to think it required. TrainerRoad has eliminated this by specifically targeting your fitness goals in short yet extremely effective workouts and even full training plans that work entirely around your schedule! That’s right, even if you only have an hour of free time at 4:30 a.m. you can still greatly improve your fitness and actually see the results. Continue reading the story below from a TrainerRoad user to see just what we mean:
“I’ve worked through a couple planning and training processes on my own to improve my fitness for MTB XC racing, and for the most part, after a couple seasons of attempts at “training”, I was beginning to see some progress. At the end of my second season in XC Cat 2/Sport (third year of racing), I got my first Sport Overall finish – nice! Although very satisfying, while reflecting upon my past two seasons I got real honest with myself and admitted it was a lot of work to commit to. As a father, husband and being gainfully employed in a great day job, fitting in the work related to my bike racing hobby was a real hurdle for me.
Preparing for my fourth race season, and carrying a lot of desire to build off the glimmer of success I experienced at the end of the season last year, I knew I couldn’t keep juggling my day-to-day family and work commitments with my drive to better my cycling fitness. I needed something that was flexible for my time constraints, but I also wanted a better way to measure progress in order to keep myself engaged in and committed to my training plan.
There are a lot of tools and approaches to consider, but for me many of the available options are very time insensitive and/or cost prohibitive. Once I stumbled onto TrainerRoad, I immediately knew I found something I could work with: flexibility for my schedule, plus tracking, live ride data, pre-built training plans, a seemingly endless repository of pre-built workouts and a tool to measure my progress.
I signed up and got busy December of 2013. After a month and a half, I did my first FTP test which resulted in 3.07 w/kg. About 4 weeks later, my plan had me testing FTP again which resulted in 3.51 w/kg, about a 15% increase! I’ll take it, and no – I’m not contemplating quitting my day job! These numbers are relative to me and my situation, and I don’t expect two-digit jumps in FTP test after test. Having data to quantify my training efforts (TSS) and the eventual payoff (increased FTP) is huge for me.
One unexpected benefit is the pureness of indoor workouts. This should have been obvious to me, but when using TrainerRoad, there is no traffic, dogs, rain, wind or other distractions to contend with. The workouts can be done uninterrupted and contiguous from start to finish. It was a rare outdoor workout for me when I could get the planned intensity and duration all within my allowed workout time. My workouts with TrainerRoad have all been on my schedule (4am works for me!), with the appropriate doses of intensity and duration.
I guess to sum it all up, with TrainerRoad I have access to a very effective, highly flexible tool to use towards achieving my personal best goals!”
