Hi all
This is my reaching out to the guys at TrainerRoad. I LOVE your service and have been a subscriber for many years and will be for the foreseeable future but I think that you are really REALLY missing a big opportunity. And before I get started, I know things are never easy, and I am sure there are lots of things involved with what I’m suggesting that make it very difficult to do, but that doesn’t mean some of it shouldn’t be tried.
Strava has just announced that, in essence, unless you pay the subscription, you get very little functionality. That’s fine. I actually agree with it. If you get value out of something you should pay for it.
But, with coronavirus (and the associated massive increase in indoor workouts being completed), and Strava alienating a large portion of its users, there is a BIG gap for a company to become the place to be for training calendar, planning and data analytics. TrainerRoad has tried with its calendar function, but has done barely half a job. A very close friend of mine is a very serious athlete (national level, KQ standard, sub 1.15 half marathon etc.). He is currently subscribed to Strava, Training Peaks and Zwift. He is also contemplating TrainerRoad. The reason he hasn’t, and won’t, in the short term, is because the calendar functionality is severely lacking.
He uses Training Peaks because it’s one of, if not the, best at tracking fitness and planning future workouts etc.
He uses Zwift because he likes the gamification for home riding. He doesn’t like the plans and has used a month’s test of TrainerRoad and felt the workouts and plans were far superieror.
He uses Strava for the social side.
He wants to cancel TP and Strava and find a more ‘all in one’. I tried to convince him to subscribe to TR but his response was that the calendar was rubbish for the following reasons:
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Planning workouts other than TrainerRoad workouts is next to useless. Does a 20 x 60 sec flat out interval run, with 10 mins warmup and 10 mins cool-down get put down as RPE 10, or 5? Or what? Or does he have to add a bunch of different activities for each of the warm-up, cool-down, intervals and rests? I couldn’t answer. I shouldn’t have to answer. It should be nice and clear.
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It doesn’t pull workout data other than rides from external sources. He won’t be able to analyse heart rate, etc for runs. This is important for him.
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Having to manually input planned workouts, and then manually input the actual workout when it is done is a waste of time and he can’t be bothered.
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The calendar functionality in the app is non-existent. With TP he can move planned workouts, plan workouts, view his fitness charts, amend workouts. None of this is available in the TR app.
His view was that, for the price, he’d rather just have Training Peaks and Zwift. He won’t subscribe to TR until the calendar is useful. He won’t be alone in that point of view. Given how, when it was released, the calendar was sold as making TR THE place to be for fitness gains, I don’t think that promise has been delivered, and TrainerRoad must be losing potential customers as a result. I also thought that the price increase was meant to reflect this added functionality (i’m grandfathered in, so am not so touchy about this). If that’s the case then that was misleading.
So, my request is pretty simple, please invest some time and effort in the calendar to make it more useful outside of cycling. And please make the app useful outside of just being used for TrainerRoad workouts. I genuinely believe these two changes would drastically improve user experience, saleability and conversion of customers a lot easier.
Is there even a roadmap for any of the above? If so, what timescale is it looking like?
