New Survey Options (Heat + Menstrual Cycle)

Quick product update that went live in the last 24 hours: When you struggle to hit your power targets or end a workout early, the post-workout survey now lets you log Heat or Menstrual Cycle as the reason in a single tap, instead of typing it into the notes field.

Over the past few years, a lot of you have asked us for a way to flag when your menstrual cycle affected a workout. And when we looked at what athletes were typing into the notes field when a workout didn’t go to plan, Heat was the most common write-in. So instead of making you type these out every time, we turned them into options you can just tap.

Here is how it shakes out:

  • Heat is available to every athlete. If you cooked yourself in a hot room or a hot day and could not hold the targets, you can now say so in a tap.
  • Menstrual Cycle is available to any athlete whose account is not set to male.

No more typing it out every time. Just pick the reason and go. You can use them going forward, and you can also go back. If you reopen the survey on a past workout where you struggled to hit your power targets or ended early, the new options will be there for you.

A couple of things worth saying:

This is about improving user experience and giving TrainerRoad AI better data so it can give you better workouts.
Making these options available via a tap rather than having to type them in makes it easier for you, and also increases the likelihood of you filling out that reason in your surveys since you don’t have to type it in. Also, when you tell us why a workout went the way it did, the model can account for it instead of guessing. A workout you cut short because you were overheating is not the same as one you cut short because you have lost fitness, and the more precisely you can tell us which it was, the more precisely we can respond. Two taps, and we learn a lot. It is a loop: you give us better information, we give you better training.

This is just the first step.
This is the first of a series of improvements we are making to the post-workout survey over the coming months, all aimed at the same goal: helping TrainerRoad AI understand your training more precisely so your recommendations get sharper. Nate has talked a bit about where this is headed on the podcast already, so this is us starting to deliver on it.

Why are you shipping an update that isn’t addressing the FTP volatility bug?
We have as many people working on the FTP volatility bug as possible and the vast majority of our resources are allocated to it. That said, there are teams that are working on shipping constant improvements in other areas, and this is an example of that. We’ve always tried to deliver on athlete-requests, and we’ll continue doing so.

Anybody can use this now, as long as you’ve updated your TrainerRoad app within the last month or so (version 2026.19 or later). If you’re on an older version of the app, you’ll still be able to choose these survey options for completed workouts from the web calendar at TrainerRoad.com.

There’s a blog post here that contains the details and serves as a sticky link: NEW: Log Heat or Menstrual Cycle on a TrainerRoad Workout | TrainerRoad Blog

Give it a try next time a workout goes south, and as always, tell us what you think. This stuff genuinely shapes what we build next.

Thanks!

I do heat training. Hence I might need to click on the heat reason. In what way will it affect my workout selection, ftp prediction and actual ftp development?

Short answer: I don’t know :smiley:

TrainerRoad AI doesn’t use simple algorithms, so we can’t say “if heat training > X”. Since we train models to recognize patterns and changes, it will understand how that affects you in a unique way to other causes of a workout failure and make specific adjustments for you.

This is a good update, but I’d really like to see these options available on non-workout activities too.

I almost DNF’d my race on Sunday because of the heat, and that feels like very relevant context for TrainerRoad AI. It wasn’t a failed workout with missed targets, but it was absolutely a ride where heat had a major impact on performance.

Being able to flag heat on races, outdoor rides, and unstructured activities would make the data much more useful.

I also think this would be cool! As Jon mentioned, today’s announcement is just the first in a series of updates we have planned for post-ride surveys :wink:

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Cool I just had a heat dnf, then spotted the option for it in the survey. Thank you TR team!

+1 - not even close to acclimated

You mean this is real? The Mythical Man-Month - Wikipedia :-0
Do wish the app could read your temp data to have objective data in addition to the survey (tempe sensor pairing in the app, the bultt in temp recordings on headunits, core sensor data in fit files…)

It’s awesome to finally have this feature!

Minor criticism: it probably would be more intuitive to have „Other“ as last option of the list again, while currently that’s where „ Heat“ sits.

This sounds like a little bug and is not intended. As you say, Other should be last. I’ll look into this! Thank you for pointing it out.

2 Likes

Can you please give me a little more info on this? Did you see this on the app or on the web calendar? Was it on a workout you ended early, or on one where you struggled to meet power targets?

Sure: it happened with today’s workout, which I had to end early. I ran the workout on an iPad with the latest version of the app , I believe, and saw the bug in the post ride dialog immediately after I aborted the ride and chose the option where it would be saved.

I checked again just now, and when editing it via the calendar of the app on my iPhone, the order is correct and Other is the last item. Can’t run another workout for testing right now, unfortunately :wink:

That’s helpful context. I can’t reproduce it either just yet, but I’m on the case. Thanks again!
Edit: We found the bug and a fix is in progress.

1 Like

Great to see the work going on behind the scenes coming to life; I think the athlete base as a whole is a demanding group indeed. Type A personalities want results instantly (myself included)!

Another thing That has been suggested in the past is the option to remove/hide the AI predicted difficulty. I think this would result in more honest feedback as you have no preconceived notion of how you SHOULD respond. But I think the updates to survey responses mentioned by @Nate_Pearson in a previous pod will also be a massive advance :flexed_biceps:

Keep up the good work :fire::100:

Just had max effort workout where I had a reduction in power but no survey asking why. Not sure if max effort should still trigger it. Did do the full workout but with a break to lower it (and a break at the start but that was my bluetooth failing).

These new survey options haven’t changed anything about when you will or won’t see the survey. Max Effort alone won’t trigger a “why did you struggle?” survey; a reduction in power may, if TrainerRoad AI sees that reduction as significant enough to have seriously impacted the quality and completion of the workout.

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Ah thanks, I was def struggling in the heat but only reduced the last bunch of intervals so that makes sense,

Excellent! I was wondering why there wasn’t a menstrual cycle option.

Sitting in a very hot and stuffy room suffering through supra thresholds I think heat should be an option for hard/v hard not just total failure.

I’m damn well going to complete this but my HR is through the roof and I’m not ruling out a slight reduction for last set. Normally this would be a good hard workout but it’s starting to lean towards really hard and unpleasant, and think it should be fed into the model.


Post Ride Thoughts

Adding feed back to the form would help IMO. When scheduled this was expect to be hard but due to the heat it was very hard. Before this workout with a 211w detected ftp it was predicting 211w with 6 workouts to go before 2026-07-24 detection day. After completing it drops to 206w which I feel is unrealistic and in less adverse conditions I’d not have struggled. Hard yes, but not what it was.