When you build a plan, VéloPeak makes a few choices for you and leaves a few to you. This page explains the ones on the "Schedule & intensity" step: how aggressively the plan builds, what a hard day is, how much you ride, and what the fitness target means. You never have to leave the screen to understand a control, but here is the full picture.
Intensity adjustment
Your weekly volume is set automatically from periodization tables. The intensity adjustment is a separate dial: it sets how fast your fitness climbs each week, measured as the Fitness ramp (Fitness points gained per week).
- Conservative: about 3 points per week. Best when you are returning from a break, carrying life stress, or injury-prone.
- Moderate: about 4 points per week.
- Balanced: about 5 points per week. The standard choice for most trained athletes across a season.
- Demanding: about 6 points per week. For athletes with good recovery and training experience.
- Aggressive: about 8 points per week. Maximum load, suitable only for short blocks. Expect high fatigue and a higher injury risk.
The same dial also decides where in the target fitness band your plan aims (see target Fitness below): Conservative aims low in the band, Aggressive aims at the top. Faster gains are not free. A steeper ramp means more accumulated fatigue, so pick the level your recovery can actually absorb.
Hard and easy days
Each weekday you train is one of three kinds:
- Structured: a prescribed session with a target effort, for example 4x8 minutes at threshold. The plan writes the workout for you.
- Free ride: an unstructured ride you do however you like. The plan counts it as endurance and leaves the content to you.
- High intensity: your single hardest structured day of the week. You can pin one day as this; it cannot be the long ride.
Fitness is built by stress followed by recovery, not by stress alone. So the plan alternates hard and easy: it never puts two hard days back to back, and it keeps the day after a hard day, a free ride, or the long ride easy so you absorb the work instead of digging a hole. The long ride and free rides are never downgraded, and if you pin a high-intensity day the plan protects it by easing the day before. This is why a day you marked hard can end up easy in your plan: the rhythm comes first.
Weekly volume
Volume comes from your annual training hours, which the plan estimates from your recent history or from the experience tier you pick. Annual hours feed the periodization tables that set each week's target hours and its Load ceiling, which then get distributed across your training days.
Typical ranges by experience:
- Beginner: around 300 hours per year.
- Sport (recreational): around 425 hours per year.
- Advanced: around 600 hours per year.
- Expert: around 800 hours per year.
- Elite: around 1050 hours per year.
You can adjust the weekly number directly. The plan never exceeds the weekly Load ceiling for your volume, reducing intensity on quality days first if a week would run over.
Target Fitness
Fitness (CLS, Chronic Load Score) is your fitness base: a 42-day average of daily Load. For a race objective, the plan sets a target Fitness for race day, drawn from a reference band for that kind of event, and the meter shows where your plan is projected to leave you against that target.
Where in the band you aim is set by the intensity adjustment, and each athlete level has a recommended ceiling within it. If your target sits above the ceiling for your level, the plan still lets you proceed but flags it: the projected fitness exceeds the typical range for your level, so watch your fatigue closely and back off if form drops.