This doesn’t make any sense. Looks like score calculation is a bit off.
Trainnow gives me a Productive level workout. Mount Formidable + 3.
Alternate “Stretch” workout is Hilgard +3 with a slightly higher Threshold Level.
But surely, Mount Formidable is a much harder threshold workout because it has 20min more of work near FTP
Two reasons I can see. The microburts are 5 seconds longer and the recovery periods are 1 minute shorter in Hilgard +3. That would make it considerably harder, even with fewer overall intervals (it would for me. those stingers hurt bad).
I’d also rather do formidable that hilgard. If you compare the first four intervals as a block the difficulty difference is easy to see.
I was thinking formidable looked easier because of the longer breaks, but just realized one is longer than the other. I thought the screenshot for the first one was just clipped.
If you “fail” a breakthrough workout, do you not get any progression adjustment? Or am I experiencing a bug? I just got in, and most of my progression levels are 1, including sweet spot and threshold. I loaded up a 4.4 Sweet Spot Workout (McGregor -2) which is 60 minutes of SS at 87%. I ended up calling it after around 51 minutes, which is 84% of the planned time in zone. My Sweet Spot progression level didn’t budge, still a 1. Yes, I didn’t finish all 60 minutes, but surely my level should have gone up some. McGregor -5 is 3x15, and it’s a level 3.1. So I did more TIZ than that, I’d think my level should go up to at least 3.
Edit:
Here’s the workout, and I created a custom workout of what I actually completed, and AT rated it at 3.7. I’ve emailed support.
I’d email support. I would also expect it to go up, but your use case may be fringe enough that it isn’t working properly or was not properly accounted for at the moment. Generally if AT sees you cut short, you’ll get the cut short survey and most likely you’d see levels decrease. In your case, you’d want to see an increase because there’s nowhere else to go but up, but it may not be looking at it properly to discern that nuance.
Yeah, sorry, I realized the time difference and deleted my question, but we cross posted.
Thanks, a couple years ago I downloaded the FIT SDK and made my own C++ program to dump the entire fit file. But my programming skills are pretty weak, and I don’t have time. The fitfileviewer.com site is pretty nice.
FWIW, I downloaded the FIT file from Garmin and a file from Strava (Export Original). And they are identical, so Strava did exactly what the command said.
No idea how the Strava API works, which is what TR is using, and I only had a couple minutes to poke around the docs.
So I got an answer about my “failed” workout. As of now, AT will completely ignore failed workouts for progression levels and adaptations. It’s either pass or fail. There is no in between or partial pass. Which I would hope changes for the future. So since I’m a 1, and I failed a 4.4, regardless of how close I was or the work I actually did, I’m still a 1 because I “failed” the workout. To me, that isn’t a great option.
There is a workaround somewhat but it’s not perfect. If I select reason for failing as “Time”, it will classify it as a success. But then I get the full pass and full progression jump, which also isn’t what I want.
The other workaround is do what I did. Create a custom workout of the time in zone I did and look at the level AT gives it. It doesn’t change my actual level, but it’ll give me an idea of the next workout I should be doing. And completing the next workout should then fix the level problem. So moving forward, I’ll just say I’m a 3.7 for sweet spot. It’s funny because AT is “adapting” me to do a 1.6 workout.
Hopefully in the future AT can analyze the workout and give partial progression bumps.
Given the way the current PL works I dont know if there is any real need for a partial. You can next time do an alternate and pick the PL you want. The actual number of PL doesnt really matter other then how AT will pick your workout. You still have the option to choose what to do.
How is it possible to make positive adaptions in every zone but still do worse in the ramp test (assuming both attempts were 100% max effort)? Isn’t that indicative that something is not correct?
Ramp uses your max 1 minute power. Looking at his levels, he is the weakest at anaerobic (0.1+ increase) and sprint (0.0 increase). That could explain why it did not increase.
I would say there is. Because what we get currently is what I had to do. I have to go into workout creator and create a custom workout of what I did, then get the workout level, then for my next workout on Sunday, I have to go into the workouts and manually select a workout based on the the level I’m at. It’s maybe 5-10 minutes or work, but the whole point of AT is that I don’t need to do that work. And since all of my levels are off, either 1s or 2s, for each type of workout, that is what I have to do. I know this is still beta, so I’m hoping they can fix this for the full release.
On a larger sense, I just feel like having the outcome be so strict of pass vs fail isn’t productive. You’re not going to have a clear pass or fail for every workout moving forward. Maybe you had to cut it short, or knock down the intensity. Is that truly a failed workout? Was my 50 minutes time in zone actually a fail? I don’t see it as a fail in any sense. It was a solid workout and definitely productive to me. But if AT only sees 2 options with no gray area, it’s classified as a fail and I don’t get any adaptions.
The ramp test still includes ~10 minutes of threshold and VO2, both of which improved significantly. If the ramp test is so specifically geared towards “anaerobic” and “sprint” zones I would suggest it’s a very bad test, seems more likely to me that the adaptions are not reflecting what is happening.
A three point PL gain in endurance can’t be just from the 25 min ramp test. I’m guessing it’s updated from a backlog of rides I’d done outside, that hadn’t had progressions applied, as its been a fortnight since my last TR ride (Hail Mary). Or an issue like you suggest.
Old ramp tests prior to being accepted into AT have had PL’s calculated, I looked at those but none show a three point jump in endurance from a 25 min ramp test.
It must be nice to be an AI and not have to explain yourself. Just spit out a result and produce a “new baseline. Trust it. Bleep!” But nobody does, yet. It’s going to take TR a long time to wean us off the explanations everybody is asking for.
I’m in 
I switched recently to pushing all my workouts to Garmin “outdoors” but I almost always actually do them indoors in Erg mode.
Are there any tips and tricks to help AT get it right?
Absolutely agree. “You did most of the workout, suffered, and it’s going to impact your upcoming workouts, but you get no credit for that” isn’t exactly motivating or helpful in your training. I’d say even adapting downward would be better than no adaptations at all. At least then you could see the impact.
All I am saying is here is the workaround. You yourself know what you did. TR still has a long way to go to get this all to work the way everyone wants. I don’t disagree that you likely did the majority of the workout but how do you quantify what PL to give. I suspect part of the issue is just there approach otherwise you would think outside rides of any type could be quantified into the PLs.
Not specifically. It seems to be getting better though.
The last two workouts I did outside, Baird+1 and Schoen, both this week, were classified as successful as I would have expected them to be so hopefully it’s an issue thats being sorted.
My plan during this version of the AT beta has been SSBHV-Short Power Build-RollingRR Speciality and at the beginning of plan all the SS workouts seemed to be classified correctly. Moving to the shorter intervals after the base period seemed to cause the issues so whether this was related to the shorter, sometimes more complicated interval structure being more difficult to classify, or changes to classification behind the scenes I don’t know.
With the classification though, if the workout wasn’t seen as successful but I hit the expected targets and felt it was successful it’s easy enough to pick a next workout thats appropriate for progression.
One thing I’ve found works better for me in that scenario is to only change a workout prior to doing it rather than a week beforehand. Adaptions can happen regularly and can impact more than one progression level and there’s often more than one workout of any given progression level that can impact future planning. If you change anything too early it’ll move the workout outside the plan and won’t be adapted even if other successful workouts would have had an impact on it.
I’ll take it! Good to not be completely reset.