Quick question, did an outside workout on my garmin, had to stop in the middle of 2 of the 9 intervals due to unfamiliar roads. Anyways TR marked it as a failed workout, on my response I said I did not struggle and labeled it as moderate, TR then wanted to reduce my sweet spot by a considerable amount, I rejected and the next workout was considered a stretch workout because of the previous workout being labeled a fail, I sailed through it and labeled it moderate, which raised my sweet spot PL by 1.2. So I guess the question is if TR says I failed when I actually didn’t how do I mark that ride so it doesn’t drop my levels and make the next workout way to easy? Thanks in advance.
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I don’t think you can reject the adjustment of levels, just the suggested workouts
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Correct, the ways we can impact Progression Levels are by competing workouts or changing FTP.
We can’t “Accept/Reject” Progression Level changes.
We can only “Accept/Reject” suggested Adaptive Training Plan changes (future workouts).
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Maybe I phrased that wrong, I rejected the suggested adaptations as they wanted my next sweet spot workout to be easier than what was scheduled, this was based on the outside workout that I said I didn’t struggle with.
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Hi all–
I accepted the invitation to Adaptive Training about 3-4 weeks ago and thought that I’d share my thoughts. All in all, I’m really impressed but there are a couple of things that I want/need before I use it more. I’ve been a TR subscriber for about 4 years, not totally consistently year round, but definitely more on than off.
How I use TrainerRoad: I’ve never used the full Trainer Road plans, although I refer to them as a baseline for training. I don’t use the plans because I like to do things other than just bike ride (e.g., skiing, climbing) and so sticking to a plan, for me, is unrealistic while accomodating for other activities. Instead, what I’ll do is pick a particular workout and then use that workout as a baseline to create a slightly harder workout. So, if it’s Antelope +5, I’ll do that workout to see how it feels, and if it feels okay I’ll repeat a custom version of that workout with (a) slightly increased interval length or (b) slightly decreased recovery intervals or (c) slightly elevated interval intensity or (d) slightly increased recovery interval intensity. And then I work through a progression of that workout, making it slightly harder every time. Most often I’ll design these workouts on Zwift because I’ve gotten faster at designing the workouts there, as opposed to the TR workout creator, although that’s changed in recent months as I get quicker at using the TR workout creator. I do most of my training indoors, although my riding objectives (races, strava PRs, adventure riding) are outside.
Why I use TrainerRoad this way: I like to tinker, and to me, it makes sense because I can work on a specific energy system and have complete control over my progression. Before Workout Levels, it was hard for me to see the difference between two similar workouts and definitively say “Oh, yeah, I see how X workout is a progression from the Y workout that I did last week”. I think this speaks to the value of Workout Levels–I can now look at two workouts and consider how a 6.1 sweetspot workout is different than a 5.9 sweetspot workout. I really appreciate the Workout Levels feature so much.
How AT may change the way I use TrainerRoad: I look forward to trying out a Training Plan once I return from summer travels, and (a) probably once there is support for custom workouts that have a reliable Workout Level attached to them and (b) once there is support for outside unstructured workouts. I appreciate that folks do their TR workouts outside, but this isn’t something that appeals to me after trying it out a couple of times. When I’m riding outside it’s usually a treat or a group ride, and I don’t want to be a slave to my Garmin. I am hopeful that using a TR AT training plan will be more effective than my own custom workout progressions…I mean, the TR team is definitely more experienced at what it takes to get people fast than I am, so there has to be some benefit to following a training plan. And with Workout Levels, I can more clearly see my progression over time, which has huge appeal than just leaving it to faith that each week’s workouts are slightly harder than the previous week.
Thoughts on TrainNow: Seems pretty awesome. I’m psyched to see what it recommends and often go with their suggestion/recommendation. Because I do my endurance/tempo riding outside, usually, and because TR doesn’t yet recognize outside unstructured workouts, the “recommendation” to do an endurance ride is off.
Thoughts on Progression Levels: So awesome. The nerd in me can’t wait to just work through the different levels, checking off each slightly harder workout. Again, I look forward to support for unstructured outside rides so my endurance, tempo, sweet spot, and threshold metrics are more accurately reflected in Progression Levels. I’m looking forward to see how these levels decay over time.
Thoughts on Workout Levels: I heart workout levels. This has been the biggest game-changer for me. I can only imagine that “filling the gaps” by creating all the new workouts was such a big job, but being able to see the progression from one workout to the next is awesome. One of the things I’m thinking about is how workouts of different durations (say, one hour compared to two hours) at the same level are distinctly different than each other. I’ve failed some workouts of the shorter duration and passed ones of the longer duration because the shorter one is more intense. This gives me good insight into the importance of mastering the shorter workouts before moving on to a higher Workout Level.
Wrap up: Thanks TR for all your hard work. I’m really impressed with all of the new features and am looking forward to where this is headed. I haven’t experienced any meaningful bugs and appreciate all the hard work that the team has been doing.
Thank you,
Nate
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TP-on-Garmin. Post-ride I pulled up TR web page on my mobile and was happy to see “Missing Response” which I clicked and rated the workout. Then on TR calendar I matched the completed ride to TP workout. All on my iPhone. Would be nice if that was possible on TR mobile app, but I actually like TR web on my mobile.
Patiently waiting for progression level updating. With all my levels still at 1.0, this sprint workout was Not Recommended. Rated it very hard (4 out of 5) and got 1 all-time power PR that TR doesn’t see unless I exclude a handful of workouts with power spikes (rather heavy handed, but so be it).
Hello, I just got in and im super excited! But I noticed I put in my low volume plan for Tue/Thu/Sat and after I did my survey from last workouts it adapted all my base 1 and my satuday went from Starlite -2 to Mono. However I realize I put my plan in wrong and should have done it for Tue/Thu/Sun so when I changed it in the drop-down inside the calendar it looks like its giving me Starlite again and all the original adaptions reverted back to the original plan. Is this correct?
I have not followed the Garmin discussion closely, but I think the recent feature request on this topic is the best place to continue that discussion, so we can return this topic to Adaptive Training focus.
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Finally got in, to be given a reality check by my levels haha. To be fair I haven’t done any sprint or anaerobic work but I’ve done some threshold stuff which seems to still be showing me a 1.0. Not sure what to make of these numbers
Short of reading 1000+ posts is there anything I should go back and do as far as surveys for past rides or is that all taken into account? Im mainly riding outdoors now with supplements of indoor due to bad weather or time constraint
You can only add survey results within 7 days of a workout, so feel free to add it, but the reach back is limited.
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Did that but good to know the 7 day rule. Anything else I should do or view right away? Any articles or tips? I’ve got a hard ride planned today and Thursday outdoors so curious how it affects the adaptations.
Unless you are performing a planned TR workout, outside as pushed to and run from a Garmin, your outside stuff is effectively ignored in AT right now. So it won’t make any difference to your Progression Levels.
Also weird scenario, on 5/30 I did Meteorite -5 which showed this
Primary Progression
SweetSpot 4.3 —> 5.2 (+ 0.9)
Secondary Progressions
Tempo 3 —> 3.6 (+ 0.6)
On 6/7 I did Geiger -1 and cut it short which shows me at SS 5.2 +0 leaving me at 5.2. However my current levels show SS at 3.6 and Tempo at 2.5. I know the levels should theoretically drop over time if I don’t do workouts in those zones because AT doesn’t know what my fitness is, but curious how it stayed at 5.2 for a week not doing any SS, then a week after staying at 5.2 dropped to 3.6
Hope that makes sense, and my apologies if I’m asking stuff which may have been discussed
And a separate post with a separate question: Threshold level shows 1.0 which is likely because I have not done an explicit Threshold workout in a while. If i were for example to do Jepson which is a Threshold 3.5 level and complete it, would my threshold level then move up to exactly 3.5 since I was able to complete the workout, or is there more to it than that (such as the survey answers after the workout having a bearing).
Near as I can tell, it will move you to the PL of the completed workout. There is potential that your survey rating could impact it, but I have not seen that in my big jump workouts.
Any word on if/when we might start seeing outdoor/indoor unstructured rides being factored into the levels? Most of my riding right now is that way, and might be a good contributor to the beta.
Is there anything I could be doing to make the beta better aside from post ride surveys?
No specific info other than they are working on it and it is a priority.
Not sure on other recommendations for helping. Complete the surveys for any completed rides (be they TR our other stuff) to keep up the history. Report any problems to support@trainerroad.com so they can track them. Other than that, keep an eye on here and/or the podcast to catch new developments.
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In the interim, is there anything stopping us retrospectively finding a workout that is similar to our unstructured rides and associating it after the fact to get some progress points?
Nope, it doesn’t work like that, so you won’t gain anything by adding and associating as suggested.
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