What analytic value does Strava give you? I find it pretty useless to be honest. I keep thinking I’ll drop it but the Segment comparison is something I use regularly to assess performance improvement (as much, or actually more, down than up).
I can’t speak to TP free but Intervals ICU is awesome. I’d still way, way rather have that along with a readiness score/light or whatever, in the one app.
(Admittedly the app analysis is still a bit behind the webpage but you get my point and I assume that and group workouts are coming to the mobile apps soon)
Yup, the leadership board gives me access to power numbers and the like, it is good knowing I am among the top x % of Strava’s user base. I then know how I stack up compared with the local competition (willing to make their numbers public on Strava). But I was speaking more broadly, too, not just from my own perspective but that of others to whom this product is supposed to appeal.
Intervals.icu is missing from my list, simply because I have never used it. But maybe I should have a look at it. For sure, @Nate_Pearson should include it on the list of competitors.
@OreoCookie and @Pbase wasn’t directed at either of your posts and regardless my language was a bit exaggerated. No one is being hostile, but I was surprised by the skepticism that the product offered enough utility to warrant existence.
Re-reading the proposed feature list I think our disconnect is that you and others may be focusing on the tracking and analysis based features and I’m focusing primarily on the training plans. I agree that trying to position TR as the year-round place for you to track and analyze all your rides is a tough argument since there are various entrenched incumbents there.
My admittedly n=1 perspective is that of an extremely time crunched athlete who wants to be able to go long (and perform well while doing so) but doesn’t have the luxury to train long. Between work and 2 small kids, if I’m lucky I can get out for 1 multi-hour ride a week and I want to be able to hit that hard and feel great while doing it.
Before I had kids, I like many people used to do structure in the winter but drop it in the summer. Despite having higher total volume, I both performed considerably worse and suffered more on my long rides and events than when I maintained at least 2 TR outside structured WOs during the workweek and then had fun on the weekend.
If you are interpreting the market appeal as pay for TR analytics but ignore the training plan in favor of doing club rides then I agree that is not very compelling. My argument is ditch your friends on weekdays, keep hammering your TR intervals while staying outside*, then you’ll smoke them on weekends and/or come race day. That’s the value.
*I also get that this is super location dependent and many people don’t have good outside routes where you can hit your intervals without excessive admin time or interruptions. I am hopelessly spoiled in that I am at the base of a 2,800ft sustained climb within 5 minutes of my door. So the world is my ERG mode oyster.
Just a thought. I used Golden Cheetah for quite awhile. Lots of group club rides and Tuesday Worlds stuff. Always checked out my Power Curve after these rides. I was looking for the yellow dots. Each one indicated a match. A hard effort within the ride. As the year progressed, it was satisfying to see a ride glittered with them as my fitness tracked upward. Not sure what they used to calculate what qualified as a match.
By the way count me in as a rider who hates indoors. I do have a pretty good riding weather and fast access to roads and gravel. Love,love love the Outdoor workout option. Sometimes I will replace a workout with something an equal PL Zone that is simpler in interval structure but thats about it. Get that unstructred ride figured out and your are Golden with me.
As others have said don’t think it’s a fair poll as the forum participants are going to be heavily skewed to year round subscribers.
I’d strongly consider an outdoor only subscription option!
I dropped my subscription altogether as I don’t like riding on the trainer much (ever since overtraining) and we have good weather year round.
I’ve done my own outdoor workouts for a couple of years. At the time pre plan builder and AT I didn’t see the value in TR subscription as it really was just offering me a calendar.
I certainly see a lot more value in it now if there was an outdoor only option.
Not sure I agree. Since TR does not handle other sports so well (or at all), many use other apps to serve as the central data repository. I don’t need TR to do that. I prefer two tools that work well in their own use, than one that attempts to do both tasks and fails at both.
Just as a side note:
I never found the TR analysis much appealing…even though it’s not bad at all. It just needs some polish…what bothers me the most:
Make PR more visible (some color in the chart or hints or list…whatever)!
Exclude the power line from the actual ride from the all time chart (so I see PR from the ride crossing the all time chart)
Make personal records list more discoverable (I suppose many don’t know you can select for example the 5min power point from the chart and then click „view details“ to get to the list of your all time 5min PR list…
Give that „Personal Records“ dialog more filters!! That list format is pretty cool but more filters are missing, especially:
All time by year/season
Include/exclude inside and outside rides
Maybe filter by trainer/powermeter
That would make analysis much more appealing. What do you think?
The TR platform is developed so modular (as Nate confirmed in a post) that it would be easy to configure different offerings…you just have to find the right one to give some additional revenue and not clutter the brand too much.
One final thought on the revenue/pricing debate from me @Nate_Pearson:
Maybe just change the framing…don’t split TR and call something „TR premium“… instead take just this one readiness score (red/green light) feature and put it unter a „health add-on“ umbrella that can optionally be clicked for maximum 5$/month. All the rest stays same for all. (Effectively/technically it might be the same but the framing is different…with a health branding being more lifestyle related).
(I assume many of Legacy or seasoned athletes probably know how they feel and might not need it (but maybe want it)).
PS: I saw you deleted one of your longer comments. At the end of it was the explanation of Workout Levels version 2 which was pretty cool and helpful. Thanks for that!
My point was that if TR wants to capture more share of wallet from people, one way to do that is to replace another service that they use. E.g., if I’m currently paying $XX/year for TrainingPeaks, but TR added functionality so that I no longer need TrainingPeaks, then TR could have an add-on pack - “analysis” - that people could purchase and then drop TP.
Spitballing some of the things I look at consistently on Intervals (and TR is close to being able to do this already just prettier/more complete): “Fitness”, “eFTP”, some of the custom graphing (which wouldn’t be an easy integration into the mobile app like the other too/better analysis tools already in TR)
We’ve worked a bit on a general fitness score which is your FTP + Progression Levels + Weight. It’s a new metric. On this POC you can hover over different parts in your graph and the progression chart updates to see what your combo of FTP and PLs are.
That looks pretty great to me (without being able to see the intricacies).
That is kind of what I mean exactly. I also refer often (though try not to let dictate my training) the “fitness” score (6 week TSS average already in the webpage analysis/career page) but it doesn’t seem quite as easy as a quick reference on TR.
I also think there’s a possibility to have an active AI-FTP graph which would be both super interesting, but also dangerous if people started chasing it.
I also hope to see all the analysis within the Mobile app as someone who doesn’t have a desktop/laptop.
For starters an actual archive of all my synced walks, runs, hikes, swims, and cycling. Full data, nothing removed.
TP analysis has some HR tools. Intervals has more.
You need better analytics. At the most basic level I didn’t like the PR stuff and lack of HR and pwr-to-hr tools in TR.
HOWEVER what I’m struggling with how I would explain the value prop after a group ride. Everyone is uploading to Strava and talking about segments. So if I worked for TR, my ‘post ride marketing job’ would be to find someone saying they got dropped because they were tired, and tell them TR can help? That’s what I got from your post above. You either need to connect with common post ride behavior, or find some niche and grow towards that. Just a thought.
We’re thinking something like this. And as you go through your planned workouts that would get filled up.
I think we could also predict a power curve too. IE we could tell you what we think is the power you could hold for an hour. We’d figure out what FTP you’d need to be at to do a level 10 threshold ride which is just about an hour at FTP.
This is just a mock-up, but the tech is in place to do this.
I love this as a reference/tool. For me, I’d love to see a line graph behind the main writing that indicates up and down as you nail or miss workouts.
i.e.if someone skips a workout it might drop. Or they forget about minimum effective dose and go all in on a workout it jumps up. Or they do an outside ride, some will actually maintain the progress while it’ll give an indication of how effectively it’s moving you towards your (FTP) goal better than Fitness does which has a lot of weighting to volume.
