I assumed it tracked them, but I wonder does it treat them differently from a back pedal/ non-paused workout.
that I don’t know for certain. But a pause in the middle could be used the same way as a backpedal, “bonus” recovery.
Or it could be you taking a break for a kid, pottie or any other reason. From their comments, a solitary one that is reasonably short will be ignored/accepted. But do enough of them, long enough (pause or BP), and it may at least trigger a “Struggle” survey.
As always, the “I didn’t struggle” option will be there and can be used when appropriate.
Hi, what does AT, PASS and AI mean??
AT = Adaptive Training
PASS = A properly completed workout survey, now called “Intensity”
AI = Artificial Intelligence
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I agree, I’ve been “failing” a lot of workouts lately based on my previous definition, but getting pass surveys. They definitely seem to have relaxed the definition a bit because at initial launch I think I would have gotten failure surveys. After thinking about it, I think this is a good thing. Taking a couple back pedals in the last interval of a hard workout may seem like failure, but I don’t think perfection is realistic if you are really pushing yourself and actually if you look at the workouts, some of them are designed to provide the same “breaks” that you may have introduced when you backpedal. I think one of the best features of AT is that it redefines failure and I can live with that and keep going rather than before AT, if you failed a workout it was about the end of the road for that plan.
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thanks !!!
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To be honest, it would be good if we switched away from using “failure” in all but the worst case examples.
It is a negative connotation that makes us less likely to accept the reality what we just missed a bit, and got a LOT from the workout despite not hitting 100%.
IIRC, Coach Chad said something around 95% (maybe as low as 90%?) was a decent result, especially from many of the harder workouts. It should probably not be the norm, but hitting one of these occasionally should NOT be seen as a “failure” IMO.
We are still training, and hopefully learning, from all these experiences.
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Just wait until they try to rollout AT with outdoor workouts. I would not want all my outdoor workouts triggering the struggle survey for one stop sign or coasting around a few corners. And the power zones used have a decent range. Nothing like pinpointed power indoors with erg mood. I use TR with outdoor workouts 8-9 months of the year.
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On a similar vein, I was surprised that I ended up with a PL bump from this. Did 2/3 of the 1st of 5 intervals and stopped abruptly and gave stress/motivation for the post ride survey (pretty much the only result I use, for the most part).
I’ll probably take another stab at it after work; reasonably certain it’s something I can do in any case.
I’ve found AT is quite good at detecting my struggles and fails. It takes a few struggles (and I give “intensity” as my answer in those cases), and even less fails, for PLs to get dropped. I have gotten a few “hey, I didn’t struggle” struggles, but most were right on the button. Taking more time in the recoveries seems to be tolerated. As an example, I had Venado -2 this morning, the recoveries are 30 and 60 seconds, and I stretched a few (!) of them - no struggle questionnaire.
In general, I think we agonize too much about the ratings at the end of workouts. Any such system looks much more at deviations than absolute levels; as long as you rate harder stuff harder and easier stuff easier, again AT appears to be quite good at catching trends.
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One thing missing from your example is how long those pauses were. I’m certain AT looks at time elapsed vs actual training time, and the duration of the pauses comes into play. Here’s an example that did trigger the struggle questionnaire; if you look at the HR curve, you can estimate the duration of the pauses.
Edit: it took two such results before AT decided to drop my SS PL, but one (massive) fail on Keith (did the first set flawlessly, but abandoned as soon as the second set (of five) began) for AT to decide my Threshold PL was too high.
Interesting. I was taking 10 second breaks but was backpedalling vs. hitting pause (which is what you appear to have done).
I have auto-pause enabled, so yes - not hitting pause, but the result is the same.
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Went back over the data with the 95% you referenced in mind. If we take “time coasting” as the sum of being off target, my workout was 98.9% as intended. 98.9% sounds like a passing grade to me ;-). Since I did use every trick I know to get across the finish line “all out” seems bang on. Thanks again!
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Nice analysis! I’d say that all makes sense and should lead to good takeaways. 
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