Yes I have seen it. Too quick from my perspective. I still find a base level of 1.0 is the wrong level for all ride types. VO2 workouts do drop…It feels quicker then it needs to be but that may just be a function of me handling VO2 workouts better then I do Threshold workouts as an example. Sweet spot declines didnt feel as terrible to me but I do think it really depends on what else you have been doing that isnt being captured. In my case my outdoor rides were not linked to any workouts so while I saw PLs decline I was doing more work riding then AT was picking up.
1 Like
Hey all! I’m just chiming in here to explain what was going on here in case it helps.
I totally understand your confusion here. There has been a very slight change to the logic here. It’s a bit nuanced, but let me explain.
What hasn’t changed:
You are only able to get AT credit for a ride that has an Outside Version with a Workout Level. Since Custom Workouts cannot be pushed to Outside, you can’t get credit for them.
What you can do, however, is find a TrainerRoad ride with an Endurance 4.8 rating, schedule it as an Outdoor Ride, and then match the two for AT credit.
I’ve already done this on your account and your level has updated to Endurance 4.8 accordingly:
That brings us to the slight change.
Previously, you could match an Outdoor Workout with a Planned Indoor TR workout for AT credit. After a recent update, y ou can only get credit if the Planned TR workout is designated as “Outside” . This is something we are having internal conversations about since I feel that can be slightly confusing in some cases.
Hope this helps!
And as always, if you have any particular questions you can always reach out on Chat or through email at support@trainerroad.com. We’re always here to help out!
4 Likes
Makes sense. Though I did find value in matching my outdoor rides (non workout) with endurance rides in post, it didn’t really effect my training and I think the update makes logical sense.
Appreciate the quick reply, and thanks for explaining the change (and please revert! LOL).
FWIW, and speaking big picture, the distinction between indoor and outdoor workouts is both confusing and leads to a loss of functionality. Inside workouts are first class within TR world, while outside workouts are relegated to second class status. That leads to custom workouts can only be executed inside. And targets aren’t overlaid on the completed workouts. It is truly perplexing and odd for a company that puts user experience first, and as an engineer working in software world for thirty plus years I do understand the complexity and nuances involved with making it happen.
A interesting that you experienced this. I wonder if it is better that it decays a bit quicker than expected. When you haven’t touched a certain type of workout, you’d rather get a workout that is a little too easy than one which is clearly too hard. Or what did you think?
Other than that, quick reminder to stay on topic 
, thanks all for the discussion 
I found the drop was too much. At the time I went back to do a workout I picked one that was roughly in between what my pl dropped to and what it previously was. The workout wasn’t a challenge and I could of picked a higher pl.
Ivy,
One suggestion - might be hard to implement - add the ability to tag the warm-up in a custom workout so that it can be ignored.
Maybe this is just me, but I need a warm-up with short, hard intervals before sweet spot / over unders / VO2 max, and my warm-up seems to confuse the classification (e.g., sweet spot, tempo, vo2, etc.) of the ride.
HI! Sorry, for a custom workout? Having a hard time understanding your request for custom workouts that can be modified exactly as. you see fit. Thanks for expanding upon that and letting me know!
Ivy,
Hopefully this picture helps. This is a 3x12 sweet spot workout @90% with a warmup. I’d like to be able to designate what part of this workout is the warm-up - like the part in the box - and have it ignored for rating the workout for PL, as I’ve seen my warm-up confuse the PL rating engine where the rating engine assigns the ride to the wrong zone because the warm-up touches higher zones.
Thanks! I’ll pass this along to the team to see if for custom workouts and unstructured rides, there can be warmup and cooldown segments that arent counted towards progressions in the way that TR workouts do!
1 Like
Ivy,
Or better would be the ability create “playlist” of workouts and have TR combine them into a single file. That is: I could create my standard warmup as a workout, and not have to add it into every “workout” - same with my standard cool down. Then when I want to do a workout, I create a playlist like:
- Warm-up Sweet Spot and below
- Sweet Spot 3x12 @ 90% - just the 3 12-minute intervals @ 90% plus the recovery intervals
- Cooldown 8 minutes
Or like (same warm-up & cool down as above)
- Warm-up Sweet Spot and below
- Sweet Spot 2x20 @ 90% - just the 2 20-minute intervals @ 90% plus the recovery intervals
- Cooldown 8 minutes
This would have several benefits:
- The warm-up & cool down could be easily tagged as “ignore” for PL levels
- If I decide to tweak my warmup, then I don’t have to go back and modify every workout to include this tweaked warmup
- For TR, this would have the benefits as well. I’m sure I’m not the only one who tweaks TR rides to include a specific warm-up / cool-down. Going to “Playlists” would allow people to use the workout that TR has created, but using their preferred warm-up / cool down
The super part would be the ability to “save” playlists, and then just schedule the playlist, just like a workout is scheduled.
just observed another sweet spot decay rate.
my last sweet spot workout before short power build was Truchas -1 at progression level 5.9 on October 2. this is 2x22min at 92-94%.
last week (October 18) I think it went down to 5.4 and today (October 25) it is 4.5. So absolute 0.5 decay after 2 weeks and absolute 1.5 decay after 3 weeks. it means that for example Eichorn at 4.7 would be a slightly productive workout to get back, which is 2x20min at 90%. sounds good.
Had what eventually was identified by support as a side-effect of AT’s decay model. I had twice the strange behavior of AT recommending a significant drop in workout progressions as I loaded a workout in the morning, with no such indications the previous evening. The reason: decay starts after 14 days. So - you have a threshold workout at the end of a week, you have a rest week after, you have a new ramp test after the rest week, a sweet-spot workout, and then a threshold workout, which happens to be… 14 days after your last one. The day before, you look at your schedule, it’s all good. When you open TR to run your workout, you’re exactly 14 days after - and lo and behold, you get a progression reduction adaptation recommendation. The Productive workout turns into a Stretch.
1 Like