I have this issue with the F500 too - I want to keep doing it but I’m not sure it’s ultimately good for my training.
That is heaping a lot of hope onto AT…
It is 
For me every big training overload week, at some point, delivers a fitness bump. Its all about managing the week or two after the overload 
AT will never replace a coach, yourself and simple common sense 
at most it will prescribe easy spins as a workouts, nothing more.
Reading all the related topics I think people have some really high expectations about AT, but it is only a tool that can help a little bit with progressions through the workouts that users do not have to think if 3x15@FTP is harder than 2x20@FTP. I cannot imagine it can do anything more even if you feed it all the metrics in the world. Because there is a ton of aspects that cannot be quantified by any mathematical modeling (example - I have had very intensive and stressful weeks at work. I failed workouts that I could do 2 weeks earlier. My every parameter was in norm, even during the ride - but my mind was not. Today I have done the same workout with ease - just simply because today was an easier day at work).
Sorry for the digression and my 2 cents.
Not a digression. Perfect examples of why optimizing only for workout compliance / zero workout failure wouldn’t be a good solution.
The biggest problem with having AT manage fatigue/adapt your rides to recovery etc is a)athlete honesty, and b)athlete ego/expectation.
From what I’ve read, most people have a ready excuse when a workout is a fail or struggle (I’m the same), and want to keep moving forwards with their training without being able to see the forest for the trees.
…
Personally I think AT is on the right track and I’ve found the load just right and exploring my limits with workouts already. I think the TR team have some interesting ideas planned.
When it comes to me and my strange preferences I would trade AT for any decent plan builder not controlled by some things but rather combination of user preference and level.
For example:
I want to focus on my Vo2 max for 3 weeks, I choose time frame, zone with main focus, number of hours/wk or some other progression (could be even based on my previous weeks and training load). It could be expanded into secondary focus etc. This way I would have block that can be moved as a whole and used in the future as a template, but changed dynamically basing on my actualparameters like levels, tss, load ftp. This would be the most awesome feature. I would like some automation but with ability to use this automation as support of manual decisions.
But I am strange this way, as I like to have control over my training, and like to change things to see how my body will react. Maybe my biggest problem is the lack of features for “tinkers”, that like the process of choosing the workouts (if someone was playing Football Manager ever in his life know what I am talking about ;))
Edit ----
I have reflected that described almost old plan system, but with some twists. Maybe I am too old for this s… as someone has said
I do think after reading the SS Progression thread, that there’s merit in having VO2 Build, SS Build, Threshold Build as options for Build phase.
AT has been perfect for me so far. I’m bumping up to some pretty daunting looking threshold workouts though so it’ll be interesting to see, if I have a struggle at some point, how AT will then manage the load/progression.
For what it’s worth, I’m not talking about base being too easy in my case (I’m in build), it’s the fact that the system seemed to always make things easier when I set workouts as hard / very hard.
My faulty RPE meter perhaps, but it’s rare that even an “easy” workout feels easy to me. I’m not one of these riders that gets a endorphin boost from training, so they all feel pretty miserable to me.
Yeah, that is part of what sparked the large discussion based on the Pass/Success survey responses.
I refined the info from Ivy to try to get something that pulled her info into a partial “check list” where you can compare the TR based info and maybe pick the “correct” response despite our different experience and scales. Not claiming this is perfect, but some of the clarified info (especially the interval related stuff, shown as underlined) has helped me pick answers since that discussion.
Support got back to me, I’ll digest it properly when I am awake, but the latest version of AT does seem to be taking account of all workouts behind the scenes but isn’t displaying the results consistently on the calendar. Which is good to know. From the ride I done tonight it looks like future rides are displaying correctly and it’s just historic rides that are a bit hit or miss on the calendar and if they are all hits behind the scenes I consider it a success 
I’ve been basically following Chad’s table, it’s quite a handy way of looking at it.
To the above posters who are concerned about AT only prescribing easy workouts, the reductive example where AT just provides Lazy Mountain -1 to ensure compliance is obviously not how AT works - it only prescribes adaptations within the boundaries of the goals for that day (threshold, VO2 etc). The plans have an initial progression rate, if you find it too easy it increases the progression rate, and vice versa if you find it too hard. N=1, that works exactly as I anticipated, and it is categorically not too easy!
Earlier in the last block I ranked some threshold ones easy and it significantly bumped the difficulty. My PLs did start off a bit low in some areas when I first got on in May (personally, that was sweetspot/threshold), but selecting a couple of harder alternatives at the start evened it out pretty quickly. After that I was actually finding it too hard in the last block, so AT backed the progression off a bit, whereas just into this block I have been finding them a bit too easy (I guess after the rest week etc) so AT has bumped the future ones up. It’s basically been performing as expected from my perspective w.r.t. indoor workouts.
Specifically in this block I found the early VO2 ones a bit too easy (i.e., Cape Range which is basically 4x5 at 106% but with a 30s recovery in the middle of each 5 min) and my HR was nowhere near what I’d normally associate with VO2. I ranked it as such and now the later workouts look a lot more VO2-y.
What I found in Build especially is that in the old builds there used to be a couple of workouts which were absolutely killer, and several times I effectively abandoned my plan during build. Whereas this time round, I am now into Specialty with some nice gains (I have been setting season, 2021 and all-time power PRs this week and last!).
New functionality for linking outdoor rides looks like it will be a good help especially for the Z2 ones that I like to do outside. In future, when AT can finally work with any power trace, I expect I will be more likely to go out with a set of goals in mind (i.e., hit these 3 climbs at threshold), and have AT deal with it rather than mess around trying to find roads to follow the workouts exactly - something which is quite hard from where I live.
That was the other annoyance, I went into the FTP test with already degraded levels (after a one week taper, an event week and a week of recovery), and then after an FTP increase the system basically reduced all my levels to 1.
Has taken me a solid month and a half to try and work out what my levels really are, and I’m still not there on a couple of zones (sweet spot specifically). I definitely wont be doing another FTP test any time soon, I’d rather just get to level 10 in sweet spot again and then start increasing the difficulty, at least until I’m pushing 10 on either threshold or VO2max.
Just sharing, I’m in HIM LV and AT adapted my swim workouts for the first time. Hopefully this is a good sign that us triathletes will be getting a little more attention. Happy to see updates to swim workouts, and hopefully run workouts follow.
Not sure if this is a bug.
I use the web based calendar, my OS (and machine) are too old to use the desktop app, everything is outdoors at the moment so not using the app on the iPad either.
After a workout I refresh the page and I get adaptations. Just got back from a ride and I accepted them for example. However at this point I haven’t completed the survey so AT is missing my input. If I then open up the workout and fill out the survey then no further adaptations are offered. So using the web page as the view on AT isn’t acting as we’ve been told it should.
Please check in with support about that: support@trainerroad.com.
Thanks in advance!
So, is it unreasonable to expect that 6 months is a little bit on the long side for a product to be in beta? Thanks for the second class status, guys, from everyone who is still waiting patiently.
Yup, did exactly this as well. Otherwise the workouts would have been way too easy, as a slight FTP bump moved all my progression levels down to near 1. I think the progression level drop with an FTP bump is way too extreme (at least what I experienced), so hopefully this will be fixed.