Been using TrainerRoad AI for a few weeks and I have a few first impressions. Not really related to if TR AI works or not, because I feel confident it does, just more user experience related. First, the predicted difficulty, that is honestly kind of annoying. I was doing mostly zone 2 and VO2 max before deciding to try out TR AI on its terms. It dropped my FTP ~25 points and just has me doing tons of sweetspot and threshold workouts. Not my favorite way to train, but whatever. I kinda wish it wouldn’t show that to you. It messes with my head, it keeps saying the highest likelihood is that all those workouts will be moderate, but since I haven’t done them for a while, they feel hard. Like I’m not dead by the end, maybe I just don’t know what hard and moderate mean to TR AI. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Next item is the AI prediction, each week that goes by and it keeps lowering my predicted FTP 1 point. I haven’t struggled finishing any of the workouts and the few VO2 max intervals it gave me have been borderline too easy with the FTP drop. FTP is FTP, so I don’t really care what it comes out to after a training block, but I wish you could toggle that prediction stuff on or off. Maybe I just need a few more months to get used to it, but I’m finding the prediction tools to be kinda distracting To the whole training experience.
You can - you need to find the prediction on your calender and find the pencil icon.
They should probably add a link to edit it via the career page too though.
Really?? I appreciate the info. I probably should have looked a little harder tbh. Thanks!
This is for the FTP prediction - not the RPE prediction - thats always visible as of now
I definitely agree on the RPE scale
If you do a SS workout for 90 mins, and it predicts it will be moderate for you……
At the end, its not “hard” and I always complete it and sometimes bump up the last intervals a few %
But moderate seems to undersell 90 mins of sweet spot - at the end of a 20 min interval you feel your legs have worked…
Flipside is every time I do a V02 session it predicts it will be hard
I think it would be better if there was just 3 levels
As expected
Easier than expected
Harder than expected
That then covers your reaction to the work and takes into account the zone
From what they’ve said on the podcast the only thing that really matters with the RPE is being consistent with yourself. They gave an example of a rider who never marked anything higher than Moderate, but then was also failing workouts regularly. And the AI figured it out and was still feeding him appropriate workouts and predicting he would mark them as Moderate, even though most people would mark them as Hard or more. I.e. It wasn’t taking his Moderate rating as a cue to ramp things up aggressively.
I’m not sure VO2 should ever be less than Hard if done properly. Would also say that if it’s giving you a Sweetspot workout that it expects to be Moderate then just get it done and don’t feel the need to dial up the power to make it harder. As it’s likely it’s deliberately giving you a more Achievable workout to manage your fatigue for the days ahead which will help your consistency which in the long run will get you better gains than a few extra % on a Sweetspot workout.
I can see why they need 5 grades for someone with no power history
But someone on a plan shouldnt need more than 3, it should be to make small tweaks to the numbers not massive changes
(ie a 90 min SS session should never be easy, or very hard)
So its really moderate, hard or very hard
Which somewhat ties in with my suggestion!