Just stop right there mister. Some things aren’t meant to be said out loud. Peanut butter calories don’t count. Breakfast milkshakes are health food. Someone on the internet said so.
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This is science. Its a fact.
But you need to eat the peanut butter with a knife and straight out the jar. The calories don’t stick that way
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While I’m not @OreoCookie , I’m interested in this. Specifically, I’d like to know:
- Where can I source high-quality ingredients from? Can you name companies/brands; alternatively, what should we look for when researching?
- Anything we need to know about mixing? Better to mix by serving, in small batches, or in bulk?
- What am I not asking that I should in order to move from high-quality branded mixes (SIS, Maurten, skratch) to home-made, or at least home-mixed?
Thanks!
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This is a great question. There are many that will work just fine. Would you find it off-putting if we included links to stuff in the app somewhere? I’ve hesitated here because I don’t want to come off as “selling” anything. But if that would be helpful, (and a couple folks have said that it would), it’s definitely something we would consider.
The app will help you mix your drink for each ride. Each ride may have some sports drink powder, plus whatever products you choose, and it tells you how to put them all together. You can also use ingredients like salt or sugar to optimize.
App spells out exactly what to use for each ride, optimized based on you, plus the characteristics of the ride.
Are you one of the beta testers using the app right now? Just want to know if you’d seen it yet because it might help me answer better.
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It would be great to have links in the app!
I don’t have enough knowledge in the space to assess the makers and sellers, so I’d rather rely on expert recommendations than put in the 30-50 hours necessary to develop the knowledge to assess makers.
Completely understand your position re: the forum.
Yes I’m currently using it for my training sessions and rides. Also am on the Discord channel, although I don’t keep good track of it right now…
Thank you!!!
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Putting this here as an update.
We’ll be sending out emails to all of you who have completed the sign-up for beta, sometime before the new year, to get you all into one final bug-smashing beta testing round before our planned launch in early January.
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Really is a great app
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Quick update here.
We’ve pushed launch to around Valentine’s day.
That email is now coming out next week at the latest. Just keeping you in the loop. Thanks for your patience and thanks as always to TrainerRoad for their awesome forum.
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Loving the app!
Quick question, are there any plans to make it where you can split the drink mix totals to a “per bottle” amount? I know it’s pretty nit-picky but it would do away with more math than I want to do before a ride 
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100000% yes.
I can’t wait for that day. 
(implementation in code is the slow part)
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I signed up, and get your emails. But don’t know how to get hold of the IOS app. Have I missed a boat?
Nah, you’re good. I’ll email you a link early next week.
We closed early beta testing several months ago. We’re doing a final public round of beta testing before launching in a few weeks.
That final round starts Monday, which is probably when I’ll get the email with the link out. iOS users will need to download TestFlight, the iOS app made for beta testing not-yet-released apps like ours.
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Two design suggestions:
- Why don’t you use a wheel (that’s the default UI on iOS) rather than a stepper to change the duration of activities?
- Why don’t you merge the three screens (Screen 1 (duration + intensity), Screen 2 (sweat level + weather), Screen 3 (summary)) into one?
- On Screen 3, I would expect to be able to change duration and intensity directly by tapping on the fields.
Great suggestions. And these were some heavily discussed UI choices internally. (understatement!!)
- Reasons for no stepper (aka “Cupertino timepicker”): custom timepicker would be required, which carries high dev cost. There is no reason to fight with 1-minute adjustments in training duration. User is better off selecting minutes rounded to nearest 5 minutes. Less decision fatigue and faster selection times when users are timed in their normal state. (Yes, I filmed a dozen people and timed them post-hoc)
(If there are beta testers that want to film their first experience with the app and send me videos, we’d love it!)
- Very good question. There are two very distinct thought camps here in UI/X. And it gets heated. Some folks want it split into “one action per screen” (so 3 screens in this use case) and truly enjoy the attentional management and decision-fatigue-prevention of doing one thing per screen. I did not expect myself to fall into this camp, but I do. Other folks want more info-density and to ruthlessly minimize user action steps to get end output. I thought this was the way to go, until I tried the other way. (We tried every possible combination). The number of hours spent internally debating this is huge. And I’m actually quite proud of the time our team spends discussing these kinds of nuances.
We opted to split it into 3 screens. So far, the people who have wanted it all on one screen don’t mind it because it feels pretty nice the way it’s been done. When we opted for the other direction (combine into one screen with heavier data-density) users actually got slower to input their information and experienced more uncertainty and indecision.
The behavioral psych of UI/X is absolutely fascinating.
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PS. No matter our internal debate, if we get heaps of user feedback that something is a sticking point for people, we’ll pivot designs to accommodate that, ASAP.
Being intensely user-focused is bedrock foundational for us.
We might even allow users to “pick your UI” in the future. I’ve been advocating for that since day 1, but it’s a little dev-time-heavy.
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IMHO having two steppers takes up way more space than having a wheel that slides in and out. It takes up less space and adjustments are way faster, especially with inertial scrolling. Steppers just feel much worse. (As an aside, the design reminds me of my Nikon F50 that I had decades ago. It’d also use steppers rather than a “scroll wheel” to adjust aperture and shutter speed. The successor model used a “scroll wheel” instead.)
And while I haven’t looked into it, I am sure there is a way to automatically round to the nearest 5-minute increment.
Also, for the intensity, you could have a slider that pops up when you touch the word intensity.
The first time having separate screens is fine and perhaps even better. It is like a Windows wizard: when you something rarely or for the first time and you don’t know what is going on, this might be a good idea. But most people who know Windows well came to hate them. And I find that this adds quite a bit of mental friction when I use your app.
I think you can achieve what you have in mind — not overwhelm users with information — by using progressive disclosure. By having UI elements that slide in and out (such as wheels or even steppers for the time and a slider for sweat rate and intensity), you don’t actually need more space. Stick to sensible UI conventions to make it clear that these are things that can be changed. People are used to that in e. g. calendar applications or when they set timers.
Moreover, the current UI feels a bit broken: time and intensity are displayed on the screen afterwards, but you can no longer change either without going back. That’s very irritating and breaks some implicit assumptions. What is more, if e. g. I don’t know whether my sweat rate is regarded as a 3 or a 5 on your scale, if I could change it on the same screen that displays recommended liquid, carb and sodium intake, I could see what going from 3 to 4 to 5 means live. Going back a screen and then forward again makes that much harder.
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Hi there! I’m curious if there is any guidance on timing for when the app may move from beta to wider/public release. I’m very intrigued with the idea and have been looking at the other Dutch option that was named somewhere earlier in this thread. I’d prefer not to get too attached to one solution if another is going to be released in the near future that may be a better option… thanks, Thayer
Not sure if I’m doing something wrong or it’s basing my suggestions on outside temps, but the recommendations on the app are WAY off and low. I’m doing 100% of my workouts indoors and have been for months.
IT’s suggesting almost half as much water and fuel than I have been taking. Also, I’ve had a sweat test done and the app’s recommendation is WAY low.
I got suggested a seemingly small amount of water to mix with my sugar for a 1hr ride albeit was a rather easy ride. I just had the suggested amount of water & sugar and then had my other bottle just with normal water in.
I alternated glugs from each so that the nectar was evenly spaced out. Worked well for me but open to suggestions.
Looking forward to adding some custom fuels in, but sugar & water is very cheap and easy. I’ll see how it goes.
Quick q: I’m doing a CX race tomorrow so I’ve entered my effort into Saturday BUT I won’t be drinking mid race. Should I have the suggested fuel before, or after? Or not at all since it’s only 50-60 mins.