Can someone point me to why I would choose one over the other for any given assigned endurance or recovery workout on my calendar if the one thing I know is I want to ride outdoors that day?
Solo outdoor is an unstructured ride outside, TR Outdoor is one of their structured workouts outside.
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When I decide to do an unstructured ride rather than the scheduled workout, I just do the unstructured ride and donāt bother changing anything in the calendar. I just leave the planned workout undone. AI sees the unstructured ride and appropriately adapts the plan and FTP prediction. The WX here has been unseasonably great and Iāve done that a lot.
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Okay, but does it matter which one I choose? Are there any differences in downstream impacts on the training plan? Advantages/disadvantages. Either way, Iām going to ride around endurance for an hour or two.
Say itās an hour endurance ride. If I do the structured ride, does TR account for that data differently than if I just call it a solo ride, but still do essentially the same amount and type of effort?
Depends what you are doing. If its my commute I label it as a Solo ride, but if its specifically a TR workout Iāll label it TR Outside. Id only assign stuff to a TR Outside workout if it was a TR workout but I doubt at endurance level itāll matter down the line though. The problem some folk got was associating an unstructured ride to a higher Zone ride and not actually getting the physical benefits of a workout but getting the points (PLs) of one, and therefore struggling down the line.
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For endurance, probably not. Ride at a smooth and consistent pace in roughly thr band, TR will use it.
If, however, you were proscribed a VO2 workout and then planned to ride a TT you should definitely update that.
The difference in benefit is whether you hold the structured ride, or vaguely stay around target. The former being more beneficial than the latter.
Hey @maytree 
As @HLaB mentioned, if you are riding unstructured then Solo Ride. If you are going to be following the TR Workouts instructions (even for an Endurance workout) then youād choose the TR Workout. We only recommend matching a ride file to a TR Workout if you actually completed it.
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Okay, but it still doesnāt tell me why I should just Solo Ride over the structured workout or vice versa, when Iām going to be doing more or less the same endurance ride ā say my TSS/IF are more ore less the same either way. What if any considerations should I take into account in choosing one over the other? Is there any difference in impact on the training plan?
If Iāve learned one thing about cyclists, itās that āmore or lessā usually means ānot remotelyā.
Just do a mindās eye visual check. Does the power trace for your ride (hypothetical or actual) look like a workout? Or does it look like an ECG of a gerbil with access to stimulants?
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In the past it was an important distinction, but with the new AI, Iām not sure. I do not do anything in the calendar when I do an unstructured ride. It uploads to TR and I rate it afterward. I donāt identify it as a Solo ride, or associate with a workout in anyway, or delete a scheduled workout I donāt complete. So far the plan adapts and FTP prediction updates after each one and seems to be working as expected. And as of late, for the past 14 days Iāve only done unstructured rides and it keeps working as expected. In fact, it just gave me a big bump in predicted FTP over what the plan originally predicted. IDK if thatās a result of my unstructured rides, or a tweak they made to algorithm.
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Maybe this is what I need to be doing. I like to mix in my 60 min TR workout into a 2-3 hour ride sometimes. Like, Iāll do an hour of z2 to the area of my choosing, do the workout, end it, and keep riding. Every time I do this, the AI ftp seems not to like it and knocks me down a bit. Iāll āmatchā the outdoor ride with the workout, but I guess that itās not a 1:1 and TR doesnāt like it.
Yeah. IDK. That seemed to be what I used to get. My thought was that the AI created a plan it thought was optimal and any deviation, going more/less, harder/easier, would be suboptimal with respect to the planās inputs and would result in a lower predicted FTP. In the past, it was a big no-no to associate a ride with a workout unless is was a best effort at complying with that workout. I think back then, the system didnāt look at actual performance during that ride but rather just considered the workout completed successfully. My impression now is the system just looks at all performance equally, structured and unstructured, and goes from there. That seems to be whatās happening in my case.
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That difference doesnāt make much sense to me. The āTrainer Road Outdoorā option (as opposed to indoor) gives a broad range of power for endurance workouts to stay within, for e.g. todayās was an hour pretty much assigned to be between 113 and 150 watts. Literally, thatās what it tells me to do āride between 113 and 150 for the next X minutes). I think people here are confusing the more targeted TR Indoor structured rides with the TR Outdoor ones. So assuming that I stay within that range, which frankly is not that difficult, what difference is whether I choose āsoloā v. āTR Outdoorā?
You mean difference in how TR processes it?
So mrtopher1980, thanks. If I understand correctly, if all things are going to be basically equal ā and given the TR Outdoor format of prescribing a large endurance range (113 w - 153w, for 45 minutes, for e.g.), itās frankly not that hard to make them meaningfully equal ā what I should do to decide which to choose is whether I care about if my Progression Levels are updated or not. So thatās going to beg the the question ā do I care if my Progression Levels are tracking work? I guess I donāt know how to judge whether I should care. Maybe if Iām trying make sure I have the endurance for a very long event, I care about that metric?