Cheaper Alternatives?

No. That explains my ignorance.
I find targeting outcomes to be hellishly demotivating - stops me looking forward to training, which stops me doing it.
However, I can choose a plan and work through it religiously to discover what the outcome of it all is going to be. With Xert, I import my own plans and work through them. A pretty clunky faff though TBH.
I used to love TrainerRoad. “I’ll be back” :grinning:

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If you want/need an adaptive training plan TR is about as cheap as you’re going to find.

If you are Ok with a training plan with structured workouts but without hands off adaptation the cheapest way to go is purchase one (or a few) of the hundreds of plans available on TrainingPeaks, etc then use a free TrainingPeaks account to sync workouts to your Garmin. That will give your targets indoors and out and erg control of your trainer. There are tons of plans in the $25 range and once you buy them you can use them forever.

The absolute cheapest is to make your own workouts/plans in a free tool (e.g. Garmin Connect) and sync to your head unit. That’s free if you have the hardware already (trainer and head unit).

Its actually not that hard to come up with an OK plan if you’ve been using something like TR for a few years (you know more than you think you do but maybe add in $20 for a copy of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter” for some guidance and sample workouts). The hard part is coming up with a bunch of different workouts to keep from getting bored. But if you can take it, you can do a annual plan with just interval length and overall time/TSS variations on a handful of basic workouts covering the zones. TR has a million workouts for entertainment purposes, not because it takes a different workout every day to excel.

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To educate myself, I joined the Xert Forecast AI Beta and have followed it through for a short while.

My initial impressions have been that it doesn’t provide a plan, rather a guide to efforts. The punter must select their own workouts on the day from a recommended selection. You can’t see what the recommended workouts will be in advance unless you select each day one at a time.

My own effort guide anticipates allowing my TP to fall away, before expecting me to put in big efforts at the end to rebuild, which surprises me.

You can “adapt the forecast” efforts very easily, but it generates a very different set of suggestions to be executed on very different days, rather than “adapting”. As I need a more consistent path for personal motivation I found this a little difficult to accommodate.

However, it’s been fun to explore and will be a great tool for lots of people. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so set with my ways and expectations.

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Dare to ride outside (and for free!)

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Thanks @FlatFylde . A feature we’ve added is what is called workout pinning. This allows you to pick the workouts for the following week, say, that best meet your needs. The system will guide to choose workouts that are appropriate. You can choose an outdoor ride/group ride/Zwift ride even that you would like to do in place of a workout and pin that. Once you’ve decided on what you want to do and have pinned the training, you can run the Adapt Forecast process to the accomodate your selections and re-plan your training in the future. The hopefully gives the best of both worlds where you can have your consistency (cake) and flexibility (eat it too). :smile:

I don’t know your situation but in the past my health insurance company has occasionally reimbursed me for the subscription.

Might be worth looking into if you haven’t already eliminated that option.

There’s always running (I say half jokingly)