The plans have constantly evolved. The ones from 2020 weren’t the same as the ones from 2016. Should they provide access to every version of every plan over the years, even if they know it’s inferior? Is that worth the time and personnel and confusion of new people signing up and getting hit with multiple years worth of 50-something different training plans to do, each with their own volumes? Should microsoft still sell Windows 95 and allow me to order the floppy discs and install it to my PC and offer full customer support for it? Stuff gets phased out and someone will always be upset when that happens.
They haven’t removed those workouts from the library either. If you want to do the old plans, you can still do them. There’s plenty of screenshots floating around, or you could look at your old completions and create it in the calendar yourself. It’d probably take half an hour to do a 6-8 week block. People spend more time here arguing/complaining about random stuff.
Yeah, but I guess I’d just like to feel like I can suggest stuff in these forums without people jumping in and getting really defensive on TR’s behalf. At the moment I just feel like it’s kind of got to the point where you can’t say anything other than “adaptive training is great!” without people acting like your opinion is ridiculous, and that’s really frustrating.
AFAIK, TR hasn’t made any attempt to please anyone with regard to access to the old plans as an interim measure.
They actually haven’t even responded to the issue at all, so in the meantime sensitivity and discontent by those raising the issue will continue to rise!
I’m always of the opinion that there are options out there, and nothing prevents anyone from picking any competitive option. If a change in TR or SufferFest or Xert or - gasp - Zwift plans make another choice better than my current one, then I can go there.
It’s not a ridiculous thing to ask for, you are absolutely right. But it’s one that may or may not be available. I tend to avoid agonizing over the unavailability of things that are outside my control.
We welcome all discussion, pro/con and the like. People are free to offer a comment or suggestion, and others are free to offer counterpoints and such.
I do my best to step back and let people discuss matters as they see fit, and only step in if I see or am flagged with a forum guideline problem. Other than handling those issues, I try to remain “hands off” to let people cover these discussions from the angles they desire. If people see a problem with any post, they should use the flag feature on the forum, and Ivy or I will handle them as appropriate.
Generally speaking, I know TR welcomes these types of discussions, even when they are critical of their direction. They follow these topics and quite often reacts based upon them. So I see them as valuable, as I think TR does as well.
Sorry, I wasn’t asking you to moderate (I realize my reply was ambiguous!) but it just feels like, at the moment, anything that’s pointed out here that’s not completely positive just gets swamped by people ridiculing it. I’m guessing it’s just defensiveness left over from the Dylan Johnson (questionable spelling?) video induced swarm of comments, but it’d be nice if people realised that the people that take the time to visit this forum (now the “polarized vs sweet spot” debacle is over) come here because they like TR.
I also dislike the responses that are essentially “Don’t like it? Use something else” because I want to use TR!
I get it, and I do think it’s actually a reasonable thing to ask for. I suspect these threads are read by @Nate_Pearson and the other decision makers at TR and sometimes they revise their actions to keep us happy.
On the other hand I think you have to understand it’s difficult and costly to provide unlimited support and access to legacy plans. That takes time, money and resources that could be better spent developing better plans that will make us all faster, faster. If they provide archived plans for everything, there’s gonna be endless threads on here complaining about how SSBMV2 from the fall of 2017 doesn’t jive with AT and it keeps modifying the plan too much and suggesting X-Y-Z instead and the progression isn’t right and they’re getting burnt out or undertrained. Then everyone on here is gonna be like ‘well why don’t you use the new plans?’ and they’re gonna wonder why the old plans are even available if they don’t work right, and maybe they don’t import into the calendar perfectly then some support ticket has to be opened and dealt with by the software team to keep that customer happy with his plan from 4+ years ago.
I’d prefer to have them as a company trying to constantly improve and using my subscription $ to create a better product that makes me the best cyclist I can be, while understanding it’s still just a platform and I need to examine the plans, workouts and my daily/weekly fatigue and make modifications to suit me and my life.
Yeah, as we see with a range of these “hot button” issues, things can get a bit heated. It is great to share these ideas from any angle. I just hope people do it with respect and consideration that is appropriate, so we can all benefit from the range of views we have here.
I’m sorry if that came off badly - it’s a position I use with any product, in particular subscription software. There’s a tendency for users to moan and complain about services they use - about bugs not getting fixed, features they want not getting added, support they need not getting delivered, name it. You can see it on Zwift, on Garmin, on TR, on anything really. The reality is - you have a choice as a customer. It is and always will be an imperfect choice. You pick the least bad option, and re-evaluate once in a while. Features will change, releases will please you, others will not, but honestly as consumers our only real power is to vote with our wallets.
I don’t know if the new TR plans are better, worse or just the same as the old ones - I haven’t tried them yet. And if they are really awful, and if I’m certain I can find better at a similar price, I’ll go elsewhere. I have the impression the answer to both of these questions is going to be no, but we’ll see.
Yes but a lot of the issue here is the release of these ‘AT ready’ plans without AT access. Until AT is working and available I can totally understand why many customers want their old plans back!
I logged in one day and it was gone. Added a new plan and did a couple rides. Then logged in late yesterday for first time in a little bit and there were 2 plans. I deleted both and started over again. I think it happened when they reworked the polarized plans.
They’re not AT ready plans though! They’re apparently new, better plans with more progressive rates that have been developed from looking at years of data on TR athletes and compliance/failure rates. They’ve changed the plans before too, in pursuit of making them better. Any coach worth their weight is going to change the plan they put their athletes on as they grow as a coach, learn from science, learn from experience, learn what works and what doesn’t. If they don’t, they’ll get left behind.
If TR hadn’t told us at all about AT and had just replaced the plans, would everyone be super happy? No. There would be this same thread that the plan is too easy, just without any mention of AT.
