So far I am one of the users who has been very happy with the new AI release of Trainerroad. I was half way through a general fitness plan when it was released and I got an overnight increase in FTP number. I do feel that it had been significantly under-reported prior to the release so was happy with the new number. Also the predicted FTP for the following month was aggressive but psychologically encouraging at an 11% predicted improvement, if I continue on the training plan.
The scheduled workouts were certainly aggressive but I would say they were feeling more realistic. Genuinely hard but in a productive way. So I was happy with everything and the predicted FTP was stable after each scheduled hard ride was completed.
Unfortunately things seem to have unraveled about 3-4 days ago and there is a predicted 2% FTP gain compared to 11% at the beginning of the week, prior to the scheduled Tuesday hard anaerobic interval session. Its not as simple as hard ride/very hard ride etc.
Let me explain the sequence; last Tuesday TR had scheduled Blue Eagle, a 9.8 anaerobic workout. Recently I have been doing workouts via an upload to Zwift. I start off with a 20 minute casual warmup on Zwift. When its done, there is an automatic upload to the TR calendar. Next I go straight into the anaerobic Blue Eagle workout which had previously been pushed to Zwift. It was hard but it was predicted to be hard. After completed I go into my TR calendar and there are three workouts for the day. (1) the Zwift warmup which was easy (2)the hard Zwift workout for Blue Eagle and (3)the actual TR Blue Eagle workout which was scheduled but not ridden.
I then proceed to delete the warmup ride and also the scheduled TR workout, leaving just the Zwift-ridden workout for Blue Eagle. TR then updates the predicted FTP and suddenly it has dropped from 11% increase to 5% increase.
I do not understand this as the ride was certainly hard, but that was also the prediction. No different to previously scheduled hard rides.
There is a second issue. On Tuesday I had deleted a scheduled easy ride, scheduled for Thursday, today, as I would be out of town. However, yesterday I manually re-entered the easy workout to the calendar as I had a change of plan and would instead be able to do the workout (which I have just completed).
Somehow after adding-back the easy endurance workout, TR predicts an even lower FTP. Now at only 2% improvement for the month. Losing predicted FTP just from adding-back a previously scheduled workout doesn’t make sense to me.
My feeling is that the double recording then manually deleting of the Zwift workout isn’t seamless. But also I don’t understand why predicted FTP drops to only a 2% increase after adding back an easy endurance workout.
