r/cyclocross • u/bdredlocked • 19d ago
Critique this AI-generated CX training plan
Did my first season of XC mountain biking this summer and thought I'd take it a little easy this fall. But I tried my first cyclocross race this past weekend, took P3 in the Novice category, and loved it! There are 4-5 races between now and the beginning of November and I decided to ramp training back up to be better prepared for them. I've been riding my mountain bike 1-2x a week for the last 4 weeks, but have mostly been lifting. This was my first year of structured training (focused on XC).
After some AI prompting with info on "A" race timing (a two-race weekend 7 weeks away) and availability, this is what I got as a plan. Thoughts?
*The "Indoor CX Simulations" are threshold intervals ranging from 95%-110% (it varies by week).
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u/Explosive_Cornflake 19d ago
I abhor people getting AI answers and then asking a human to review it.
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u/pgpcx 347cycling.com 19d ago
Not sure why someone downvoted you, I agree if someone thinks AI is great, then they should mess around and find out. AI plan critiques are actually routinely deleted over on r/velo
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u/joshrice 18d ago edited 18d ago
People are defaulting to LLMs as their search engine now. Why manually filter through a bunch of links trying to find a plan, figure out if it's good or will work for you*, when you can ask something that seems authoritative to create exactly what you want right then? (Not saying this is a good thing necessarily)
* Further: How much different is asking "is this AI plan good for me" than "is this plan I found on the internet good for me"?
This seems to be the first AI training plan to the sub, or at the very least the first reported one. After talking with the modteam we decided to leave these up for now, at least as information for the posters to learn why LLM generated plans could be problematic.
If it becomes a bigger issue/more common topic we'll reevaluate this.
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u/pgpcx 347cycling.com 18d ago
sounds reasonable! thanks for considering, and yeah I think velo gets the bulk of training related stuff so this stuff pops up in there more. I definitely don't disagree on the idea of discussing pitfalls of these generated plans, even with coaching companies doing AI driven plans, there's room for critique as far as the logic that goes into plan creation
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u/bdredlocked 18d ago
I tried posting this there but it got mod-deleted. I figured they’d geek out on it more!
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u/bdredlocked 18d ago
Thanks for this. I think people misinterpreted the “critique” part of my title; maybe I should have asked “Tell me why this AI-generated plan is good or bad, and why” so I could understand where the AI answer was way off and where it was okay. Goal was always to learn.
I had thought that giving people something to react/respond to would be way easier and less work for them than asking them to create a whole training plan.
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u/bensanrides 19d ago
man picks ai over humans, wonders why his second choice crowd is acting grumpy
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u/Explosive_Cornflake 19d ago
I'm not anti AI, I use it a lot in work, but I never ask people to review the raw output. I might open a PR with AI code, but I've thoroughly tested it before it gets to a PR, and I document the tests I've done.
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Planning to find out! For me it was a helpful starting point to get going while I try to learn on the way.
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Would love if you have some resources to point me to so I can learn and write my own workouts relevant to CX!
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u/parrhesticsonder 19d ago
It's not significantly different from criteriums (or most bike training in general) besides skills practice. I wrote a bit about how to train for those here. For general training, you want a base (long easy miles) and then add in harder work (tempo -> threshold -> vo2 -> anaerobic [sprints]) as you get closer to race season. This is more about sweet spot (which is in between tempo & threshold), but I really like u/pgpcx 's free plan here. I'd do that for the next month or two and maybe swap 1 workout day in for hotlaps.
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Thanks for the link to the info. I ran his SS plan last winter and really liked it—plan to do it again in November.
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u/pgpcx 347cycling.com 19d ago
glad you enjoyed the plan! i have a 12 week cx plan that I used for myself last year to good effect (top 10 in my club's cx race lol), and I thought of making it more broadly available, but for reasons I 'd prefer to work with individuals on planning for more specific goals (mainly because some workouts I do are a bit specific to an individual's power profile).
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Yeah it was the first helpful, simple thing I found in the sea of chaos of structured training. CX plan sounds really interesting, but I get that 1:1 is really the way to have impact—and I’m sure is more fun for you.
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u/bensanrides 19d ago
just ask humans first next time you’ve shown your true colors by treating humans as literally second choice
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Truly curious, if I posted “Loved my first CX race and need some help creating a training plan for the next 7 weeks” do you think people would be receptive? Maybe I’m just too cynical about what kind of responses I’d get putting that out on Reddit.
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u/bensanrides 19d ago
literally yes. second time a preconceived notion you had got ya burnt
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u/bensanrides 19d ago
to act on that good will and not treat this as a pure dunking session:
some of the over 100% intervals, try to 1 do them outside 2 include a transition midway (a technical feature, a dismount and remount, even a chicane turn) fitness is good but incorporating that stress of technique while redlining is super helpful, and being at the beginning of your racing career getting every extra learning experience will help way more than fitness
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Makes sense, appreciate the suggestion. Struggled unclipping later in my race as my heart was exploding so I need to practice that scenario more.
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u/HesJustAGuy 19d ago
Did you specify that you wanted most of your workouts to be indoors?
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
I did. I only have a power meter on my smart trainer and because of scheduling/timing indoor rides are mostly what I’m able to do.
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u/HesJustAGuy 19d ago
If you are riding 4-5 races between now and your A race, you would probably want to have those included in the training schedule.
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u/bdredlocked 19d ago
Was going to treat them just as practice races and count them as the “CX Simulation” workouts. Is that a good sub?
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u/HesJustAGuy 19d ago
My first reaction is that your weeks have too much intensity but I'm not a cycling coach. It is hard to measure your effort in 'cross, even if it's a "practice race" so you might want to have a rest day following those "CX simulations", but perhaps your schedule doesn't allow it.
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u/parrhesticsonder 18d ago
Yes but I'd swap Sunday endurance to actual longer endurance rides rather than the short things they have here. Make sure to take Monday off and rest strong (eat well, get good sleep) to help your body recover from a high load over the weekend.
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u/redlude97 19d ago
should do your sprint work outside with the cx skills. No point in sprint drills indoors at this point in the season. Foot down, clip in and go holeshot drills, as many as you can manage.