Your sport

Plan settings has a card called Your sport. It offers five options: Triathlon, Running, Trail, Cycling and Swimming. Your choice decides which sessions the plan puts into each week. If you run and never go to the pool, pick Running and there will be no swimming in your plan.

You also pick your sport in the sign-up questionnaire. If you joined before the card existed, your sport is Triathlon.

What makes up a week#

Triathlon weeks hold three sports: swimming, cycling and running. Every other option has one sport, which we call your main sport. For Trail it is running, including running on trails and uphill.

A full week means three sessions of your main sport. If your schedule has fewer suitable days, the plan is still built, and the week caption gives the reason. Two sessions make a short week. One session keeps you in touch but will not move you forward much. If your main sport has no day in the schedule at all, the week has no endurance sessions. Strength and the sessions you added yourself stay.

A week usually has one hard session. A second one only comes if you are not a beginner and the week has five sessions of your main sport. Beginners get no hard sessions in general preparation.

With no race#

A race is optional. Without a main race the plan runs general preparation: plenty of easy work, one long session a week and strength.

The long session grows in small steps, as described in How the plan is built. Without a race it has a ceiling. Running goes up to 2 hours, cycling to 3 hours. A swim session goes up to 90 minutes, with no more than 30 of them nonstop. A long swim appears once the plan sees that in the last 30 days you have already swum at least 20 minutes without stopping.

With two sessions a week or fewer and no long sessions behind you, there is no long session. Every session is easy.

Trail with no race#

Once a week the plan sets an easy trail run. The first one is 30 minutes, or 20 if time is short. Five of those minutes go to technique. Hill reps can take the place of a hard session, starting with 4 reps of one minute uphill. A week has no more than two special trail sessions. The long run can become the second one: the plan moves it onto a trail by itself. For that it needs your runs from the last 4 weeks. If none of them were on trails, the long trail run is no longer than 90 minutes and no longer than the longest of those runs. With recent trail runs it can reach 2.5 hours, still step by step from your last completed long run. An ordinary road long run stays at 2 hours at most. With no runs in the last 4 weeks, there is no long trail run. Descents and technical ground only grow once you have run them.

I also do#

Under the card, Running, Trail, Cycling and Swimming have a row called I also do. Say you run and sometimes ride at weekends. Tick Cycling there. The row is only in Plan settings, not in the questionnaire.

Each ticked sport gets one easy session a week, with no long session, no hard work and no brick. Its time comes out of your week, nothing is added on top. Together these sessions take no more than 20 percent of the week. With 5 hours, that is an hour at most.

Your main sport gets its time first. If even a short session of the extra sport no longer fits, it skips that week, and the week caption says why.

A sport that is new to you starts carefully. Running for a cyclist, for example, stays at 20 minutes until you have done it two weeks in a row. After that it can grow to 45 minutes, step by step.

A race in another sport#

Say you are a runner and your main race is a bike race. Until the race the plan prepares you for it. Cycling gets the key sessions and the long one. Running keeps at most one easy session a week, with no hard work and no long run. A sport that is neither your sport nor ticked in I also do does not appear on its own.

If your sport is Running and your main race is a triathlon, the plan prepares you with all three sports. Swimming and cycling start carefully, like any new sport. If a sport is missing from your schedule, the plan sets what it can and names the missing sports. A bike-and-run brick only appears in triathlon preparation.

For Trail, both road and trail races count as your own sport.

After the race and recovery the plan goes back to your sport. Your old long session does not come back at its old length straight away. The plan takes your two longest sessions of that sport from the last 30 days, done on different days, and starts from the shorter of the two.

Changing your sport#

Changing your sport erases nothing. Your history, thresholds, fitness and form, the cycle of easy weeks and your long sessions all stay.

A sport that is new to you starts with short sessions. Hours on the bike do not turn into the same hours of running. Running loads your legs differently and needs its own build-up. So part of the week may stay unused.

If you switch from Triathlon to Running, swimming and cycling leave your schedule. You can bring them back in I also do.

Calibration and health#

A new athlete starts with a few calm weeks, called calibration. With one main sport, such a week has two short sessions of that sport.

If your plan has no running, the plan does not need your answers about bones and joints: such a plan has no jumping and no impact work. Tick running in I also do, and the platform will ask you to answer them if there is no recent answer.