Goodbye to TR - no motivation to renew subscription

Results
21

Thanks, so didn’t have much luck with it? Would you be willing to share more?

I was cautious, because I don’t have any first-hand experience with it. But I haven’t heard rave reviews either and my experience with general purpose LLMs tells me that you (1) need enough expertise to spot non-sense and (2) you need to know how to phrase your input.

22

Not arguing with you at all. I knew it couldn’t be that great when the marketing material all says you need to try out CC during your trial period, but once you’re in the trial you find out you can’t use it without paying for it. Having said that, I’ve read that you can ask it to be more “tough love” and less “everything is roses” and it will get more critical of you. I’d also be interested in hearing your experience.

23

Just tell CoachCat to more strictly critique your ride. Yes, it is overwhelming positive. For most of my workouts, that is fine. But CoachCat can finely “criticize” and analyze your workout (or as I do at times, weekly critiques). Just for information, I am not saying that CoachCat works or. doesn’t, just that you can adjust its “approach and attitude.”

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24

That’s shady and counterproductive. Last time I checked, their website was quite bad and confusing, too. They aren’t doing themselves any favors.

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25

Oh, i told Coachcat to act like a drill sergeant. Still wasn’t helpful.

Im my experience, which was last year, so maybe its been improved, but i bet not, you got basically a static training plan and then the poor excuse for AI would basically do what the strava “ai” does and say wow you really did great in today ride, or wow, you did a really solid ride, but next time try to stick to the planned intervals. The only “ai” feature is you could tell to change a workout or you could tell it to add a race or rest day….basically siri, not ai.

Onetime i did a max effort in a race that was a 35-40 min hill. It gave me a new ftp estimate based on my highest 20 min effort? Seems like looking at the full 40 min would be a bit more accurate me think…but no the ai that is ai of a toddler only understand 20 min tests.

Its trash

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26

CoachCat AI has been improved upon recently. You can’t really compare it today to how it was a year ago.

27

Can you share more? (Like I wrote above, I have never used it, but I’d at least like to know what others with experience think of it.)

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28

So how has the ai improved. Does it adjust workouts based on your past performances?

29

Hey @ArniePL,

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for your feedback! :slightly_smiling_face:

There are a few things that I’d like to step in and try to help out with here. Here’s what I found after reviewing your career.

  1. It looks like you’ve only ever completed two Ad-Hoc training phases back in early/mid 2023. How far along did you ever take these other plans that you’re referencing? While some plans may seem similar early on (particularly during base training), they really start to diverge and become more specific in the build and later specialty phases..
  2. This one, I might need some more info on to be helpful. Looking back at your career, I can’t see any recent stretch of time where you actually followed a TR plan. The most recent I can see was in late 2024. Almost all of your TR workouts since have not followed any plan settings. I do see a ton of cut-short workouts from early this year that weren’t a part of a plan, and the post-workout survey responses show a wide variety of reasons ranging from illness, time, equipment issues, other, poor sleep, etc. Oftentimes times you attempted the same hard workout multiple days in a row after failing, each with a different response. This is problematic because we won’t necessarily change your upcoming workouts if the reason you failed the workout is because of equipment issues, time constraints, or sometimes even illness or poor sleep. If those workouts were too hard, we need to know that in order to make the appropriate changes to your future workouts. Additionally, following TR’s fatigue management recommendations is critical to avoiding long-term fatigue. I’m seeing along of really long unstructured rides (sometimes back to back) on yellow/red days that were likely at least a part of the reasoning for your accumulated fatigue.
  3. The point above applies here. Ensuring that you follow the plan and answer the post-workout surveys honestly is critical for us to get you the appropriate training.
  4. Outside Workouts can be tough to dial in! They take practice and planning, but if your terrain doesn’t allow for workouts of a specific type to be completed accurately, I’d recommend using Workout Alternates to find one that fits your specific needs.
  5. As others have already mentioned above, using keyword searches in the workout library can be really useful. Searching for “4x4” gets me 41 workout options. “5x5” gets me 65. From there, you can easily narrow down your search with the filters on the left-hand side.
  6. PLs for unstructured rides would be a great feature to employ here, but that alone isn’t a catchall for riding all summer long without structure. If you’re still planning on doing some structured training, you can build a plan that incorporates unstructured solo or group rides and still have great success.
  7. Did you often perform 20-minute tests? Were they inside or outside? Were they using the same power meter as you used inside? I’d be happy to dig into this some more, but based on your most recent post-workout survey responses, I’d say that your FTP is set accurately, at least for the power sensor you’re using when training inside. DM me if you’d like to chat about this more!
  8. Again, how far did you take those plans? Both the “Improve Climbing” and “Increase FTP” plans have VO2 Max workouts in their Build and Specialty phases.

It makes me sad to think that we may have lost your trust in our plans, but I do believe that if we worked together on understanding what your particular needs and goals are and what and how the product can help you achieve them, I am sure we can get you in a place where you could follow a plan with quality and consistency, with much better success than you had in the past.

Let me know if you have any interest in working on this moving forward; otherwise, we wish you the best in your training journey in the future! :handshake:

Thanks again for the feedback & happy riding!

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30

Oh shit, @eddie brought the receipts.

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31

Big Brother :laughing:

32

If I had a nickel for every time someone on the internet complained about a product they either didn’t use or didn’t use properly…

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33

Look, I’m a huge advocate of TR and sing is praises during group rides often, but totally accept that it might not be a good fit everyone - I don’t want to come across like the OP “wasn’t using it right” (although some of Eddie’s post did make me chuckle) but it is a shame the OP didn’t at least engage with TR support or the forum before quitting.

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34

Everyone is different, but OP’s outline is very similar to what I would have written when I left TR. I used for several years quite consistently both before and after Adaptive Training was added, and I kept plateauing, plain and simple. I have been doing structured training for probably 15 of the 20 years I’ve been riding. I know plateauing is not uncommon in any training regime, but my challenge with TR is that the experience is so “on rails” that it felt like it became more work to edit it than to just build my own simpler plan.

I had exactly the OP’s experience with FTP estimates and even ramp tests. Maybe I am not the target audience/population for these tools, but I get target numbers that are far more realistic at all intensity levels if I do a proper long-duration FTP test (either a 20min style or even Empirical Cycling style).

Also he’s right about some of the workouts being very difficult to do outside, especially the 30/15 or 30/30 VO2s. People have been doing structured training outdoors for a long long time, so it’s not hard to write workouts that can be done outside. The problem comes when you write workouts through the lens of “indoor first,” but then don’t give users an easy way to adapt it for outdoor training. It becomes a lot of work to edit every single workout individually, at which point one might as well just write their own plan once equipped with enough knowledge and experience.

I’m looking for a reason to come back to TR, because there are definitely things I like about it, and recognize it can’t be all things to all people.

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35

Did you break out of the plateau after you left?

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36

I wonder if a plateau is sort of by design if you follow a traditional base-build-peak-race type plan. One can’t build infinitely all season. Hopefully, one maintains fitness and then does their next build from a higher level the next year.

Maybe TR doesn’t have a good “stay fit all year long” type plan?

37

Ime TR did a perfectly fine job of base/build/peak (it had issues with overall intensity and some personalization that has seemingly been fixed/greatly improved since I used it) but it does not have the ability that I know of to figure out why someone has plateaued and then build a plan to break through that plateau.

It did a good job of building me to basically the same fitness each spring for racing but after becoming coached, and again after self coaching I had large improvements in fitness with some adjustments in training.

38

Part of me wants him to look at my history and tell me what a good user I am

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39

For all the amazing things TR offers, I’ve said countless times that TR is terrible regarding VO2 max work. It’s just not a strong suit. Yes, you can search for 4x4 or 5x5 manually. But I’ve yet to ever be given one of these workouts in a plan. Instead I get 60 second or maybe some 2 min intervals. I also think their ratings are all off. I’ve done 8.0 rated workouts with 30/30s and it’s been easy, Moderate at worst. Then I’ll do a 7.0 extended interval workout and it’s All Out. The difficulties are just all over the place.

I also wish they would do a proper VO2 block. They pepper it in, a workout here and there. Or once a week. But no specific VO2 blocks. After a few years of TR plans, I had a coach add in a specific 3-week block and I couldn’t believe the gains I saw. Did the same thing the following year and again big gains.

I think sometimes TR overcomplicates things because engaging workouts sells. It keeps people finishing workouts. Which is great. But I can do boring. I can do long boring sweet spot intervals. I don’t need all the fancy changes or an interval with 8 power targets.

Anyways, TR was a huge part of my training development. I can’t thank them enough for where I am today. But I left a few years ago when I wasn’t getting faster and the boring training plans are what I needed. Specific blocks in the offseason and I keep getting stronger and faster. Something I wasn’t getting with the mish mash TR plans. It’s great for a lot of people. And they’re doing great things. It just doesn’t fit everybody.

Also we have to all agree that this forum is a wealth of information and even being able to discuss their competitors is awesome. Having an open space to discuss and learn is invaluable for everybody.

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40

We need a roast me thread series. Once a week a TR staff member picks a random volunteer forum user and rips into their training.

I say this as a joke but also it could be pretty educational.

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