Who has taken the plunge? (Dropped TrainingPeaks, etc.)

Just double checked my account - you are correct here. Removed my incorrect post above. Free only gets you general calendar tracking, TSS and IF calculations, time in HR and power zones, very similar to free Strava.

1 Like

I really do love seeing the time in the zones though. I donā€™t have any additional stuff with strava, so this is nice for me. Though, I just got the elevate plugin for chrome, so now I can see fatigue, form, and fitness via strava.

My TP subscription just expired. I dug the graphs / info but I wasnā€™t really learning / gaining from them. I get enough planning with the TR calendar and the analytics give me enough info as I wasnā€™t tracking other workouts with TP anyway. I will miss the dashboard, but I think seeing my fitness number drop sometimes stressed me out unnecessarily, hit my OCD.

I only use Strava as a social platform and compare some my rides / efforts outdoors.

I used TP Last year but didnā€™t renew. There are parts of it I liked such as the Annual Training Plan implementation but I didnā€™t think much of the web UI and graph setup. In this respect I much preferred the usability of cyclinganalytics.com and hope that TR ends up something like this.

Still on Strava premium but doubt I will renew as they havenā€™t released any decent new features in years. The recent finger swipe route creator is a joke. May even ditch it completely as the whole kudos thing gets annoying (the other week I accidentally synced a 1s workout from Apple Watch and it got 10 kudos ffs).

I dropped TP when I came up for renewal in December. I am exclusively using TR as well as a notebook. Keeping it simple.

1 Like

I still run TR and TP in parallel; what TR needs in order for me to cancel TR is:

  • Logging of non-cycling activities - running, swimming, cross country skiing, strength/weights. 15% of my training is non-cycling.
  • Automatic estimation of TSS (e.g. hrTSS) for when I do non-cycling activities or ride without a power meter.
  • Tracking of other metrics, specifically weight, sleep, nutrition and/or sickness.
  • Report gallery. I suppose this is mostly for nerds, but the customizable dashboards and reports are useful to keep track of progress. Especially the ones in the TR app are great.

Having said this, TR has taken a few giant leaps over the last year, so it may well be a matter of ā€œwhenā€ rather than ā€œifā€ I cancel TP.

5 Likes

As one user mentioned a bit earlier in this thread, anyone who wants Training Peaks-style ATL/CTL/TSB charting outside of Training Peaks, you can use an app/Chrome extension called Elevate (it used to be called Stravistix). It pairs with and pulls the data from your Strava and is a donation only model. I use it with a free Strava account and it works great.

Itā€™s done by a developer who pulls rides (and runs and swims) from your Strava account and does the standard Coggan model ATL/CTL/TSB chart as well as some nice graphs of year over year progressions. It also supports historical rider data (threshold paces, FTP, heart rates, weight, etc.) that allows for accurate historical data relative to those benchmarks as they change across time.

To me ELEVATE is worst than TP:
elevate uses TRIMP score (heart rate) in running activities, whereas TP uses pace, which I prefer.

Admittedly, Iā€™m not an expert in these things, but digging through the ā€˜helpā€™ icons and notes within the app, it appears the developer uses several different methods for calculating several different forms of TSS based on event and what equipment and athlete capabilities data is availableā€¦and all of the methods he uses are correlated directly to metrics taken from Training Peaks.

And like you, the developer notes that TRIMP is an inferior metric to the other options and he doesnā€™t recommend using it.

You can control what metric (heart rate, running threshold pace, etc.) is used by what toggles you select in the settings and what data you provide the app.

For example, the picture below shows how Elevate calculates a ā€œRunning Stress Scoreā€ based on threshold pace and activity pace and duration data rather than heart rate data. This is equivalent to Training Peaks rTSS according to the developer.

Thanks. I just tried this, and it seems adequate for my use. So, with TR and this, my wife and I can give our TP plans. Thats about 200 dollars a year saved.

1 Like

A question though. I have a different indoor FTP, and with Todaysplan, I can edit a ride to re process with a different FTP.

Any way to do that on a free Strava account or on elevate?

Edit: One way to do it is to change the FTP setting for the day that I do an indoor ride I guess?

You can:

  1. Open the completed TR workout on the website,
  2. Click the 3-dots under the bottom right of the graphics,
  3. Click [Edit Ride]
  4. Change the FTP, then save.
  5. TR will reprocess that ride data with the new FTP.

This works for most workouts I have ever checked, but there might be limits that I have not experienced.

5 Likes

Been doing that. Using TR and Todaysplan. Want to give up TP, and was suggested Elevate as an alternative to get that performance chart thingie.

I was asking about how to change FTP in Elevate. Got it finally.

Can you put planned workouts into Elevate, because without it youā€™re missing half the point of the PMC.

Mike

I didnā€™t get that. Planned workouts show on TR right?

Yes, but without them showing up as future TSS itā€™s not as easy to plan your season in Elevate. Knowing where your CTL, ATL and TSB at a point in time is great but you need to be able to use it to plan to make the chart as useful as it can be.

Mike

3 Likes

I gotta think that anyone who is looking to drop TP for the cost is probably not invested or sophisticated enough in their training to really benefit that much from something as marginal as the ability to forecast their CTL/ATL/TSB into the future.

Thatā€™s not a knock in any way. Iā€™m definitely in that category. I like seeing the chart for itā€™s motivational and historical purposes but for planning and forecasting the TSS data in TR is plenty for me.

Now maybe if I was a more advanced racer or at a higher level of fitness the forecasting ability for CTL/ATL/TSB would be more important, but if I got to that level Iā€™d probably also have some form of coach who handled that stuff for me anyway.

Besides, half the point for zero cost is an infinitely better return on spend that the whole point for any price. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I am absolutely in this category. The graph is kind of motivational.

Iā€™ve subscribed to all the platforms for a couple years now, but as far as TP Iā€™d just been using it as a data/metrics dump without ever going back in to ā€œanalyzeā€. Their functionality in the phone app is fairly limited versus web, and the website is abysmal on a mobile browser in function and appearance. For forecasting, I like to see CTL effects but with form and fatigue I never really considered this as more than a vague estimate given life stress etc not being able to be forecastedā€¦ I reasoned that HRV4TRAINING or Whoop would provide more actionable data?

Iā€™d been running purchased TrainingPeaks plans during outdoor season but with TrainerRoad rolling outdoor plans to our Garmins soon Iā€™m in the process right now of comparing the outdoor versions of TR plans to my current in-season plans to see if Iā€™m ready to drop TP. Speaking of which, did @themagicspanner get around to charting PMC of the TrainerRoad plans or sharing his delightful spreadsheet?? :wink:

Well, if you FTFP (follow the fā€¦ plan, for the 0.5% who donā€™t know), and the plan comes from Chad (or anybody else who is not you and who you trust), then forecasting your metrics is more of an entertainment / motivation thing? I personally donā€™t need the motivation, and am not enough of a weirdo to be entertained :wink: but I am as invested in doing the plan as Iā€™ve ever been.

1 Like