At the moment probably not, but they are part way there. Having more flexible plans, particular for Masters and to be able able to incorporate outside rides was what I was anticipating. Also the workout player at that time was streets ahead of anything else I tried. You got on your bike and it just worked unlike others. That is no longer the case others, notably Xert have caught up in that respect and is a viable solo alternative to TR these days. A proper AT incorporating outside rides would go a long way to addressing that point with me. At the moment I happily use 2 platforms. Xert & TR. If TR put my legacy pricing up I would have to consider dropping one. At the moment that would be TR,
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I like the idea of an optional analytics suite. To my mind that is a differentiated value add from the ācore productā and also hits the āproā button. Personally speaking I pay for TP premium purely to easily see my TSB & ramp rates and have a nice central point for my weight data (Withings), HRV/Sleep (Oura) and activity (Strava, TR, Garmin).
Lol. Apparently my thoughts about this issue were articulated a few years agoā¦
Yeah I agree. Sounds like theyāre looking at functionality using this extra data already (the red light/green light thing Nate mentioned). A Pro version including the normal TSS tracking and planning stuff plus this functionality using other metadata would be cool - then the standard version is just the vanilla training/AT package (I think you need AT in the core package as itās the key differentiator to other training plan platforms).
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TRās slogan is to make us faster cyclists. It was set up to provide workouts for indoor training.
If that ticks your boxes, TR is perfect. I suspect for the vast majority of users they ride for pleasure outside (unstructed riding) or have other forms of exercise. This means that a lot of the extra features that help fine tune training become redundant because they donāt take account of those things which makes a lot users question the value of the product.
I do feel bad for constantly mentioning run/Tri integration because that has never been their main goal. Many other uses have additional nuances around training plans- intensity, age etc etc. Based on the recent current developments, TR core offer has not changed - to make cyclists faster using structured training.
It is up to TR how they evolve and how they use their income to develop their product.
At the end of the day people will speak with their money and will find something else if TR doesnāt match their needs.
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I donāt think āDonate Nowā works as there wonāt be the predictability around income. You canāt really expect Nate to invest lots of time and effort into getting new engineers on the basis of an unpredictable income stream. Subscriptions are a reliable income, I imagine Nate & team know have measured how many users abandon ship each year and how many new people sign up, at least within some thresholds.
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So whereās the āTR wants to drop my priceā thread with all the honey?
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@Nate_Pearson Someone suggested an inflation or nominal increase in all prices, including legacy pricing. As someone tied in to a legacy price, Iād be happy with that.
Iām also a year around indoor trainer though - outdoor workouts just donāt work, so the next big TR win for me is the unstructured rides counting.
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Perhaps a user-wide survey would be something to consider.
As a legacy user I respect that some increase in fee may be appropriate. If I read what you posted correctly, you are saying that as legacy user I would be placed in the Pro level without an additional charge or not at the full rate of a Pro subscription. If that is the case, Iād still be willing to pay a little more per month (either some percentage increase based on longevity with TrainerRoad, or a smaller flat-rate increase).
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Iām not donating for a service, its not a charity.
At the minute I am very happy with the service. Before I came onto trainer road I was paying Ā£80 a month for a coach, I got an email with my programme every 2 weeks and a cookie cutter programme. The standard of training is much better with TR, I would be willing to pay more for the service that we now have and I think it was a mistake of Nate to say the charges will never go up, although I begrudge netflix going up I donāt stop paying.
For me outside workouts are meaningless as are further analytics, all I want to know is what to do to improve and as long as I am I am happy. what I want are improved tri programmes which I think are badly lacking. I always hoped that when the team moved into tri that it would be a focus but that doesnāt look to be the case at the minute.
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I am, admittedly, an outlier, but it seems out of place to include PlanBuilder with this group. I would imagine that many of these āpower usersā would grow out of PlanBuilder after 2-3 years.
Iād guess that PlanBuilder would be a good taste at the lower tier to get people to the higher tier. Included in both, but maybe āunlockedā or made more visible after a certain period of time at the more basic tier.
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I am in a much smaller cycling club, maybe 40-50 members, but with a much more active TT and road racing scene. I would say a far larger percentage (even some who do not race) use TR. Others are coached but do not use TR. They also use Zwift, RGT and other platforms, depending on seasonality.
I suspect Nateās characterisation of āBroadly two groupsā is the right sort of area. I suspect it might be three:
- Serious training people, for racing etc.
- Those who want structure in their training, but in a more ad hoc/seasonal one event way
- Those who just want to jump on and get something suitable.
I guess we are spliting personas, but as someone once said āThere are two types of people in the world: Those who divide the world into two types of people - and those that donātā. 
I do get the impression reading all this that Nateās thinking and description of the problem is becoming clearer (with all the input and despite all the noise).
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That does stand out as odd. Nate can clarify the vision, but seems that TR envisions Plan Builder and AT going together and being the flagship product and main path to making riders faster.
What some (self included) want are not the Plan Builder + AT approach, but rather the workout player, workout creator, workout library and calendar. Better analytics would be nice, but this group of users is likely using Intervals.ICU, WKO or GC already, so TR spending time on that is perhaps not a good use of their development resources.
Suspectā¦ the group of users Iām in who just want some of the TR apps is fairly small and likely not the target market. But we might be cheap to keep around and we might decide at some point to upgrade and change our training approach and use the PB+AT toolkit. If Iām an app user and in the ecosystem higher chance that Iāll upgrade than if I wander off to other platforms.
The target market seems to be to go after riders who want to: (a) follow a plan without much question as to what is in the plan , (b) have adaptive workouts which drive success rates per workout , and (c) who donāt want to do hard test rides . That is absolutely great and if it works then TR has made big strides from canned plans and low skill coaches.
Just thinking out loudā¦ there does seem to be a number of people using the apps but not using PB, AT or a TR plan. I wonder if AT could evolve to āmonitorā these folks and at some point a suggestion box pops up and says:
The TR AT Evermind has been watching you and your training. If you introduce the following modifications the algorithm suggests better return on your time investment. Please consider these alternative plans for the next two months.
Something like that would get my attention. Likely a long way off but we can dream.
Also, while Iām typing and helping to extend this thread toward 1,000 postsā¦
Good on you Nate for getting back on the forum. No matter what direction TR takes, itās always fun to see how much the TR team cares.
I generally do not like gamification concepts, but TR could use a set of āmore funā workouts. Iāve created some of my own and remember when they had the sufferfest rides. For folks using TR for winter fitness, and maybe using TrainNow as opposed to planning of thinking, it would be more fun to see TGTTOS pop up as opposed to Leconte.
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100%
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Essentially what I described in an earlier post. For me, AT is not particularly useful until it can respond to, and propose adaptations for, inputs and plans outside of Plan Builder and default TR workouts
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IMO - group 3 is likely to be on Zwift right? I see a lot of people on my Strava feed who just hop on Zwift and pick a random workout from their catalogue. I canāt imagine persuading them to pay for TR would be easy, although the total addressable market would be much larger. TrainNow would seem to be a decent standalone product for them (assuming the rest of their training is visible to TR). You could imagine a special TrainNow TR app, you sync your TR with Strava and then when you got on the TrainNow app you just see the 3 TN recommendations for the day, based on what youāve been doing recently. Although I expect the price expectation for that app might be fairly low.
I would expect the sweetspot would be between 1 and 2 - people at the top end of 1 are more likely to be coached. Certainly I am between 1 and 2, I donāt race really except on Zwift but I do want to be able to ride well with my club and to perform to the best of my ability on the events that I do take part in, but equally I do train almost year round.
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Iāve had locked in pricing since 2013, and in exchange, I have continued to pay through months in which I rarely use TR for a lot of reasons. And TR is not the only training platform I use.
Iāve seen a lot of change and enhancements to the platform since I first joined. Having said that, I wouldnāt mind paying incrementally for some additional functions described in the podcast. But I think those increments should be on top of my current base if Nate is serious about keeping his promise. For example, I may not mind paying some incremental dollars from my base level for the enhancements talked about on this podcast. I would greatly resent being bumped up to a price that new customers are paying to obtain those enhancements.
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So many quality comments here, and without quoting them all I particularly find myself nodding in agreement as Iām reading posts from @PhilSJones, @AlphaDogCycling and @rthompson among others. I get Nate & Co wanting to push the envelope on new stuff; at the same time, you want the envelope to actually hold stuff when you use it (wow, is that a tortured metaphor for āmake sure the stuff youāve already introduced actually works well as people need it toā as the folks above have all written about more eloquently). I spent a ton of time working with support during AT closed beta, and felt like TR had overpromised and underdelivered at that point.
As I approach age 68 Iām much less about hard-core training and analytics than I am finding effective and efficient ways to train that reflect the joy of cycling. For me thatās more about what I can do outside on the bike vs on the rollers. The outside ride feature is good, but the implementation of unstructured outside rides in AT leaves me frustrated. Others have written about the desire for PB and other tools to reflect master athlete training design. Iām a legacy guy since 2013, and used TR before that with coming in and out of subscribing for winter. I had the Sufferfest videos before it was a subscription service and certainly like the TR focus more so havenāt looked back there. But depending on where TR goes perhaps itās served its purpose for me; Iāll watch what happens until my annual renewal comes up again in October.
And then of course, there is this POV from the Jan 16 Pez review of Phil Cavellis āThe MidLife Cyclistā where they quote from the authorās epilogue: āI canāt make myself perpetually young, but I can make sure that my wisdom and common sense increases to meet the challenges of maintaining health, speed and strength. So unshackle yourself from your stationary trainer and your power meter. Go out into nature on your bike and take a few breaths. Remember that trying to make old people young again is the ultimate foolās errand. But trying to make old people fast is fun, life-affirming and almost certainly good for us.ā
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Fair comments. While I think that would be a decent and useful product I also think very few of that group 3 (Zwift) crowd would be much interested in it: itād simply appear too dull and no fun to them (which is likely their view of current TR). I agree itād have to be low cost, but despite that low cost I can easily imagine such a product simply withering on the vine due to lack of interest by the imagined target audience, such that the app ended up being a colossal waste of resources by TR.