Yes…
thats what most coaches do…
From several Time Trial distance (2 miles, followed by a 1 mile is a popular one) can give you a good range.
I prefer longer TT tho.
Yep, I had a recent bike workout which had a lower power than normal but higher heart rate. But RPE felt lower. Probably because I’ve had a lower load recently so feeling fresher. Hence lower RPE and higher HR
Zooming out a bit from the HR discussion:
One of my biggest gripes is really the lack of scaling or parsing out of previous swim and rub experience. I think their plans make a lot of assumptions (that aren’t even entirely unfair,) but don’t really account for a wide variety of skillsets.
For instances:
- A first time long-course athlete who is aiming for a 16hr completion vs. a many-year-triathlon veteran, who are both constrained (for whatever reason) to the low vol plan.
- An advanced runner and beginner cyclist new to the sport, but whose bike and run abilities are heavily mismatched.
- A brand new swimmer who will spend 2/3 of their total training time before they even get to the race distance as an ability they can do in the pool
- A first timer doing a sprint tri vs someone looking to throw down a really competitive time.
All of these people are, effectively, going to end up choosing a plan based on weekly volume, which is not at all representative of their various needs within each bullet. Time-based RPE running naturally captures a bit if the difference, but not nearly enough imo.
It’s not unfair to say that yes, different people have different needs, and that if you want a custom plan, you need to pay for it, but I would really appreciate even a pretty low-level plan-builder-esque assessment of skills. So take plan builder, and then also ask you to rank your relative SBE abilities. The low-hanging fruit might just be having beginner and non-beginner swimming plans; as is, if you can’t already swim, you’re basically just using the plans to know what days to swim. But even then, as a new beginner, swimming every day is really beneficial to keep that water feel.
Anyway, I could go on, but to keep it relatively short: Yes, it’s very complicated to build out a comprehensive, adaptable, and appropriate set of dynamic plans, but even just asking some basic questions and giving out the right pre-made plan would actually even just catch us up to what you can already get by googling “Free [beginner/interm/adv] half ironman training plan.”
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This is definitely an issue.
The run plans don’t even assume you can run for 60 minutes in the base phase (advizing walking breaks if needed), whereas the swim plans seem to assume you have a stable technique.
I don’t mind the run workouts actually. The RPE scores are translatable to sprint/5k/10k/HM/M pace (it would be nice if this was in the app tho!) or to Stryd power zones (same remark). The workouts are extremely basic…but I think that is a good thing.
Importing the completed swims and runs from Garmin seems like an extremely basic feature tho.
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You guys could try pulling your TR plan into Intervals.icu (my app) via the TR calendar export and collecting all of your activities there (via Dropbox, Garmin Connect, Strava or manual upload) for “all sports” analysis. I recently added support for running (and other sports) power and am busy with pace zones to complete the picture.
Intervals.icu also has a lot of support for exploring the power and HR relationship (w/bpm over time, decoupling etc.).
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At a high level, I don’t think so. Both sports have equivalent benchmarks to FTP, both sports are measured in time, distance, intensity.
I think the logic being built in AT is not cycling specific, AT essentially doesn’t know what the sport is, it just knows whether you struggled with the session or not. And it knows your history.
Patterns built from cycling history would be the same - you struggle with a threshold swim too soon after a vo2 run or some such isn’t complex logic.
At a low level, yes - swimming data files are notoriously non-standardised. Running data is different to cycle data. So yes there is significant parsing work to do.
I would suggest that they will get further and quicker bring swim and run into AT than they ever would “hiring a triathlon coach”. A Tri coach at best is going to come up with different cookie cutter plans, they’re not going to be able to empirically advise on changing the planned workout for every individual on a daily basis.
They have stated that they are analysing heart rate data to inform AT, but that is not the same as guiding training by HR which is what most HR athletes are after. I’ve bought an HRM partly to get the data flowing into TR, mad perhaps, not because I want to train by HR.
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But I don’t really get why the same variables won’t apply? I have trained with Heart Rate, and haven’t seen massive swings in Heart Rate v RPE, or Power v Heart Rate. Certainly not to the degree that is implied on the podcast.
They could presumably implement hrTSS, with lots of caveats, and get non-power meter activities included a long time ago. Now they’re moving to use Heart Rate in some circumstances, it “feels” more principle than science to me.
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Swim yes, run, no.
Maybe if you are light or live somewhere flat, but my 84kg on little legs means every 1% change in gradient is immediately felt! A consistent RPE run means you can slow down on the uphill and pick up the pace on the downhill, at the moment I’m trying to use a Garmin pace-based plan which just means the damn thing is bleeping at me all the time 
Pace in running tells you something else too - how much damage you are doing to your legs. Not so for swimming and cycling.
So for me, I would take pace, HR and RPE for swimming and running (as TR are taking power, HR and RPE for cycling). In swimming I would use pace as the success/fail metric, running the HR…maybe pace for vo2/sprint interval workouts. Combine them all for the ‘cost’ of the activity.
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They will, but if there is a causal relationship, AT should detect it. If I’m a random booze hound, AT would likely see no relationship between my training and by elevated/depressed heart rate at endurance outputs and ignore it. If I’m a studious health fanatic, there might be a better correlation and AT can act on it.
The benefit (and detriment) of data analytics is that it doesn’t need to know why something happens, only that there is a statistical relationship.
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I think we’re looking for an app the plans training in all three sports and is cognisant of all three sports. Not so much analysing our workouts but what should we do today and did we do it - without manual faff. Does it do that?
At the moment I have TR doing it for cycling, Garmin doing it for running and (kind of) SwimSmooth doing it for running.
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Yeah. I already use intervals.icu (now with running power!) but that doesn’t help me mark my run/swim workouts as completed (with correct TSS) in TrainerRoad 
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I totally get what you mean, but I think their experience is that everyone will go for the advanced/expert/High Volume plan because it is perceived to be better, then fail, then publish a youtube clip complaining about it 
I think the adaptive approach is the way forward - don’t ask people, tell people based on empirical data what is recommended…then let them exercise their free will to ignore that and do Disaster Day instead of Pettit
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No it won’t automatically plan for you. It does have a workout library and you can create training plans but nothing automatic.
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This is probably the best reply in here and the best summery of what’s going on.
There is no way for me to ask for a beginners guide to swimming and something a little more advance for running. They send me straight to swim 1600y the 3rd day of my base training. At the same time they have me “walk if you need to” on a 35 minute easy run. I was injured most of the winter so I like the slow build… but sometimes I whish they would manage better and give me a stronger run wo, but not the day after of a vo2Max on the bike.
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Theoretically I see that with with AT you’d start off the standard plan - say it asks you to swim 3000m. You tick “completed” and type in 400m and 2hrs in the time field (Or syncs from your Garmin automatically 
). AT mulls this over and changes down your next swim workout to 200m drills 200m free style. Or something. The run workout you type in your stellar running time and distance and it realises you are an ace runner, so it adjusts the next workout. It wouldn’t even take a week for the standard plan to adapt to a weak swimmer/strong runner.
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Just to add to the hr discussion, that is the one metric that is telling you how you are feeling that particular day. Following a plan blindly if your body is not reacting well to the conditions is an easy way to add more training stress than intended. How you can handle that depends on the line you’re already walking with stress balance.
There’s a reason people don’t get world records at elevation or in super high temps, because those conditions lower your abilities. So why wouldnt you think that the older prescribed workout is actually harder than prescribed if your hr is >= 10 beats higher than normal.
All that is a bit moot though as there are established protocols to calculate rTss and swim Tss. I was actually using excel to calculate swim tss and manually adding it to my calendar. I understand ml is a few steps away, but that simple feature has been asked for quite some time. That’s why i no longer use the calendar.
For running, grade adjusted pace isn’t perfect, but is an attempt to normalize runs over varying terrain. I mostly run on gravel though, so using pace gets tricky as my pace is also dictated by how recently they regraded the road. Fresh gravel us almost 20 seconds per mile slower than pavement, which is also why my garmin gives me very erratic vo2max numbers for my run.
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I tried Training Peaks freebie service at the start of this year but it just reminded me of Windows 3.11 and data synced into it seemingly randomly after a while.
Has anyone tried Tridot? Or know anything about the upcoming Triq? Both should be comparable to TR’s Adaptive Training.
Neither appear to be popular in the Tri community, which says something.
I’ve been doing my long runs on gravel roads as of late since it’s more stimulating than running loops in my relatively small town, and I’m kind of forced to keep going when I’m following a certain grid. It’s definitely a bit of a mental battle seeing the pace vs. HR difference running the gravel, especially when it gets sandy.
Whenever the name gets brought up you get like at least 5 “different” testimonials posted that are all eerily similar in structure. At least I’ve seen this play out a few times. A case where overly aggressive marketing makes it difficult to find real user feedback.
Enough for me to not consider it.
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