Discourse (used by TR and Intervals.icu) is free and a doddle to setup and they will do it for you for $99 or something. They also have hosted options. It annoys me when companies just delegate such important things to Facebook. Its really not hard to have your own site and forums!
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And I think WKO could get there as well, there are some INCREDIBLY smart people that chime in from time to time. The issue using facebook is you get a “newsfeed” type service for posting questions, so no delineation or thread naming. And it drives smart people away, and junior people dont want to join because its not user friendly. worst of both worlds
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interestingly, these positions don’t need to be inconsistent. I for the most part ignore mFTP, because i’m rarely feeding it max efforts of a duration long enough for it to properly obtain. I just use my preferred FTP testing protocol to get an estimate of MLSS (I like the 5 mins max followed by 20 mins).
But the iLevels and associated functionality for +FTP work are still super useful. I also use the fatigue resistance insight functionality.
FWIW, I have seen the WKO “powers that be” respond rather curtly to people’s questions and I definitely agree with you that that’s not helpful. On the other hand, I also see a ton of people popping in there with comments bout how mFTP doesn’t match their tested FTP as if that is some sort of personal affront to them, so i’m sure that has to get annoying after a while. I’ve asked questions on that Facebook page and have only gotten helpful responses.
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Are you still using TrainerRoad plans/workouts and customising them based on your ilevels, or are you now just creating your own using the Optimised intervals?
A combination of both. I still stick to TR workouts for SS but when I get into build phase I start to modify the plans using the TR’s workout creator. I tend to fail a lot of the prescribed Vo2 workouts but if i tweak them using recommended iLevels + recovery I get much better results.
To me the combination of WKO + modified TR Workouts using workout creator is really good…
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I do the exact same.
100% this. I actually build out all of my workouts that my coach assigns each week in the creator and reference WKO during the process.
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You are a saint. I tried doing to briefly and the workout creator beat me down.
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There are a couple of tricks to working around the quirks of WorkoutCreator, once you learn them its really easy to edit an existing workout.
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Sharing is caring…
The one that drives me absolutely nuts is when i want to “add” an interval onto the end of a workout, and for some reason you can’t pin it to the very end, it winds up splitting the final interval into two pieces and inserting itself right in there.
Also a “Ctrl+A” copy all function would be a god-send.
Step 1 is to embrace the “feature” and use it to your advantage…
Lets take Galena +2 and turn it up to 11 
Starting point:
the objective is to take it from 3 intervals to 4 intervals… so grab the 5-min snippet and drop it smack dab in the middle of the last interval and change it to 6-min and 40% just like the other recoveries:
and now:
- change duration of interval #3 to 20 minutes
- change duration of interval #4 to 20 minutes
- and we are going to crank it up to 11 so change the Start FTP to 101
all done! Frustration free zone
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What is missing from WKO is a workout builder that will make use of the iLevels and make it super easy to put together a session based on targets at that point in time.
This could either be spat out into a .fit file or played in a training interface in WKO itself.
Golden Cheetah has this.
I posted a question on one of the YouTube vids on how iLevels would be infinitely more useful this way. WKO responded by saying “use training peaks and edit your workouts every monday”. I then said “I paid for WKO, why do I need to pay for a subscription to get the best use of what WKO tells me?”… and of course they never responded.
And I totally agree with whoever posted about the use of FB for support. It’s quite lame. I’m missing out due to my stance on FB, and the community is missing out on my contributions too (if I may say so myself).
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I’ve been thinking of taking the plunge and buying WKO5, but Facebook is not usable as a support forum. (or forum at all.) This is definitely a big negative.
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I’m sure you know this… TP free allows you to create workouts for today and tomorrow. You don’t need to pay for a subscription, but you need to deal with that limitation.
(It may even be possible to create your 1-3 interval sessions for the week on Monday, and then say on Saturday edit one of the Monday workouts you created and move it to Saturday. But I haven’t tried it)
Re: Support If you go to wko5.com
and click on “Submit a Support Request” it will take you to TrainingPeaks support. I’ve filed a copy of WKO tickets and got a quick reply.
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What WKO5 lacks in a forum, it certainly makes up for excellent YouTube videos on the WKO and Training Peaks channels. Everything from 2 minute tutorials on basic features, through detailed seminars from Tim on how to use WKO5 to improve yourself as an athlete
I think I need to dig into these videos and see how my brain copes with them.
I didn’t know that… does it support ilevels and integration with WKO5 data?
They already have my username and a profile so it shouldn’t be too difficult.
No iLevels in workout builder… This is a great idea though and would even maybe make me consider subscribing to TP again.
For now it’ll have to be TR plans + WC + iLevels + WKO5 for me…
Tim let slip in a recent webinar that TP are working on workouts creation using ilevels. I got the impression it might not be too far away, but that might have been wishful thinking
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For that specific example there is a far easier way;
Click on both the 5min interval, hold CTRL, and then also click the working interval.
Once selected top right, click DUPLICATE
BAM!
All done.
This is handy for extending things in existing workouts and adding additional intervals if a “+ X” version does not exist for what you want to do.
While the above method is awesome, what is less awesome is selecting a “set” of intervals (think Spanish needle) where you have to click them each individually and can get very difficult. Hence my request for a select all feature.
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