Hi. Age 71 here. You are wonderfully young - so enjoy your good health and fitness. You have an interesting question and I am curious if your doctor suggested or prescribed any treatment for high SHBG, such as exogenous testosterone, checking for hyperthyroidism or other issues that may be causing this? The reason I say this is that you mentioned that you are feeling fatigued even after getting plenty of rest, vacation, food, etc. Also, with respect to the TrainerRoad AI model, it seems to rely pretty heavily on your rating at the end of workouts, so if you say that one was easy, they are going to serve up more/longer/harder workouts (the folks at TrainerRoad can clarify if this is accurate). So you could run a fairly long experiment and state that the workouts were super hard, and see if you get more rest days, or easier workouts and check to see if the recovery helped. But all that said, because of the fact that your downtime is not helping, I would lean into exploring the medical intervention options with your doctor. Best of luck and congrats on that two year old! That will keep you young, also!
That’s what I keep hearing, that TR AI FTP is no longer really FTP. However, what is TR’s recommendations for how to set our FTP in Garmin, Interval. Icu, etc? It’s a mess if we have different FTPs all over the place now…
Thanks!
AI FTP detection has lost its dang mind.
Last time my FTP touched 300 was at the end of 2020 when I was riding 12 hours per week. There’s no chance I’m going to gain 7.8% FTP in 28 days on the four hours of cycling I have planned for each week.
Well that’s silly.
I expect to be able to smash out my ftp for 60 minutes if needed. Not have it be some hypothetical number. The current number it has me assigned at 282 seems reasonable, but 300 would be nuts. (I’m 135 lbs, so there’s a big difference between those numbers.)
Nomenclature aside, is it still silly if it gives you good training?
Probably not, right?
You’re smart enough to handle the concept of having two different benchmark power numbers - one for TR workouts and one for everything else. That’s all you need to adjust to.
I don’t really understand why trainerroad would need its own fake ftp number. They could easily just build their workouts to an appropriate difficulty level while using a realistic ftp number. I mean…. This is what they’ve already been doing.
It isn’t a “hypothetical number.” It is a training metric based on analysis of 10s of millions (I think that is the number Nate said) rides, inside and out. The data showed them a better way to set users training to make them faster. You don’t have to agree with the term AIFTP, but to call it hypothetical just isn’t true.
I guess because it works better for more people
I’m not saying the new model doesn’t work. I’ll use it.
What I’m questioning is why they need to use a fake ftp number. They could program the model to give the same exact workouts with the same exact targets, but display a realistic FTP number.
The only reason I can think of for an inflated FTP number is to make people feel good about themselves and keep paying trainerroad.
Also have you listened to the two podcasts from Thursday. If not, would highly recommend you giving them a listen. Nate and Jonathan explain what went into the new approach and why. You may still disagree after, but you will at least understand their approach and rationale. All I can say as a beta user who has some time with the system, it works really well for me.
The forum is littered with posts of people wanting to know why their number has dropped.
It’s still really FTP if you are using intervals.icu to track TSS. As TR is prescribing workouts based on it. The FTP value is still a value that for ~95% of users is as accurate as a Ramp test. If TR is prescribing your workouts then use their FTP everywhere.
WINNING!!!
Went to bed predicted FTP said it will go down in 26 days
Woke up now it says it will go UP
maybe my emailing TR support worked lol
OK Nate, Here’s an “edge case” for you. Despite my ego and some reservations, I’ve decided to go all in with the new TR AI. With a big loss of CTL due to a bad cold and a recent crash, I’m going to accept the 22% reduction of FTP. Hopefully the new system will learn and adjust quickly or at least in time for the DOM’s to wear off! I schedule my hard leg/gym days the same day as my hard interval days in order to recover but with the setback, the easier initial work outs on the bike should help with the healing in general. I do all my rides outdoors so hoping to see an improvement there as well.
For the record, with my self tested ftp from last June and custom training plan, I saw some great results as early as 3mo in and up until the new year following the TR workouts.
does your predicted FTP in 28 days go up or down or remain the same?
Hey guys,
My FTP with the new update went up 18% from 257 to 303 which was concerning to see. Being an extremely motivated and competitive person, I always love to see progress, but this seems a bit extreme. I will admit that I have been pushing more watts outside than ever before but a 300+ seems very unrealistic and more of an aspirational goal than anything. I was reluctant to accept the change but decided to give it a shot after listening to both podcasts that cover the update. After doing so, I went and looked at the prescribed workouts, and they were unlike anything I’ve achieved in the past and the likelihood of failure was 100% in my eyes. I will admit that I’ve historically marked every workout that I can finish as “Easy” so this may have been part of the reason but not sure how to proceed at this point. I manually adjusted my FTP back down to 260 and did a sweetspot workout yesterday, Redondo +1, that I’ve done in the past and it felt about right if not maybe a little easy but not 40 watts too easy. Let me know your thoughts.
-Jimmy
Glad you’re liking it Mike.
thanks! I did do as you suggested 
Fortunately most of my athletes don’t spend a ton of time on trainerroad, other than looking at what they are supposed to do that day, which mitigates some of the confusion.
If chance favors the prepared mind, then adventure favors the prepared body.
Beth A. Lamie
Pegasus Elite Athlete Management
The Wheelhouse Cycling Studio
Follow us on Twitter @team_pegasus
Someone replied to your post.
| Flashpoint51
January 24 |
- | - |
Get your athletes to turn off these
And disable this
Then get them to manually input whatever FTP number you choose to give them and pin any future workouts you allocate to them, and you’re good to go.
You will, of course, be left with them having to deal with a different coloured background for the 28 days of the simulated calendar.
HTH