I assume that the running we do in cyclocross looks like coasting to Adaptive Training even though we’re putting out a lot of power. I also assumed that this doesn’t really matter to AT, because we don’t spend THAT much time running. I was recently proven wrong by an accidental scientific experiment. In early December, I raced in the cyclocross Nationals. I rated that workout “very hard” in Trainer Road. And it was - I was fighting to make the podium! Two weeks later, I did an outdoor cyclocross workout that I rated “moderate”, and it was. To my surprise, the power numbers for this workout were uncannily similar to the Nationals race, which was MUCH harder. The difference between “moderate” and “very hard” has to be the running I did in the Nationals. In an 8:42 lap, about 43 seconds total were spent running, which took a lot out of me, even though my power meter “thought” I was coasting.
So, does Adaptive Training get “confused” by two identical workouts, one of which was “moderate”, the other of which was “very hard”?
And is there any way that AT could distinguish running-with-the-bike from coasting? I imagine heart rate goes up during running and down during coasting, but I’m not sure this would show up in these short runs. Until this “experiment”, I would have said this effect was negligible, but it certainly didn’t feel that way!
I’m pretty sure current AT doesn’t do much with cross races or outdoor workouts, with or without running. I did 17 races, many on consecutive Saturday/Sundays, all rated “Very hard”, and, up until the end of DST, one or two outdoor sessions which primarily involved working with kids, most rated “Easy”" or “Moderate”, and never had any changes to scheduled TR workouts (including early season VO2 max workouts on Saturdays if there wasn’t a scheduled race). How the “WLv2” will handle cross/MTB or other disciplines where there’s a lot of non-pedaling time isn’t clear (and I suspect is lower priority).
At least in my case, the races were scheduled in Plan Builder but I never had any post-race plan adaptations, which was never an issue, at least based on race performance, which got better over the season.
Scheduled or not, the races won’t impact AT unless they are associated with TR workouts.
I’m not saying that pairing is a good thing either. Per TR, it’s only appropriate to associate imported workouts that actually aimed to follow a planned workout. Stuff like races and unstructured rides are not recommended to be paired since they rarely match any TR workout.
All that means these races and such are not affecting AT now (even if scheduled on the calendar). That should change when we vet WLV2.
That makes sense, and for all the reasons already mentioned, the effort to specifically associate a race that has high cardiac demand that isn’t correlated at all with cycling power with a TR workout just to try to get adaptations seems unlikely to be worthwhile, especially when one can just use their judgement and pick alternates!
I did not associate the CX ride in question with a TR workout. The Nationals race was my A race on my calendar, but it was not associated with a TR workout.
When Workout Levels 2 arrives, cyclocross running may become a small issue, but not as small as I would have guessed prior to this experience.
At this time, there isn’t any way for AT to tell if you are running with your bike vs. coasting.
AT also doesn’t make any changes to your plan based on races or unstructured rides at present, as @mcneese.chad already mentioned (though this is something we’re working on!).
Given how AT works at the moment, there isn’t any way for it to get misled or confused in the way you’re describing here.
We’d say that the impact of running during a CX race or workout in the scope of your overall plan and time spent on the bike is still negligible. Ideally, in the future, this might be something we can track more accurately, but, for now, I wouldn’t worry excessively about it.
Hopefully that explanation makes sense – if not, feel free to ask any clarifying questions!
Thanks for your and Chad’s clarifications. I look forward to Workout Levels II. I accept the fact that CX running will probably always be treated as coasting, and that this won’t matter in the big picture. In the small picture, however, I’m still amazed by a) how nearly identical my race and workout were (12/6 and 12/23 in the unlikely event you want to check them out) and b) how different they felt at the time. Weird, but ultimately unimportant!
I used to use a garmin watch and no sensors on CX races. Then I added a Quarq power meter. I found that the tss would better align with my effort with no sensors as the effort was picked up with the algorithms in place for missing power. I would imagine that the running sections were picked up as equal speed cycling. When I added a power meter I agree that it was picked up as coasting. Nothing is perfect though and I thought it was fun to review the power file after races. I learned that I needed to do a better job maintaining speed through corners for example. The year of using a power meter trained my brain to be sure. I am building up my cx bike for 2024 and I will likely again skip all the sensors and just run with my watch and heartrate/gps data.