If you’ve read any of my posts in this thread I’ve very clearly said I’m not burning out. In fact I’m thriving.
I read your posts in this thread but didn’t go dig up the post from ‘a few months’ ago when you were questioning burnout. Did you also say you were thriving in the post where you said you were also burning out?
ETA - you also said you’ve adjusted since you made that post, by removing one of the workouts…
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for those interested:
and
and the longer post:
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Only change I’ve made is dropped the sweet spot (which helped!). Recovery weeks in TR are misleading. If you recover 5-6 days instead of 7 and they fall across a weekend it isn’t reflected in a mon-sun recorded week. And lastly I choose LV + 3 days as I would never deal with the intensity of their HV plans (even though it’s less TSS and less volume). I don’t think it’s fair to compare my LV + plan to a traditional 3.5 Hr LV plan.
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I love this chart, and find it very helpful. I would add when I’m having trouble with a rating, I just thing about how I would describe it to my (non-cycling) mom if she asked how my workout was. That seems to get at the heart of it for me.
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Yeah, I think about in those “simple” ways sometimes too.
I also have this “second look” sometimes if I struggle getting upstairs with dead legs, to have my dinner after the workout. That and if I end up with some saying “Whew!” a time or two while making dinner, I know I was in the 4-Very Hard range. Toss in a four-letter word instead of the “Whew” and it’s a heavy 4 or 5 if I had to tap into bailouts 
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The more I think about this and read other people’s experience, the more I think I might downgrade every ride by +1. I’ve run into excessive exhaustion multiple times and end up taking time off or scaling way back. I think instead I’m going to take a “slow down” approach. I train for general health and to be able to enjoy my rides outside. I’ll probably never race again, so really, I see no need to ramp quickly any more. I’m tired of burning out.
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I train for maximum performance and race and I still do that.
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If you are aiming to “slow down”, wouldn’t that mean a +1 to whatever you have as an initial instinct:
- Felt “Hard”, but choose rate “Very Hard” so AT will potentially reduce the Workout Level for the next workout.
For the record, if I am in doubt or waffling between ratings, I try to force myself to pick the higher / more difficult rating. Sort of the “better safe than sorry” approach.
You’re right. I’ll edit for clarity.
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That’s what I do too
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rate it as it is, don’t game the ratings. Treat the ratings as notes to yourself, that you can reliably go back a year or two from now. Gaming the ratings for the ‘audience’ is just wrong.
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Something I’ve thought about…if someone only ever rates workouts as easy or moderate…will the system adjust to decrease future difficulty when people enter moderate?
If that’s the case…trainerroads messaging is spot on. But I really dont think that’s how it works.
I have rated them as it is for over a year now, and it’s not working. That’s the point.
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Yea. The fact it consistently works for some people, but not others, suggests to me there are essentially designated, pre-set adjustments for each survey options. And if how you view the options differs from how TR views them…you’re going to be in trouble.
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I use Moderate with some frequency, even on Threshold and higher zone workouts.
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For these higher demand workouts, AT tends to offer a recommended adaptation that “kicks up” the pending workout in that system. Below is a loose memory of what I see with some regularity:
- Before doing a “Productive” Difficulty Level workout, the pending workout for next week has a Workout Level 0.5 increase as currently scheduled in that same zone.
- After completing the Productive workout and rating it as Moderate, I sometimes see that pending workout kicked up to 0.8 or 1.0 higher than the workout I just completed. That effectively “accelerates” the progression from the original 0.5 Workout Level step.
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This is just a rough example, but I have seen that basic increased adjustment for any of the Easy/Moderate ratings I’ve had for “Productive” or higher level workouts.
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Same experience
He rates it as it is and the following workouts are too hard. Quote “I’ve run into excessive exhaustion multiple times and end up taking time off or scaling way back.”
I had the same experience. I err on the side of rating one up and the workouts are now perfect. Why would you recommend he do otherwise?
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That’s essentially what I’ve seen too. Hard and below set a positive progression level increase, very hard and above set a negative progression level adjustment.
I just wasnt entirely certain if EVERYONE saw that…meaning perhaps that hard/very hard split happened based on my previous responses. It doesnt seem to be though.
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Yeah, it’s possible that result vary between users. Been a while since I saw it stated by a TR rep, but they when AT got introduced, they frequently said stuff like “rate the workouts consistently and the system will learn you and your ratings and adjust appropriately…”.
They stressed the consistent aspect and claimed that would sidestep the questions and confusion about what each rating “actually meant” and the fact that we all may see or think about these words a bit differently. If that statement above has merit, the results any of us get may well be unique to some degree.