I’m in this camp too. TR has been prescribing great workouts since I got in the beta group, but my FTP is clearly too high by any conventional definition. Its last detection was 20 watts better than my previous TR best that I’ve hit a few times before when I was a few years younger, so I’ve rejected it an manually left it at 420. That’s still 12 watts higher than my previous bests, 35 watts higher than 2 months ago before this release…..and I really don’t think I could do for longer than 12-15mins on a great day.
Like others have said, it makes mid PL z2 work probably a bit more than z2 and sweet spot is basically low threshold. They’re doable, but pretty darn fatiguing. Long term I could definitely see it leading to burnout. Endurance/z2 days should be easy, not into tempo. I’ve heard that on the podcast for years and years.
I feel like all this could be resolved by benchmarking the AI against a harder threshold level. Like Stromlo or Dicks. If you can do just over your threshold for 8-10 minutes and repeat it, it’s probably pretty darn close and no one’s gonna get a prediction that’s 20 watts higher than their capacity. If you do those workouts and it’s moderate, then that’s a sweet spot workout and its clearly below your FTP. Right now if I load Stromlo +4 it’s predicting a 18% failure rate at my lower, manually entered FTP…..and I’d wager I’d need a perfect day to make it through that. At my latest FTP detection that’s almost certainly not completeable at 2% more power.
Meanwhile I could definitely do cloudripper at my latest FTP detection, and maybe even higher. It’s only 27 minutes of total real work over 90 mins which isn’t much at all, and only 9 minutes of that is above FTP. Compared to Stromlo +4 which is 48 minutes of real work and all 48 is just above FTP.
Either you benchmark it to something higher or leave the AI as is and get rid of a specific number completely. Give a 20 watt range of your FTP with the current setting as your high end, and give a predicted range as well.
Go for it. I haven’t looked back since I did. Once you start using manual FTP, you can also update it whenever you feel necessary, no need to wait for a detection. I just added 3 watts to mine, and won’t hesitate to keep updating it based on feel (not after every workout, of course).
Judging by the reliability of the FTP prediction, reported on the forum, I don’t think I’m missing all that much either.
I am doing the same. Still below my detected ftp but I definitely am increasing my abilities. I just think for the outliers manually changing your ftp isn’t a detriment.
By accepting the AI ftp and simply delete it again won’t that screw up the TSS for that week?
Using AI FTP here and believe it’s approx 10w too high compared to my real ftp. Giving it a chance though as it seems predictions are settling in. Eg last OU workout at 3x9 min I marked as all out. Reached 175/182bpm HR in last OUs and was totally done! I believe that is too high for a threshold workout?
I check in with my predicted AIFTP every couple of days mostly out of curiously to see how it thinks my “FTP’“ is changing. I have my FTP set at 11w under the AIFTP, and to check, all I do is accept the AIFTP, take a look at the prediction and scan the future workouts - mainly to see how off base things still are or not, and then go into my FTP history and delete it. This will revert you right back and retain the workouts that were in the calendar, and does not change any of your tss values in the past or the current day.
No issues with TSS calculations, everything recalculates based on your current FTP history. The only “fallout” I see from accepting and then deleting AIFTP is that your athlete levels will be reset. I personally don’t really care about those, so no big deal for me, but I can see where it might bother some people who use that as a measuring stick.
Edit - nevermind on the athlete levels. They do reset initially, but I just noticed that they eventually self-correct back to where they were before accepting/deleting AIFTP. I see a similar behavior with the system resetting workouts, sometimes it takes a few minutes for it to reset itself to the old FTP after deleting a value.
Yeah, just feeling. Over/unders are my go-to “test” for feeling out my FTP. I did Picket Guard yesterday and it was good confirmation that my FTP is set pretty close to where I like it. 2’ overs (only 105%) were clearly not sustainable with HR drifting and heavy fatigue setting in by the end, while unders (90%) allowed some HR drop and recovery before the next over.
Mine is also set by feel. I like to calibrate the ability to do 3 x 20m SS in the 90-94% range. I did a SS workout yesterday doing a 3x20 at 91%, 95% and 94%.
I also like to calibrate around o/u like grwoolf. Depending on your fitness, 3x9m intervals are too short and not enough TiZ, so 5x9 (to start) or 5x12 (work toward this) is what I use for duration. If doing this length, you have to have your unders dialed in or you won’t be able to complete them.
Thanks, I’ll try the same. Trusting my feeling. Yeah I agree regaring the TiZ with OU. It’s just “funny” as the AI FTP sets you at 3.0 PL so those OUs are never muck more than 3x9 min but just 5-10 watts off they will just feel like vo2max intervals.
Max is low (maybe mid) 170’s. I took a few years off from following HR and started again this season, so honestly not sure what the max is (will have better idea in march when I start v02max work). Resting during normal activities is ~50, ~40 when sleeping/laying down. And my HR strap was acting up at the start of that workout and giving some crazy readings for the warmup. Max for that workout was 158 during the last couple overs.
Yes apparently it does - I hadn’t noticed this, but grwoolf pointed this out. I don’t look at my career PL I guess. I did an 8.5 PL SS workout yesterday, and it shows 7.9 after accepting my AIFTP and deleting it. My previous SS workout was a 7.1 PL, so not sure how it arrives at 7.9. I don’t consider this important as it still shows what power level you did for each workout even if they don’t match the career PL.
As we get a couple months into the new system, I haven’t seen any challenges working with a manually set FTP. Yesterday, I was scheduled for another AIFTP bump and it’s still ~15 watts higher than what I consider my physiological FTP. So, I’m continuing with manually set FTP values, but I think it’s good that the TR AIFTP number is consistent in the way it’s estimating (at least for me). The system is recognizing the appropriate level of gains, but the actual number is just skewed up from my definition of FTP. As much as I’d love to think my FTP is 15w higher than it was this time last year (would be my highest FTP by far at the age of 57), I know that’s not the case and using the AIFTP number would make any comparison to past years significantly flawed.
After couple months of working with the new system, my TR experience isn’t dramatically different from how I used the old system. As I get into my build phase, I’m doing quite a bit of manual manipulation of my plan. My favorite new feature is probably the workout predictor. It does a nice job of helping me guess how hard/appropriate a workout might be as I’m looking at options.
I can second that. Manual FTP has allowed me to keep training as I did before. I also see consistent ~10-15 W overestimation of the AIFTP compared to what I center my over/unders around. I do find the current alternates inferior to their prior version, so picking a workout has become more involved. It is a very well-informed choice though, especially since the workout power curves came out.
I just made the decision to drop my FTP manually after getting another bump from the AI.
My first round with the AI was great, it dropped me 30W. I had three weeks of really good workouts with effort levels between moderate and hard. I was even motivated to do all my deloading week workouts, something I have historically skipped a lot of.
It brought me back up 30W. 3 weeks later everything feels hard and my legs are dead.
I think I am wiser now. I can’t empty the physical or mental tank for every workout.
Same story for me being happy with a 10w lower manually adjusted FTP. I’m getting stronger with longer TIZ, and slowly making a progress on raising my threshold, but not by much. I actually accepted the 10w higher FTP this week to see how the intervals feel, but still too high IMO, even though I’m closer to what it thinks. The real issue, is it wants to raise it again 10w on the next detection! I’m feeling like I was just catching up, but if I accepted the next FTP, I’d be at least 15w too high again…
I mean what do you set your ftp based on? Feeling? Actual test?
but just 5-10 watts off they will just feel like vo2max intervals.