Something similar happens with FTP tests that are not TR tests – eg a custom Kolie More test. By design, such tests result in a failure at some point – you just can’t keep going. AT thinks that you failed, by not completing the last interval.
I’ve emailed Support about this, with the suggestion that there needs to be some kind of tag that identifies such test workouts and prevents AT from thinking that it is a failure. Perhaps you could drop Support a line and suggest something similar – either tagging the ride as a race or having “race” as an option in the surveys.
After much messing about and trying I finally managed to get an adaption to my endurance progression level from a measly 2.3 up to 7. https://www.trainerroad.com/app/career/bobw/rides/113511528-vogelsang Slightly ironic in that my Garmin ran out of juice about twenty minutes before the end of the ride. Given that my strength is endurance (multi-day rides of 12+hrs per day) it’s been somewhat amusing that my endurance PL was so low.
Until today no workout classed as endurance did anything to the relevant level, AT just seemed to ignore everything at that level but was happy to boost my threshold (5.2) and VO2max (9.0) levels following workouts targeted at those levels.
Next week is the recovery week and all the workouts are marked as “endurance” so I’ll see if AT accepts them.
I don’t like how Races don’t fit into the the Effort Responses.
IMO, a race is always going to be an “all out” effort no matter if it’s a A, B, or C race. I’m racing to do my best and I’m going to give it everything I have no matter what.
That “all out” race effort is different from a workout. If I’m giving a “all out” to a workout, then the workout is too hard and I need to dial it back on the next one or couple of workouts.
For races, I’ve been categorizing them as “all out” but have typed in “race effort” under the “other” response. I want it considered in my training but don’t want it to be considered as a “fail.”
So I have been on the beta for a bit over a week now. One area for improvement is how workouts should be presented in the calendar: on the calendar you don’t see whether a planned workout is achievable or productive. You have to click on each of the workouts to see which is which. I’m saying this, because the progression level distribution did not make any sense to me: I’m currently at VO2max level 6.0 as I have finished a level 5.9 and a level 6.0 in the two weeks prior. It really took me a while to understand why my next planned VO2max workout (scheduled for tomorrow) is a mere 5.1 — the previous workout was Productive whereas this one is Achievable. Presumably that is because this week is focussed on productive threshold workouts.
This should be made obvious in the calendar view so that one can see the pattern more easily.
The other weirdness is that at present my endurance and tempo progression levels are ridiculously low: but that’s because the only endurance workouts are the extremely easy Wednesday workouts (progression level 1.x). I understand why this is the case (unstructured outdoor rides aren’t included yet, and there is an insufficient basis for data), but also here I’d say TR should improve the presentation. E. g. they should perhaps add asterisks or color the progression levels where you have had insufficient input to indicate that essentially these numbers aren’t reliable yet.
One thing I found on this is that AT threw me a more challenging endurance ride on the Saturday of my recovery week, and it wasn’t until this that my endurance PL felt close to what it should be. (Obviously assessing unstructured outdoor rides will help even more.) Like you said, it makes sense, since the endurance workouts in the build weeks are very easy. But it was good to see what happened towards the end of the reco week.
I’m very tempted to throw in a “super difficult” endurance workout early into my recover week next week for that exact purpose. Earlier this year I did up to 2:30 hour-long endurance workouts, and the biggest problem for me is fighting boredom. Fortunately, there are podcasts.
I’m pretty solid on the 5.1 workout, so I’ll see an increase of 0.2 each week so it would take me 20 weeks to get to 9.1 by which time I would have retested FTP three times…
Yep. If you think about it, that makes sense because what was a Threshold 3.0 is going to be less when your FTP goes up.
This is my one criticism of the new platform though. The time it takes to get the levels correct after the test is about the time it takes to get to the next FTP, and that makes me feel like I’m wasting workouts. The flip side of this is the old way, which involved failed workouts and burnout, which I hated, but I do admit I wonder if I’m under achieving.
I don’t know if this is related to something I did last night. After completing my Alternate workout indoor the adaptations didn’t take place right away. I went to the web browser to loaded it and was offered pending adaptations.
*CONTEXT
I am tinkering to find where my VO2 level should be right now since after increasing my FTP 3% manually my VO2 didn’t move down at all from 6.3 So I am trying to find where I should have been to avoid crushing myself. I am slowly getting myself back up to that level now from the standard (3.X) starting point and have not found the workouts to be too hard yet we will see what happens at the end of this week.
