I’d also like to mention that after speaking to the team a bit about all of your feedback I’ve been reminded that when giving an All-Out survey response after a truly all out race effort, selecting “Intensity” as the reasoning for the tough effort is the best option if that effort was simply tough because it was really intense physically.
We understand that all out efforts that are really hard because of intensity are a part of cycling, and those don’t stand out to us as red flags in terms of your fitness. As a matter of fact, those types of activities give us a lot of good data regarding how you can perform on any given day in one specific type of effort. It’s just more data for us to use.
That’s great! I think I’m just hung up on the phrase “too hard”. If it said something like “what was most challenging about this ride?” or “what made this ride difficult?” That would feel better. If I didn’t actually fail the workout then it wasn’t too hard so I don’t like the survey questions with that connotation. But I’ll definitely use that option more often after my races now. I love providing data.
It’s worth clarifying that it’s not always black and white as to whether an “All-Out” response signifies a fail. As I mentioned before, there are certain scenarios where an all-out response is acceptable, and even somewhat expected.
Of course, there are situations where an all-out response is unexpected, and those are the times where we’re most curious as to what made that particular workout so dificult.
Regardless, there is still a good chance that your upcoming training might need to be adjusted slightly after a workout/ride that tough. Those can be really productive workouts in terms of stress signaling, but you’ll probably want to dial the next workout or two down to ensure that your week stays productive. Especially if you tack on an additional 50 miles.
It’s not necessarily that we’re being more conservative, but prudent about what it takes to achieve adaptations, and what becomes unproductive..
Maybe it’s where trainer road calls it “too intense” after selecting intensity?
This was a race I considered all out, due to the effort/intensity. It absolutely wasn’t “too intense.” It was a race, it’s supposed to be all out intensity. Anything less, IMO is an actual failure..
I’m riding 20+ hours a week already, 50 miles is just a stroll. And I had plenty of rest time scheduled before the next workout, which was an easy sweet spot workout that the algorithm lowered to even easier.
The A-race effort that destroys you—in the context of that race isn’t “too intense”, it was what you set out to do. I can feel myself bristle at the thought of someone saying that was “too intense.”
But in a training context, looking for efforts designed to optimally stimulate adaptations, that was an overreach. The coach isn’t saying you should have held back in your season’s most important race, he just wants to dial back the next couple workouts after that to provide some recovery.
Exactly. So, include an option when rating efforts of, “Race Intensity,” and the impacts to subsequent workouts can be the same. What I think you’re saying (and I agree with) is largely semantics, but saying that a race was “too intense” is still inaccurate terminology. For people that spend a LOT of time & money racing, and trainer road to support that, I think accurate effort terminology for races is a pretty reasonable.
Another example of something that really doesn’t make a difference, but would be nice to see, is that in free ride workouts the power bar is always “red” as if you aren’t in the proper power band. Except since it’s a free ride workout, you are ALWAYS in the proper power band because it’s the power band you choose. I do a lot of TR workouts, so when I look up and see the red bar in free rides I am often mildly alerted by it, but quickly remember it’s nothing.
