Masters (45) HV plans user here. AT does improve upon this in my experience. SSBHV 1 & 2 went much better this year with AT than last, even though last year I made my own 3/1 work/rest alternative HV plan. When I struggled during week 4 of SSBHV2, AT got me back on track and I ended up crushing week 5. With the “soon” addition of TR allowing “hours to train per day” this will further refine the plans. All that being said, I still think TR is wrong in prescribing more SS on Sundays in most of their plans. It’s just too much.
Can’t see them splitting features/pricing into tiers. Partly because I think it conflicts with TR’s mission statement of making people faster. If they think a feature makes you faster (which is what most of the AT marketing is saying) then pretty hard to then say that not all users can have that feature. Unless the tiers are called “fast” and “not so fast”… And partly because this thread just confirms how many different ways there are of using TR and what weight people put on different features depending on age, experience, goals, whether they do multisports, etc. So the features don’t really break down into a nice standard vs premium set. And Strava have demonstrated just how bad an idea it is to go down the route of having lots of different feature packages to subscribe to.
I’m a >5 year user with $99 pricing. I’m not going to get emotional about what Nate did or didn’t promise, I wasn’t even aware of that commitment until I started listening to the podcasts and using the forum a few years after I initially subscribed. If or when they make changes to what I pay or what features I get I’ll make a decision then as to whether it’s still something I subscribe to. I do really like TR for the periods when I’m focused on improving performance, but there are also large chunks of the year where I’m not using it for much more than indoor Z2 riding either because I’m not doing intensity or else I’m getting my intensity elsewhere (races, group rides, etc). Lots of cheaper/free options for just spinning along in Z2 in the garage, so if I was having to justify my subscription on a cost/benefit basis I’d probably dial TR down to maybe half the year or less.
One other aspect which hasn’t been touched on I don’t think (haven’t fully read all 766 posts!) is the benefit to TR of having a base of users who are subscribed continuously for years. Not talking about the revenue stream (though that’s certainly a benefit), I’m talking about the data. I.e. capturing what people are doing when they’re not following TR plans, both on the bike and potentially off it (fairly sure the TR T&Cs enable them to capture all kinds of other health metrics like sleep, weight, HRV if that data is available via the integrations TR has). That’s got to be hugely useful in developing and fine tuning new features.
Fair enough, a perfectly reasonable response….so given the competitors I laid out above (Zwift $15/month; System $129 / year, $15/month), would you leave TR?
That is the core issue specifically because it means programmers on teams are not being released from prior projects to work on new ones because their work is not done yet. Hence the need for more revenue to hire more people to develop new features. Repeat that cycle a few times and you end up having to ditch legacy pricing.
But “broken promise” is a stretch at best, IMO. The presence of a feature request, no matter how old, is not a promise.
TR never claimed that the end result product was in active production. Nate spent time in that thread talking about ideas and what people wanted. At no point in there was a date or hard product “promised” from what I’ve read.
I think people took the rays of light shared like the “background filling of activities” as a sign and let their expectations go further than reality.
This product is still on the “to do” list and I expect it may well be closer to active than ever since AT is so far along (yes, that’s speculation). I fully expect it to happen, we just don’t know when.
And/or because you already hired more people to develop new features to attract new customers, and then new user signup wasn’t as high as expected/hoped for and you therefore now need to increase revenues from the existing customer base instead to balance the books sustainably. Anecdotally I know quite a few existing TR users who are making use of new features like AT and Trainnow, but actually I can’t think of anybody I know who is new to TR in the last year or so. This despite the fact that there has been significant cycling “growth” among my acquaintances in that timeframe (people starting riding, increasing their riding, buying their first PM and/or buying their first smart trainer).
but you’re missing a few…and stuff like TrainerDay at $3.99 is a very real alternative when linked with Intervals.icu 
That wasn’t meant to be an inclusive list….just two of the biggest competitors that I could think of.
I am not familiar with Trainer Day, but it kinda sounds like it is not a stand alone product if you also have to link with intervals.icu, so there is added complexity.
But sure, toss them or anyone else in the mix….but if TD is only $4/ month, the question becomes why aren’t TR users leaving now for TD if it is so much cheaper?
You are forgetting Xert which I would put as TR nearest comparable competitor.
$99 a year
Better workout creator
More app functions (switch from slope/erg, skip/repeat intervals, dynamic workouts, in app live metrics)
Real time threshold
Predicted threshold based on training
Adaptive training
Garmin data field
Includes all cycling activities…indoor/outdoors and adapts your plan accordingly.
Freshness indicator
There are more
TR has a better calendar
I’m not saying Xert is better or worse than TR there are areas Xert is better and areas TR is better…and is outside the scope of this discussion, but you actually get more functionality/features in Xert for half the price of a new TR user.
I’m legacy $99. Which is why I’ve stayed around. If they up’d my price I’d leave as all the new features Nate talks about are in Xert already. Maybe increasing my price would do me a favour as I’d no longer feel any loyalty/benefit of continuing my subscription.
I was going to say Xert but someone beat me to it. Looking at all the advantages of Xert that he’s laid out I’m wondering why I kept up my subscription of TR. Habit? Because @ $99 year fixed it wasn’t really worth thinking about. It is now though.
Couldn’t agree more
You are very optimistic! Comments from TR staff indicate swim/run/triathlon is way farther down the priority list than we thought or hoped. That is the big reason that I may let me legacy TR account go. I agree that nothing was promised and no timeline was given. However, comments made in that and other triathlon-related threads did make it seem like it was a priority and that they were working on it. Then TR released group workouts (which I have and never will use), plan builder (which is dangerous for triathlon training, specifically the massive drops down and jumps up in running volume between phases) and now AT.
Currently there are a bunch of much smaller companies that have already released “adaptive”-style triathlon training. My guess (purely a guess) is one of these smaller companies takes off within the year and TR triathlon falls way behind.
You don’t have to, intervals just adds functionality , TrainerDay has it’s own workout library, training plan builder, training plans and workout player (phone only, no desktop version at this point)
Personally I used TrainerDay as TR workout editor (via TrainingPeaks) amongst other things, even the free version allows you to do that
- Realistic, IMO. I believe it WILL happen because they said it’s on the list and they do want to do it. But importantly, I do NOT expect a specific timeline for delivery, as many others seem to have done and seem to be leveraging via the “broken promise” claims.
-
Precisely my point. TR never gave any firm timeline or estimate for completion other than they needed to get done with existing priorities first (presumably AT).
-
But we have more than a few people here and in that topic reacting like that promise existed, was broken and now TR is “in the wrong” somehow. It’s just not right.
-
I get the desire and wish to have this done, I totally sympathize to a point, but the expectations far exceeded the info TR shared. Negative reactions on the level we see are just off balance, IMO.
Again, my list was not meant to be 100% inclusive of all the option and I think everyone popping in with “What about this app?” is missing the point.
I am trying to get to where the “pressure points” are for some Legacy users who say they will leave if the price goes up. As already established, some who said they would leave, when queried on an exact, modest, price increase indicated that they would stay.
Pick whatever competitive training program you want…it is immaterial. This simply highlights my larger point in that this discussion is not really being productive for TR, IMO, despite the massive amount of feedback. There is so much noise and emotion in the discussion that you can’t discern anything form it that is useful.
We have even gone from the price increase discussion to many users venting about a perceived lack of implementation of some features that they felt were promised long ago.
(FWIW, I tried Xert a few years ago and found it way over-complicated vs. TR. For data geeks, I suppose it is great, but I would think that for the majority of people who just want to load a plan and train, it is too much. YMMV.)
TD is like TR at the start - no calendar and analytics, so if you need that then Intervals.icu is the fix. Biggest difference is that it has a much bigger community element at its heart, so many workouts are created by users and made public, so its quickly built 20,000+. There are also coach and community created training plans available to subscribers. If you just want a big w/o library, choice of lots of plans and an erg player etc then its perfect,. If you have a look through the w/o library you’ll see a few TR users obviously have jumped
I’m still at the $99/year price which is a bargain IMO. I’ve had a coach for a few years so don’t use the TR plans currently but when I go back to self-coaching I’ll go back to some TR plans and will be excited to use AT and TrainNow features.
I appreciate Nate and the team’s transparency both in the forum and on the podcast. I remember Nate saying things about not raising prices for existing users. I guess I didn’t think much about it and just assumed eventually my rates would need to go up.
I feel like $99/year is a great deal. If it went up to $125/year I doubt I’d be upset. It’s a solid product and worth it in my opinion. Honestly I wouldn’t blame TR if they just put everybody at the $189/year level and called it a day. I know some people here would be upset but I think TR is worth it.
Also, I know everybody mentions Zwift but it’s be great if TR allowed other companies to make use of their plans on their platforms but I’m not sure that’s feasible. Zwift has never grabbed my attention but I’ve tried RGT cycling and Fulgaz which are both cool. It’s easy enough to run TR on my phone and Fulgaz on my laptop.
Tiered pricing is the wrong way to go IMO. But I like simple.
Again, I agree! Lots of over-reaction everywhere, but I guess it is the internet. For me personally, I felt like some of the expectation was set by TR. I don’t remember the exact timing, but when they were talking about importing swim/runs on the backend, they were simultaneously talking on the podcast about how they were all going to take on triathlon the next year. I incorrectly put two-and-two together and it got my hopes up (probably shouldn’t have).
I usually pay for a current product, not something I think may come. In TR’s case, I actually kept my legacy subscription active solely because I liked the podcast and hoped the triathlon elements were coming. In TR’s current form, and looking at the other competition in the triathlon market, TR is more and more looking like it is not worth even my legacy price.
As a triathlete myself or up until a couple years ago I think TR should stick strictly to cycling. It’s clearly their primary focus so throwing in those triathlon plans just doesn’t seem worth it. Its always secondary to their primary cycling stuff.
Agreed. Triathletes are a niche inside of a niche and I’m sure make up a very small percentage of TR users. After listening to every podcast to date and reading the vast majority of comments from TR employees in this forum over the past 4+ years, I can confidently say the incorporating run and swim into AT is years away at best. Like it or not TR is a cycling product with a courtesy to appeasing triathletes. Triathletes are not on the back burner, they haven’t even made it to the stove. If you’re a triathlete waiting for AT to incorporate other sports I would set your expectations at 3+ years away and then hope TR delivers earlier. If I was a serious Triathlete I would look elsewhere, even though I’m a big fan of TR.