Time to move on from TR?

TrainerRoad Software
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after +5 years with TR is maybe time to move on. i’ve lost faith in the platform a little, and only use it for the calender, choosing workouts, and tracking time. the PL’s are off, because one good workout does not mean you are there, its one workout. the AI FTP may be a consistent gauge, but it its typically too high. i don’t want a plan which i have to continually tweak, because it really means i’m doing my own plan. my time available lies outside of the plan range these days on the plus side, and the progressions and intensities are off. there is a lot of info (good and bad) available these days elsewhere. $189 is my renewal in feb '24, and i’m hesitant.
i feel thee needs to be a better guide for folk with long riding history, to be able to make gains. extra inputs for volume, fatigue, age, lifting etc are required. winging it on TR isn’t working well, and there is shiny new (for me) advice elsewhere.

are there changes in the wings at TR?

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Sounds like you already made up your mind. I was sort of in the same boat, mainly because my (time) availability wasn’t lining up with the TR philosophy anymore and I was basically making my own plans.

Still think TR is a great platform, just not for me at the moment.

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Same feeling, hard to see tangible development of the platform in particular for those who have stuck around for some time now and essentially disregard the built in plans (which should be many I would assume after a few years of experience).

Legacy pricing is what’s keeping me in.

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I posted about this elsewhere but I recently dropped TR completely after a bit of a longer journey. In 2021 when adaptive training was released, I did the program exclusively and while I really liked the progression, at the end I was left a bit let down as I wasn’t really any better in any area of the power curve. I’ve started designing my own training and recently compared my current power curve to what I had achieved in 2021

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While I did add a little more volume (generally 14hrs vs 10-12) I include more exclusively vo2 blocks (which TR does not, I don’t think) and the floor for any vo2 workout is at least 3min intervals. With adaptive training, I believe I had a lot of shorter efforts included which just don’t move the needle. TR is a decent enough platform but ultimately I think it’s not in a place to identify when an athlete is plateauing and give them the type of stimulus to overcome it, and that still requires a human eye and, despite all claims of personalization, TR plans are still canned designs

Anyhow i guess I’ve become one of those people who have outgrown the usefulness of TR and I wish I had useful suggestions for them.

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I can see why you guys feel this way. Personally I think TR is better than ever and for a lot of people training, say, under 10 hours per week, it’s the best thing going by far. It’s come a long long way since over the years. But it’s hard to be everything for everyone.

I would like to make a request though…after you leave and train for a year, come back and update the thread with what you did and how it worked. I’d love love love to see that!

Wishing you all luck on your journey!

Joe

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Outside ride PLs are just around the corner…

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It’s a little sad but I think the calendar is the best feature of TR for many. The workout library is huge, but it’s almost too big in a way with so many similar workouts. And it’s almost faster and easier to just create a workout in ZWO rather than search TR’s massive library. And I personally think TrainerDay has a better workout controller. Outside ride PLs have been “coming soon” for years now and in the northern hemisphere we’re leaving outdoor riding season for many so another summer come and gone without it. I still think TR has benefits for newer riders or time limited riders, but TR almost feels like a stepping stone to higher level training. Like you use TR to dip your feet into structured intervals and yearly training plans, but eventually you either move on to a coach or have enough of a foundation and knowledge that you can build your own training plan.

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@cagiva_wmx125 if your training is stalled out any sort of change can sometimes break the logjam. If you want to try something new, you should! Remember, it’s supposed to be fun. Something different might be just what you need.

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as a 52 yr old with a few years racing under my belt, i just need something a bit more nuanced. i’m not hating on TR at all, it must be 8 years or so a subscriber. the training info on line these days makes it easier to structure your own work with more confidence in the plan, and i’ve just discovered traingpeaks (i know, i know).

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In my opinion, everyone will outgrow TR plans at some point … the median time seems to be about 3-5 years.

Now … I don’t use TR plans anymore, but I still use the software because I really like using the platform for my indoor training … and I can build my own workouts.

That said, if I we were turning this into an “artist” thread vs. a. “critic” thread … I would recommend they allow more flexibility to determine days AND hours you want to train … while inputting age and racing modality (i.e. Cx, Crit racing, Road/Gravel race under 4 hours, Road/Gravel race over 4 hours, etc.)

So theoretically I could input the following:

Training Days: Tues, Weds, Thur, Sat, Sun (5)
Target training hours: 12/week
Target event: Less than 4 hour gravel event
Target event date: April 20th, 2024
Age: 49

2 Extra credit ideas:

  1. Type of power that will be decisive or get you dropped: 3-5 min power

***** (Examples of the above: 60 min power (TT), >45 min power (climber), 15-45 min power (long breakaway), 6-15 min power (short breakaway), 3-5 min power (puncheur), 1-3 min power (lead out), <1 min (sprinter).

  1. How many hours do you have to train this week: 13

If I could I put those and then it spit out an adaptive training plan, that would be outstanding and then alter it based on how many hours you have to train in a give week … which will can vary for me between 2-4 hours based on season, work, etc.

I get stuck in the areas where I have to fill in my my own training because they don’t have a plan, for instance, that minimally addresses my time to train … which is, I want to train 5 days a week at about 10-12 hours. I either get too many days (6) or not enough hours (6-8) which generally means more intensity than I want for the amount of riding I’ll actually do.

Good luck, TR! I’m still on board and appreciate what I do get out of the service.:metal:

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Such a training app already exists for less than half the price per year :confused:

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Also, why many have such high expectations of outdoor PLs is beyond my understanding.

So much development went into something that IMO that doesn’t even come close to addressing the issues raised here already.

I would have preferred TR had invested to turn into something like join. This would be a major step towards accommodating a broader variety of users other than the new time crunched folks IMO.

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@jz91 it’s the only hope some people have for TR being (or beginning to be) what they actually need/want it to be, so they hold on to it? re: outdoor PLs

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TrainerDay offers a competing product at a lower price point as well. Some riders in the fam prefer that option because you can ask it to fill your calendar with a plan that provides almost zero >threshold intensity. Ha! :smiley: I’m not a fan of that approach for my own training but it’s better than sitting on the couch and playing video games all day. And much cheaper than TR.

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That is the main improvement I would like to see to TrainerRoad. Being able to specify the default availability for each day in the week and being able to override for the availability for specific days (e.g. taking the day off this Thursday so adjusting the availability to max, not able to ride this Tuesday due to work). And given the training I have done the last few days, what is the best training schedule for me the next week?

I think we all try to do this once in a while where we move e.g. VO2Max sessions because we know that this Tuesday we will have to join a work/business dinner or travel. And if you just follow the plan you end up with a rest day on Monday, skipping the VO2Max workout on Tuesday because of work, and then a 1 hour endurance ride on Wednesday. So you basically wasted half of that week. I think TR should be able to do better.

I have a subscription of JOIN running in parallel with TR, but it is basically just asking me to have a rest day. Maybe it will learn the training load I can handle at some point :grinning:

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That’s what moved me away from TR. I can train 10 to 12 hours a week. Just don’t want to/can train 6 days a week with “just” 1,5/2 hour workouts.

Also after some time of training and listening to (multiple) training podcasts you start to realize, trading basics are just that, basic. You create 5 types of workouts and a couple of variants of those workouts and you’re set. Hardest part is to know when to do what workout. Something I’m not sure any training algorithm has really cracked at this moment. But we’re getting there.

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I did that for a few weeks and realized Join works best when you follow their weekly schedule.

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I assume so, but I do not trust JOIN to actually make me faster. When I only see what they want me to do for the next 7 days I am not sure where this will end up. Most workouts looks very easy compared to TrainerRoad.

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Yea they ramp things up after a few weeks if you follow their plan. It’s not static like TR, doing over unders every Saturday for 10 weeks.
They have a different approach which emphasizes endurance and less intervals. I’ll get long rides with long threshold or tempo efforts and some weeks it’s long rides with vo2 sprinkled in.
I don’t want to say it’s superior but it has me more motivated to ride and I’m doing way more hours than I was on TR. They both have pros and cons and right now I’m using what has me riding more and thinking less.

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Can’t you manage that by changing your rider activity profile type?

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