I’m hoping that Ivy says they are the same, otherwise the whole point of Workout Difficulty level goes out the window. That is, you would need a time dimension added to the current PL. E.g., I’m an endurance 5.2 for 1 hr, but only a 4.0 for 3 hours 
@UKCarl
I don’t see a 1 hour and 1 hour 15 minutes ride that have the same level 
More specifically I don’t see any 5.2 …1 hour endurance rides or any 5.2 1 hour 15 minute rides.
I did notice that the higher the lever number the longer the duration. All 1 hour endurance rides only go up Level 4.3 then if you add 15 minutes the lowest level is 4.8. So in your case just pick a productive 1:15 minute ride… hope that helps
To make shorter workouts the same progression level as longer ones you would need to increase the intensity. For endurance work you get to a point where increasing the intensity moves it to tempo. So for endurance it makes sense that the increasing progression levels involve increasing duration.
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Looks like Ivy is offline at the moment so I’ll chime in here: you can absolutely compare levels from workout to workout as long as they’re in the same zone. Workout length is one of the factors that goes into determining levels. For an obvious example of how this works, a steady workout at a particular intensity will naturally have a higher level if it’s longer, since it’ll be tougher to complete.
Exactly how big a factor duration plays varies from zone to zone. To understand why, consider an endurance workout—adding 15 more minutes at 65% will make it a little harder, but not dramatically so. Thus, the level will increase, but not too much. But for an anaerobic workout, adding another 15 minutes of productive work could easily push the workout from being rather tough to being utterly all-out, and the level would increase more dramatically than it did in the endurance example.
So to circle back to the original question:
Is a 5.2 progression level on a 1hr workout the same as a 5.2 on a 1hr 15 (for example)
If these workouts are both in the same zone, yes- the identical level implies a comparable real-world difficulty. Note that the TSS, calories, and specific time in zone for each workout may still be different, as Levels include multiple factors, not just these.
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It’s not an endruance and I was using 5.2 as an example. Specifcally I have Star King -1 tomorrow, 1hr threashold level 4.7
The closest Alternartive 1hr 15 is Mount Hope -1 at 4.6.
Is it harder (it’s idfficult to tell, 40mins vs 36mins of effect but at 95-99% rather than 100%) or juts longer?
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- Richman at 6.9 level is basically 3 hours zone2 / 151 TSS / 0.71 IF / 2000 calories
- Bays +1 at 6.8 level is basically 1.5 hours zone2 / 84 TSS / 0.75 IF / 1000 calories
TR has an interesting position on that.
@SeanHurley what you wrote makes sense, but look above at two workouts at same difficulty level and one is double the time/energy.
but So the same “difficulty level” but due to the extra length it would be fair to say I’d be improving my work capacity.
This is where Workout Levels shine, since simply looking at TSS, energy expenditure, or IF alone can give you a wildly misleading idea of how tough a workout will be. By those metrics we’d expect Richman to be nearly twice as difficult as Bays +1, but given its corresponding reduction in intensity that’s definitely not the case for most athletes.
No metric is infallible or perfect, and at heart Workout Levels use objective data to quantify subjective experience— so it’s not surprising you might find examples here or there that don’t perfectly match your own perception of what makes a workout harder or easier, especially if you intentionally seek out the inherently apples-to-orange example of two workouts with dramatically different lengths. But in practice we’ve found them to be remarkably in-tune with how workouts actually feel, and much more effective at summarizing workout difficulty in a single number than any other metrics.
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I don’t agree for this specific zone2 example. Based on my review of TR library, Workout Levels for sweet spot and threshold and vo2max all look reasonable. This example is either a red flag for how TR sees zone2 / endurance in general, or an anomaly. Will just leave it at that.
BTW I didn’t intentionally go looking for anything, just took the two ‘equivalent’ workouts that TR support provided to someone.
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But even models are not purely objective. They all have inherent bias as well based on assumptions used to generate them, in addition to data provided to train in the cases of data-driven models. It is important to sanity check always. There are surely some cases, like the one pointed out here, where there is a problem with the model output.
Edit to say that individual data points are objective. Collections of data points often are not and are tricky to classify as such.
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No doubt about it, and that’s why we appreciate and seriously consider every criticism, suggestion, and bit of feedback that gets posted here (or submitted via any of our platforms!)
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What about the following scenario:
I’ve successfully completed McAdie +3 (4x15 OU, a level Threshold 6.4) and my secondary progression level SS went from a 4.1 to a 4.4.
If I lookup a 4x15 SS workout like Tallac +2, which is rated as a 6.5. Wouldn’t you say my proper SS level should be higher then that 4.4 , and much closer if not the same as that 6.5?
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WL do generally not compare across the training zones. My experience is that Threshold workouts are much harder to reach same PL than VO2max and Sweetspot/Tempo (Endurance is more about having time)
Do a sweet spot workout, rate it accordingly and see where you are. I think people are getting too hung up on the numbers.
I’m talking about getting the right workout every time (the AT slogan). If i want to do a productive SS training, i don’t think i will get the right stimuli with a level 4.4 SS workout. And yes, i know i can manually select a stretch workout etc. but that’s not my point.
“As your fitness changes, your Progression Levels adjust to reflect your dynamic strengths and weaknesses.” I don’t think this holds up in my example.
The primary objective of that work out is threshold so it’s not going to instantaneously reflect on your sweet spot levels.
TrainerRoad is still a self coaching app, Sure they say the right work out every time, But at the end of the day AT doesn’t get the full scope of your life stresses and everything else.
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