I’m sure this has been covered in previous posts but I’m curious if there are any plans by TR team to include Fitness, Fatigue, and Form data into the TR platform, ala the Elevate Chrome add-on for Strava? It’s been so helpful to me, I just wish the same info was a part of TR, especially in App form.
Thanks!!
Not according to Nate in a prior post asking for the CTL / Fitness, ATL / Fatigue, TSB / Form (source items for those terms you mention).
I asked for this too. Nate said no, but something better was coming. Still waiting.
TrainerRoad - whilst I love the product that you have, I am a new user and have not been on the “journey” over the past years. Without being overly critical of the progress that has been made over the past few years I struggle to understand why there has been no investment made into provide a somewhat similar service to that of Training Peaks, Wattsboard, Golden Cheetah products? I use TP and GC, primarily for CTL, ATL, and TSB chart information and having this in TR would provide a one stop shop where you can view that information without leaving - heck if it was done well, I would pay the TR subscription just for that aspect. I also think there would be a lot of people cancelling TP subscriptions and could be a differentiator against other products. Does anyone else think that this would be a good addition? Maybe I am on my own here - what are peoples thoughts? 
My guess is that TR considers the 6 week TSS average as good enough. You have something similar to fitness/CTL (6 week TSS average), fatigue/ATL (last week or average of last two weeks) and form/TSB (the difference between the two).
It’s not exponential smoothing but it’s good enough? I guess it depends on how these metrics inform your training. Do you use them in the context of the TR plans?
BTW if you run your rides through Strava, you can use the Elevate extension for freee!
Agree, whilst there has been improvements with the calender, the analytics aren’t still developed enough if you are someone who has been training for a few years. For example, tracking Pwr:HR can inform you whether you should progress or repeat a workout, 2 x 20 is a great example of that. Having to use other platforms for this is a bit frustrating and expensive. I’ve decide that after I finish this TT season I’m going to have to sit down and strip my cycling apps down, unfortunately I’m now at the stage were I need to personalise my training more and more in order to see gains, so TR with it’s one size fits all based on FTP percentage and the inability to dig deeper into how I am responding to training means I may have to say goodbye.
I am hoping that with the recent price rise and recruiting of more engineers that a more holistic TR will make it a one stop shop, fingers crossed.
I also believe this would be an additional differentiator for TR. I’m a data geek by nature and really like the data availability in Training Peaks. I prefer the plans and workouts in TR over any other product, but can’t justify keeping both TR and TP anymore. It is really a very difficult decision, but I was doing TP workouts just fine indoors prior to being turned on to TR the end of last year. I hope over the next few weeks we hear something on this.
I’m an engineer/math major and serious data geek too. Tried for 3 years as paid TP Premium user to leverage TP charts to gain insight, and this is what I learned:
Sometimes having too much data is worse than not having enough data. Of course that is the very point of this thread, if you prefer to train by a set of numbers (CTL/ATL/TSB) then I get your frustration. I’ve come to the conclusion its better to follow the plan and feelings, and not train by numbers that can’t account for everything going on in my life.
I’m all-in with TrainerRoad and WKO4, not paying for anything else.
I dont think that a 6 week average TSS is similar to what TP provides at all. If I take myself as an example, my TSS average within TR looks completely different to the profile that is shown in TP or GC.
I think that having history is really important due to the amount of outside riding that I do combined with the training program from TR. For me, I look at fatigue and form and attempt to maintain the right training zone as per Coggans recommendations. If I move into overload zone then I know I need to scale it back a little, conversely, if I am in a neutral zone then I know I can ramp my TSS up to deliver some benefits. If I have a race coming up then I want to ensure that I am approaching freshness, how do I do that within TR using the tools that are available? I don’t think you can now but would love it if you could.
If all your rides are on Strava you can use Intervals.icu (my free tool) to track ATL, CTL and TSB. It also does a bunch of other stuff (e.g. automatically fixing power spikes, estimating FTP from any max efforts).
Very nice, David.
That is really cool, just linked it with my Strava account. Thanks!
Very good. I don’t see an option add historical weight or FTP however, am I missing it?
Edit: found it, under ‘bulk edit’
@davidtinker - thanks for sharing this - looks great. I’ve also linked my Strava account. Keen to understand the logic behind why estimated FTP be trending down when fitness is increasing? This happens in my graph also and I don’t understand it.
I don’t seem able to enter the optimal training zone when doing SSBMVII, what are peoples thoughts on that? I am not turning workouts down and I am completing them successfully with TSS accumulated aligned to the recommendations from the workouts.
Also,
If your TSS/week is stable then the estimated FTP value should stay the same otherwise it will decay slowly. It only goes up if you do a max-effort of more than 60s that exceeds the power curve you are on based on your current estimated FTP. So every now and then you need to go flat out for a few minutes on good legs and try set a new number. You can click the “Est. FTP” value for a ride to get some more info and see how close you were to exceeding it on that particular ride. If you mail me I can have a look at your data and check its all good.
Thanks, I’ll look into WKO4.
Hey all,
At this time, we don’t plan to support Fitness/Form/Fatigue metrics within TrainerRoad since, like Brian suggested, they can be potentially confusing, and at worst, misleading. Coach Chad takes these metrics into consideration when creating the plans, which means our users get the benefit of all this complicated data analysis done for them.
It’s worth noting that 6 Week Average is about equivalent to CTL, and by limiting the amount of other data, it makes it easier for our users to achieve their goals without needing a science degree or extensive coaching background to understand how to train. For those that love having and seeking to understand their data, there are other free tools such as Golden Cheetah, or the Intervals.icu plugin that @davidtinker shared.
Cheers,
Bryce
I don’t see how providing a ‘similar but different’ set of data for the user helps in any way. By your own argument, the six week average should be removed entirely because Chad’s done all the work for us…
Which brings me to another point, I doubt there is a single user who does not add additional TSS over and above what is in ‘the plan’ at some point, assuming that they are actually following the plan to the letter. I mean we do all actually ride our bikes whether it’s in races or just because, you know, that’s what we do as a hobby.
Developing the calendar was an attempt to move TR away from the list of workouts it was previously. You can now have much more flexibility. The trouble with that is that Chad’s work balancing TSS gets invalidated straight away.
In my mind it would be better to provide the tool and make it visible to those that want it rather than make us use another service for something that isn’t hard to implement.
If Trainerroad is serious about being a one-shop-stop for training I think they need to look beyond the plans and develop a serious suite of tools that all but the most data hungry cyclist can use.
Mike
