Recovery ride difficulty question

TrainerRoad Software
1

This morning I did “Lazy Mountain-1”, a recovery ride. I was surprised when I was asked the difficulty question at the end of the ride since I didn’t have any difficulty. It was easy (as it should be).

I can see two things it might have made it think I was having trouble.

  1. I think it may have given me instructions to up the cadence, and I missed them.

  2. Late in the ride, I got out the saddle for 10-15 seconds give me butt a rest (easy hour long rides all in the saddle become a bit uncomfortable). This results in a dip, then a spike in the power.

If I had any difficulty, it certainly didn’t fit any of the options (my butt hurts, or I failed to read the instructions).

If I wanted me to up the cadence, it would be really good to have some indicator of that on the UI (outside of the text).

I see now it wants me respond to the “Easy, Hard, …” question, but it never asked me that at the end of ride. Only the difficulty question.

2

When I say the “difficulty” question, I mean the question about why I had difficulty.

3
  • See below. Did you actually get a “Struggle” survey, or the normal “Intensity” survey?

When completing any TR workout, you will get a survey. There are 3 specific surveys depending on what TR sees:

  1. Intensity - The “normal” survey we see most often that is the “Easy” to “All Out” range.

  2. Struggle - The alternate when TR thinks you had trouble and didn’t follow the prescribed workout close enough, contains “Intensity”, “Training Fatigue”, and other issues. As of now, this is only looking at your power data compared to the targets, and specifically within the workout (ignoring Warm Up and Cool Downs).

  3. Time - Whenever you either end a workout early, prior to reaching the Cool Down section.

From your description, you got the normal Intensity survey (#1 above), which means everything was fine, you did not “Struggle”.

  • Cadence is not currently a trigger and will never be an explicit reason for an issue that triggers the Struggle survey.
  • This is unlikely to have been enough deviation (amount or time) from the target to lead to a Struggle survey (and again, that is not what you got).
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4

Yes, I got the Struggle survey, but I didn’t feel like I struggled at all. Wonder if one time I got out of the saddle fooled it into thinking I struggled. I did the ride on the Android app, when I went back and looked at the ride on mac desktop app, then it said, I didn’t respond, and showed me the Intensity survey.

I suppose another possibility, maybe as I took the phone out of the holder, I accidently told it the Intensity survey that I had difficulty. But I don’t think so. I was expecting the Intensity survey but never saw it at the end of the ride.

5

Unlikely from what you describe. Can you post a screenshot or link to the workout (assuming your TR account is set to "public’)?

That or you may be best to contact support@trainerroad.com directly so they can review the internal logs and see what happened.

2 Likes
6

Chad is right! Unless you had a significant drop in power when moving in and out of the saddle, shouldn’t result in a struggle survey.

The support team can for sure tell whats going on and what caused that struggle survey to appear. Cheers!

1 Like
7

I had this happen on one of my workouts. It was very easy but no matter what answer I gave to the survey, it asked why I struggled. I opened a support ticket. The workout still shows that I struggled with a reason of ‘other’ but I got credit for everything and still advanced through the progression level so I’m not worried about it. Haven’t had it since.