I’ve started doing a bit of heat training indoors in my garage. If you’ve tried it, you’ll definitely notice that your heart rate increases to higher levels than if you were running fans and cooling. My question is that if I’m doing this on a z2 or endurance ride, is TR going to think that I’m losing fitness because my HR is higher? I’ve been adding annotations on my heat training days so I can remember I did it. Curious how other people might be handling this as well since TR has no concept of what my core body temperature is at any time.
My concern would be that TR thinks I’m losing fitness so it might start moving to easier workouts or reducing my FTP. This hasn’t happened yet, but seems like it could in the future.
1 Like
Ive also wondered this just from a general “its too bloody hot” perpsective on my outside rides. Garmin thinks my VO2 max is falling everytime I’m on a hot ride…does TR think the same?
I wouldn’t worry about this too much.
I could see those endurance rides feeling harder as you get hotter, and this will likely affect your post-workout survey responses, but I’d still recommend answering them honestly, as you don’t want to take on workouts that are too hard when you’re heat training.
The key there is to find the spot where your core temp/HR are on point, so you might have to adjust the intensity during some workouts to ensure you stay on target.
I have been doing the same and had the same concerns regarding TR adaptations. Despite the fact that the workouts can get pretty brutal, I have been rating them Easy in the post-ride survey with the hope that prevents TR from reducing my FTP/levels.
1 Like
That doesn’t seem right to me since I am not strictly riding in the heat and do not want my non-heat training workouts to also have lower intensity due to TR AI updates. I have not had a problem recovering from the added heat stress (which should be prompting adaptations which actually translate to improved performance) but I have been making sure my heat training workouts are an appropriate intensity and I end them when they start getting too hard. So far, TR has not downgraded anything in my plan based my higher HR; it actually just bumped my FTP up after completing a level 9 sweetspot workout (not in the heat, of course)… So, this seems to be an effective approach so far.
First off, we always recommend honestly rating the workouts on how they felt. I can’t stress that enough.
If you’re doing heat-specific workouts where the goal is to spend x time at y core temp/HR, rather than hitting the prescribed power targets, then those kinds of fall outside the intentions of Adaptive Training in terms of guiding you through all of your prescribed workouts.
In this type of scenario, it might be better to switch those heat sessions to a Solo Ride to keep them separate from your other workouts. They are different enough from regular workouts that treating them the same might not be the best option.
Hi Eddie,
I get what you’re saying. However, I do my heat training inside on a trainer. So, I want to still be able to run TrainerRoad application and modify intensity somehow. Would using the “free ride” workouts give that experience?
1 Like
In that case, I’d probably just pick a simple Endurance workout and adjust the intensity to help you hit the numbers you’re looking for. Find a workout that works for you and don’t worry about Workout/Progression Levels, or anything like that, since this type of work doesn’t fit in with a prescriptive training plan as much as the workouts you’re assigned.
But the original question still remains (since regardless of workout intensity, the added heat stimulus will increase heartrate and RPE) - Will this elevated heartrate data impact future Progression Levels/Plan Adaptations for rides that will be done without the heat stimulus?
Can you elaborate on why you strongly suggest honestly rating a heat stimulus session? i.e., Why is it better to rate a Z1-Z2 heat session as Hard when TR has no insight into the heat effect variable? What is the negative impact to AI FTP/Levels/etc. if rated Easy when we know it would have been easy in the absence of the heat?
2 Likes
Seems like it’s a complexity they don’t want to deal with on their platform. I get it. It does add in a lot of weird factors where your body is behaving differently than they’d expect given power numbers.
The vibe I am getting is that we need to essentially not use TrainerRoad for heat training which is unfortunate. The more I can use TR ecosystem for training the more likely the AI would be to give me accurate recommendations.
1 Like
Heat training does certainly add in some nuance that can make data trickier to read if you aren’t aware of the context. 
For this reason, it might be better to keep these types of workouts in their own category for the time being.
After thinking about this some more, I wonder if using Free Ride, as @burnett2k mentioned, would be a good option. You could even monitor your HR on a separate device if you’re worried about that data skewing your pool of non-heat training HR data. 
I don’t think doing this in TR would cause any issues, but the option is there for those who have concerns or want to get a more focused approach to their heat training.
Free ride worked out ok, but annoyingly I was not able to just set a power target. I’m on a Zwift cog, so I cannot manually change gears. Had to toy around with resistance levels from 1-10 instead of just setting a target watt. That would be a nice feature to add.
1 Like