Yes, absolutely. But I think for many athletes they have motivation and friends can provide support and encouragement.
AT could also be programed to be empathetic. Only half kidding - there are robots that can do chat pretty well. How much encouragement and from what source is needed?
e.g. Coach Chad Bot says: You are doing great!! Keep up the good work!! How’s the wife and kids? All good!! Kick butt at the race Saturday and I’ll look at your race file when you upload it!!
The thousand bucks was just meant as a throwaway “large” amount, I could equally have put ten thousand, rather than a figure to be dissected.
I think TR (including AT) is best looked at as the (a?) base for training rather than the whole thing so direct comparison with a coach is not quite right. Certainly as it stands it’s a one-way conversation in that you can’t ask “Why did you change that workout?” in the way that you could with an IRL coach and it doesn’t seem to pick up on subtleties of how you perform particular intervals. The former is a problem with machine learning in general, it’s very much a black box.
As a non-racing amateur a bit past 60 TR is fairly close to what I require. Cost aside, what would I get from taking on even a decent coach? Quicker progression? Better analysis of my weaknesses (there’s way more than one!)? My wife did look at getting a coach recently but the individual was asking £40/wk, i.e. nearly $60/wk or $3000/year. That’s just silly money for an amateur who again, doesn’t race. Somewhere around £70 - £100/month ($100 - $140/month) seems to be the starting point for British Cycling licensed coaches here in the UK.
Generally there’s three types of pricing:
what can the customer afford?
what’s the market rate?
what can I/the company get away with?
There’s actually a fourth: “What do I charge so I don’t get the business?” but that usually only applies when you don’t like the customer or the work to be done.
There was something along those lines in last week’s podcast (just listening to it because I was away, think it was in the section about plateaus in training)
Yes, understood. But it is actually a pretty good number to throw out there. At various times in my storied athletic career (LOL) have spent $50 a month upward of $200 a month. The $50 guy was a good value for me at the time. Now charges $100-150. The $200 guy was not a good value. I know one fellow, as good as it gets IMO, and he is in the 200-250 range. Anything above that for the normal amateur is nuts IMO.
I think TR has a good shot at replacing the low level, canned plan coaches. That’s an interesting discussion for the technical part. Athletes will still need human coaches and encouragement to perform. The best coaches are part (mostly?) therapists.
The black box part is interesting. I think the TR crew might say: “Believe the machine and let the results convince you”. I’m more in the “tell me why” camp. But good debate in different directions.
Have not listened to the latest pod yet. Will keep an ear out for the segment you mentioned - cheers.
I’ll add that coaches can help prevent their athletes from overreaching and/or burning out. I’ve had a coach for a few years and the most frequent line of questioning I get is along the lines of “how are you feeling?” and “how did that feel?l” she can look at my data including power and hr and get a good sense of what happened but she wants to hear it from “the horse’s mouth”. She definitely plays therapist and knows when I need a break.
But I think with TR both with AT and TrainNow it helps self coached athletes by adapting to their workout performance but also showing them workouts and giving athletes better indicators by labeling them as achievable, productive, stretch, etc. clearly in the end the athlete makes the choice but I like what TR has done with AT and TrainNow.
This is why as a legacy user im okay with paying more as I think TR is always trying to improve and add new features
Not to detract too much, but as it currently stands, AT is basically a canned plan + choose your own adventure after some of your key workouts. The hard days are more like a hodge podge of workouts, not always focusing on a particular aspect but only sticking within an achievable or slightly higher pl. Kind of similar to crossfits random wod, always different but scaled to you.
Erm… alternates or suggested adaptations are usually (always?) in the same zone and normally (always IME) follow the same format (i.e., it doesn’t sub short/shorts for long VO2 intervals, over/unders for long threshold etc). So not sure this is true.
I’ve been getting milk and bread from the same shop for nearly 25 years, I seriously wouldn’t expect them to keep charging me at 1990’s prices, that’s absolute bonkers , they’d go out of business.
I can remember when the Grandfather price promise was paid, I thought at the time that although it was well intentioned it would eventually end up being something that had to be removed. Given the growth in terms of what TrainerRoad now offers users, it really is nuts to keep people on the price they originally signed up to. I stopped using TR for a while as we found ourselves through no fault of our own a wage down in our house, and as a result had to trim anything non-essential from our budget. I’ve only just re-signed back up to TR after a few years away, I could have come back earlier but knowing I was paying almost double what others were just didn’t sit right with me.
I think that the product is good, then everyone should pay the same fair price, this could mean that for those who are paying the highest prices they might see a decrease and those who have enjoyed several years of extremely low pricing would probably see an increase, but a consistent, clear pricing strategy really would be good for any business.
It’s definitely true that SS is a very wide zone. There’s some other posts about this on the other AT thread. I find those 95% ones more like easy threshold than sweetspot; like you I’d prefer to do longer SS intervals.
I think my point about VO2 is 100% valid: AT tries to preserve the intent of the workout, it isn’t a random workout selector as you imply. The specific issue many of us have is with the very wide bands on SS workouts.
Other poster making a similar point that some of the SS workouts are at very high intensities. Nate’s response around their data showing they’re still productive. Not sure how far I agree but he’s got the data and I don’t
For full disclosure, I’m legacy priced at lower than current rate but more than many others…what I never understand is why people have major issue with what other people are paying (higher or lower). I make decision for myself whether I’m happy with price I pay…if someone else pays half or double what I do that has no impact on me, not my problem. Never understand why other peoples’ price factors into someone’s decision!
Because they think they’re subsidising you, when in fact you’ve helped pay for all the things they joined up for.
I’m torn about pricing, I’m on a decent discount, but I’m that busy I’ve barely used TR this past 12 months. It’s essentially parked. If I was paying full price, I would have come and gone a few times to save money. I live in a place with good weather 9-10 months a year, so I keep my subscription because I love what the TR guys are doing.
Except Nate has specifically said that he is looking at ways to bring in more money for development.
So TrainerRoad’s decision on wether or not to achieve some of this by raising the cost for legacy users could very well impact what will happen for full paying users.
@Nate_Pearson as a legacy member i think this idea would be more palatable if the members who agreed to this got something in return as a thanks. This could be annual TR swag, annual beers with Chad, first access to new features, a tiny bit of ownership in the company -ok i might be streching with that one but not really joking. If you agree to pay extra to “be nice” getting something special in return makes it easier to justify I feel
What about raising EVERYONE’s plans like 10-20$ a YEAR or something like that? For example, I’m grandfathered in at $129 and have been a member for over 3 years, so I would instead pay $139/year. Someone brand new would be paying $199/year instead of $189. Just an idea. TR is the only training platform I subscribe to, because between that, my Wahoo sensor stats, and my Apple watch, I don’t need anything more to train hard and really see results.
I also work for a small AI software company and understand the time and money that development takes. Regardless of what happens, thanks for building an amazing product and for taking the community into account while doing so.
I definitely like the idea of a granddiscount even if it’s not as good as the grandfather rate.
Someone suggested a 20% discount for loyalty which sounds good.
How about something similar that if you renew your rate decreases? An extra 1% a year?
So someone who renews their annual subscription gets a 20% discount. But someone who has been a member for 4 years gets 24% discount, someone who has been a member for 9 years gets 29% discount.
Part of the issue with pricing of SaaS is you have to be competitive with alternatives to attract new users, while rewarding loyalty to retain them and reduce churn (which reduces revenue, increases the need for marketing, and increases support costs as new users encounter old problems). I’m not sure there’s that much wiggle room on the former - hence the debates on the latter.
Not sure where I stand on this. I am on fixed legacy pricing but would be willing to spend a bit more. I did however jump at the grandfathered plan in an attempt to save money. Same reason I am not upgrading bikes anymore.
At my job we have had stagnant wage increases for years. I started 15 years ago at $23.50 an hour and now make $30.00. We just accepted wage increases of 2% a year for 2 years ( I did not agree with it.) For me to have the same purchasing power I had when I started I would need to be making around $44.00 an hour. Compare my wage increase to inflation and I am getting a pay cut of around 6-12% a year depending on whose numbers you use. My power bill literally doubled this month from $250 to over $500 because of transmission charges. And fuel prices are at an all time high of $4.70 a gallon USD (I am Canadian)
I may be the minority here making this kind of low wage but I have already cut cable, cell phone plans and many other things to keep my cycling habit alive. It comes down to value. I find great value in Trainer road. There is more value in paying the bills.
Something I have not seen discussed is that new users are all coming in at the higher prices. I do not believe TR has reached market saturation.
It would not take a lot for me to be priced out. Just trying to make a point about subscription services and that they are a luxury and not a necessity. We all have our choices to make. Just like TR has choices to make as well.
FWIW I’ve been thinking about this and as a legacy priced 2016 subscriber, here’s my take -
I’ve had a similar experience with another app - StrongLifts (formerly Stronglifts 5x5). When I joined them I joined with some “lifetime” level plan since I had the $ and wanted to not worry about price increases, etc. >> to 2019 and that went away, replaced with another, new option. The rationale? So they could raise more money and have more features for their users. Ironically, I was in a situation that made sense to pay more for a longer period of subscription. I suspect that in a few years this will come up again…
Anyway, I do believe that SL and TR is not an apples to apples comparison by any means. I see a similarity in the situation. TR is looking for ways to expand services and grow users. Legacy pricing can get in the way of that. Legacy pricing also keeps people here rather than shopping for a different system.
Without expanding on others points, my suggestion is pay ahead pricing to keep it simple for Users and TR. This could be in whatever increment makes sense, and would give people simple options based on their current state. Pay per workout? Pay per hour? Pre-pay up to 5 years?
For me, using this system I would welcome a price increase (but of course not too much). Just setting the price gives TR the ability to project, and the users the ability to evaluate the value of their purchase regularly. An example based on the current model could be:
Per workout - $5
Monthly - $19.99
Yearly - $189
3 year - $450
5 year - $600
