Towards the bottom, there is an option. That says something like “I didn’t struggle”. When you pick that, it gives you a “Pass” survey instead.
5 Likes
Unfortunately, the option of “I didn’t struggle” does not appear.
1 Like
Don’t worry, it’s the name of a climb near me in the Yorkshire Dales. Not too far away from Blubberhouses.
Sorry… I meant to add that there is no option to switch to intensity… Thanks!
Scroll down in the survey options box. You can see there are more options by the scroll bar on the side. At the bottom is “I didn’t struggle.” I have to do this for basically every outdoor workout right now. AT has marked them all as struggles for me, even with pretty great compliance.
Also note that if you’re doing these on Wahoo, they won’t impact PLs right now. It’s a known but is being addressed.
2 Likes
Yup. I am done as well. In fact I’ve almost stopped riding and definitely have stopped using trainer road. Been in the dumps for a while and can’t get motivated. The last podcast was really enjoyable and a lot of fun. Then I hear they added 10 more people to the beta. F that. Why oh why can’t there be a specific thread on the beta update. Tell me what’s changed and how many. I’m sick of flipping through so much to find an update. I’m sick of actually wanting to know. I’ve got a big event through the rockies in August. Was planning to be in best shape ever using AT. Now I’ll just ride it and whatever. This is not Tr’s fault at all as I’m CANADIAN. Been on the front lines all of covid and have been quarantined 3 times. Work for post office and are the only quasi government agency open so we are always getting harassed and attacked. Ive actually just been put in a depression and anxiety care program. I used to use cycling as my safe place. Now I’m riding once a week even though my salsa cutthroat finally arrived. I just want this all over and I’ll try again next year when AT has been released by then I hope. If there’s 50000 users I’ve accepted I’ll be user 50010 in AT. Was quite pissed off to see the couch to crit guy get into adaptive training as a new user. Not too random there. But whatever.
3 Likes
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not, but I gotta say I’ve pretty thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing. Announced and “launched” in February and now we’re in May and just hit over 1,000 people. And from reading the various forums that seems to be a very small percentage of people who signed up. I’m not sure if TR expected less bugs, but I’d guess they would have hoped for more than 1,200 or whatever added by this time. And it doesn’t help that half the podcast time these days is covering various AT things, which again, won’t be very helpful for the majority of people who aren’t a part of it. Workout levels is kind of neat, but even that was a little bit of a SNAFU with release weeks after it was supposed to be.
My subscription is coming up on renewal and I’ll likely keep it, but it was a little bit of a question whether I would as opposed to previous years where it was the easiest decision I’d make keeping it another year.
Plan builder to me was TR’s best feature release in the last few years, and it was available at the time of announcement if I recall correctly. Starting to think AT would have been better going that route. Just my thoughts, rant over.
2 Likes
As a software developed (who works on AI projects, but thats not important here) I’m finding this whole thing interesting, it seems to me that TR were forced to react to the DJ’s video where it was found/percieved that their perfect plans, where not as perfect as had been made out to be (even though they were based on data they had)
So they announced, AT, made a lot of promises that it was going to change world, fixed the issues with their exisiting plans (making DJ comments obsolete) make coaches obsolete in the future and make all the TR users pro’s
TR has history of getting their users to do the beta testing, and did this AT, but getting your (paying) users to do beta testing is a dangerous game, especially when you have made public announcments of the the greatness of the game, which is why most companies don’t do it, Garmin do it to some degree with their products with the initial device being a bit buggy, and resoonding to “issue”, but this leaves the public tainted opinion of the device
I’m not comparing products, but sufferfest has a major re-write/new features coming and all their beta testers are on none discloser agreements and are not allowed to talk about what they are testing, this manages expectations, in the TR announcment they talked about (at some point) sleep and the numbers of steps affecting your plan, right now (3 months later) we see public posted every day that adding Z2 or just going for a 6 hour Z2 ride ride, will be ignored and the system will still recommend endurance workouts, you are far better off to announce what you are releasing when you release it
I pay TR to help make me faster, not to do their beta testing, so I’ve not signed up “beta test program” but do find this whole situation intereting, it amazing what making your users think that they are your (Nates) friend, allows you to get away with
11 Likes
Interesting points and I think you hit the nail on the head. I do agree that the DJ video seemed to force their hand a bit and push out a product before it was even ready for large beta testing. And that seems to lead us to where we are today with AT.
And just go on and on about this on the podcast as well.
I know we’re on the TR forum, but I agree with this as well, sometimes to the point where TR doesn’t get the constructive feedback/criticism they need to keep improving. A lot of blindly defending them. Not to say I love what they do the majority of the time. Just not a fan of the “fanboy-ism” sometimes.
Competition is good for innovation.
7 Likes
This exactly. I think back when AT was announced we all expected to wait a couple of weeks (rumors of a month seemed far fetched). In the meantime there’s been more ramp downs than ramp ups in addition numbers, and full scale launch now seems years away (although AT is one of the first things you see on the website, which kinda is misleading to new subscribers).
I don’t mind waiting (hell, I have a di2 drivetrain ordered since 1.5 month with no shipment date from the dealers, and I’m cool with that). What I do dislike deeply is not understanding the why:
- Why is the addition rate slowing down to a crawl for weeks sometimes?
- Why exactly are so few users being added when the list of bugs is shorter than my to-do list for monday morning, and scalability doesn’t seem a huge issue to the layman?
- Why make the whole process feel so arbitrary?
Much as I like the TR crew, this definitely feels like an instance of “overpromise and underdeliver” to me 
Not aiming to pile up unecessarily here, but I criticize because I care…
5 Likes
I’ve defended TR and their Plans at various time, both on this forum and in real life. I wouldn’t consider myself a fanboy. However, my opinion is extremely polarising and it doesn’t tend to make me many friends.
TR are trying to make a series of Plans/Workouts/Training Platform(s) that work for a whole mess of cyclists. Age, experience, ability and a willingness to listen to advice and adapt their approach to training. These are just some of the aspects we, as users bring to the table and expect TR and their proposed Plans to accommodate. They (TR) are in between a rock and a hard place.
The bit no-one wants to hear but I’m willing to bet more than a few TR users are thinking. TR Plans, be that the ‘old’ Base>Build>Specialty, POL or Adaptive, work for ME. Do you really think that other TR users really care if you’re struggling?
Trying to train for a race? No-one is going to care if you’re struggling. Your competition want you to struggle. Your fellow Saturday/Sunday group ride buddies want you to struggle. Unless you’re using TR to improve general fitness and challenge yourself (massive kudos if that’s your goal), everyone and their dog wants you to fail. No-one wants you to beat them to the line.
TR are trying to create a system that we can all use and benefit from. Personally, I liked the old plans. I thrived on the fact that the old Plans beat you down both physically and mentally. If you can’t go to those dark places, reach inside and draw something out… as Chad used to say in his workout text ‘this is where those riders who just won’t break are made.’
Maybe TR are trying to accommodate too many cyclists with vastly different aspirations. I’m NOT for one moment saying that those aspirations aren’t lofty. I’m simply forming the opinion that TR might not be the right training platform for all cyclists.
That in-of-itself might be the mistake that TR have made in their marketing.
5 Likes
This is why the height of a scrollable panel needs to not be the height of a multiple of the items in it. A partially obscured item makes it easier to tell that the list is scrollable
2 Likes
I think it’s a bit unfair to criticise TR for communicating more than other companies - you just have more sight of the process with TR than you do with other companies.
I worked on a new software release last year, we did a completely confidential Alpha, a small Alpha/Beta and a semi-open Beta (basically the same as this AT Beta, people applied to take part). We have a much smaller user base that TR (it’s relatively specialised commercial software), but we didn’t communicate anything like this much.
From what I understand, TR followed a fairly similar process in that they had been using AT internally for some time at least.
The key nut I think they need to crack is assigning progressions based on a supplied power profile accurately and equivalently to the pre-classified workouts. That would solve the issues with superpasses, outside rides, and adding endurance to the end of workouts at once.
I’ve not had much chance to use the Beta yet, as I’m still recovering from food poisoning, but the option to easily select alternatives based on progression level and to select workouts filtered by Achievable, Productive etc is really handy. Yesterday I wanted a nice Achievable hour long endurance ride, since Friday I struggled with high HR on a Productive endurance ride (illness), so I just went right in and selected 1hr, Achievable, endurance and picked one which I’d not actually done before. Previously I’d have had to eyeball it and maybe adjust the intensity.
3 Likes
What you probably mean is “people who disagree with you”.
What you may see as “fair critique”, others (eg. me) might well view as “moaning from those exhibiting less patience than children before Christmas”. 
One thing’s for sure: TR will roll out the new product releases only at a pace they are comfortable with based on a careful assessment of the progress of their closed beta. No amount of whinging from posters here will change that one bit and moaning about this is simply a waste of time and emotional energy.
11 Likes
I give TR massive props for the level of communication, I love the fact that as a team, the TR crew is engaged with users.
However, it is abundantly clear that AT was simply nowhere near ready for closed beta. Not even remotely close. And while I sympathize with the scale and complexity of the problems the TR team is facing, that they’re dealing with these issues so publically is a completely un-necessary self-inflicted own-goal.
At this point I’ve almost lost interest in AT even if I got the email to join, and launching a product that couldn’t use outdoor rides seems…odd. Surely the best time to launch would have been in the fall when the northern hemisphere is moving into the fall / winter and outdoor rides are less of an issue.
You only get one chance to make a good impression. CVRCade captured a ton of interest when it was first launched…until people actually looked at it, and it was so poorly done, it’s now practically its own punchline. Xert is by no means a joke, but the interface is so poorly done that people such as myself will never bother with it again. First impressions matter!
17 Likes
+1
2 Likes
It definitely is ready for closed beta. They certainly could have done an invitational, private closed beta and the people invited would have been happy.
I’d obviously like it to look at non-TR rides, and I am sure it will in time, but it’s still a totally functional training system without that and (this is the key thing) significantly more advanced than the previous static plans… which take no account for anything at all. If I start nailing my 2-3 TR workouts a week either because of the extra outdoor training I’ve been doing on the other 3 days, or because I am progressing faster than the default progression for whatever other reason, the system is still going to start bumping me up quicker, which is unarguably an improvement over what was there before.
(it can use TR outdoor workouts if done on Garmin… There’s an issue with it on Wahoo currently).
4 Likes
Hi. I’m excited to have been added to the Beta and to get cracking using AT. I have a question about the best way to approach training on two different bikes with different FTPs TT bike vs Road bike. I know that my FTP is 7% lower on the Time Trial bike as I’ve done back to back ramp tests. To keep training levels and TSS correct I usually do one of two things. Which will give a better experience in AT? Assuming the last ramp test I did was on the TT bike
-
Change my FTP up by 7% before the road bike workout and then change it back down by the same number before my next TT bike workout
-
Keep my FTP in TR always set to my TT bike FTP. Increase the workout intensity to 107% when doing a workout on the road bike then edit the workout afterwards to change the FTP up by 7% to get the correct TSS score for that workout
1 Like
Oh boy, that’s going to give it a real test I imagine if you keep swapping around like that. Is that what you do now, keep changing your FTP settings each time you swap bikes?
If so, hats off, life’s too short for that level of tinkering IMO.
Apologies in advance cos I realise it’s not a very useful answer but I’m genuinely amazed people go to those lengths for a few TSS here and there.
1 Like