I’ve been doing all my indoor rides on Zwift for the last year. I just (re)joined TR and intend to continue using zwift for all indoor rides.
I really like riding with the Robo Pacers for all my endurance and recovery rides. I can pick different pacers depending on the type of endurance and it prevents me from losing my mind to boredom.
I can’t load a workout into a Robo Pacer ride, so when I have an endurance ride on the calendar I’ll pick one that approximates the prescribed TR effort. Will the AI utilize the data in the same way as it would if I loaded the workout into a solo ride? Will RPE affect the training plan in the same way?
I do this too and it works just fine. Not a big deal. I wouldn’t overthink it. If you are supposed to have an easy ride for example, theres probably little difference between a micro structured workout in TR and just riding easy with a pacer bot
You could probably try to switch the workout to an outside workout, which is a bit more lenient and gives you ranges you should keep during the ride. Afterwards associate the Zwift ride with the Workout and done. Unless TR actively prevents you from associating a Zwift ride with an outside workout, which would be strange
(This is all theory, never tried it myself but I’m also intrigued by the possibility)
You could run the workout on TR in the app on your phone but disable the trainer control, this will give you the power targets. You then ride your selected pacer group at the nearest intensity and let Zwift control the trainer, this gives you the terrain and surges etc for variety. I’ve done it in the past for workouts such as Pioneer -3, phone for TR and use my laptop for Zwift.
My endurance rides are there to support my interval sessions. In and of themselves they’re not going to move the needle on my FTP. I don’t think it’s a huge deal if TR can’t directly assess endurance work done against endurance workouts. If I’m doing my endurance rides right (or wrong) that’ll be reflected in my interval workouts, and how I do in those matters a lot more.
As long as the riding is more or less in the spirit of the day’s scheduled workout, it’s all good. Even if it’s, say, two 45 minute rides back to back instead of a single 90 minute ride.
When the day comes, I pin the workout so it doesn’t subsequently get adapted, do my ride(s), and skip the workout when prompted.
I agree. I’m fine with the harder sessions having rigid structure. Sure it get it’s simpler for TR’s “maths” to probably assess it’s know workouts from it’s library. But I would hope for the most there is not a ton of difference if I just do doing any type of “free” endurance riding where, as you state, I am riding more or less in the spirit of the day’s scheduled workout.
Let’s say tomorrow you have Fayette lined up as your endurance workout, but rather than loading that up and doing it you want to do a free ride or RoboPacer ride of similar load/intent instead.
If you do your ride and save it, TR doesn’t know that you’ve already “done” the workout. It’ll assume that you’ve just done one endurance ride, and you’re still going to do Fayette as well … only it’s very likely that it’ll adapt Fayette out and replace it with something easier before you either a) manually tell it that you’re not going to do it, or b) accept the prompt to skip it.
The solution/workaround is to pin Fayette before you do (technically - before you save) any other rides on that day. That way, when you get the prompt to skip the planned workout, it’ll definitely be Fayette that you’re skipping.
The alternative, if you truly think that the ride you did is pretty much an exact copy of Fayette, only done as a free ride rather than in Zwift workout mode, is to decline the prompt to skip it, and then go into the ride you did and associate it with Fayette.
You can turn off the prompt asking if you’re doing the workout?
Is there a need to associate the pacer group ride with a specific workout? I guess my opinion is TR should be smart enough to analyze that ride as a zone 2 ride
No - and I agree. Sometimes, though, I do a solo free ride and deliberately exactly copy the workout structure, and in that case I may as well associate it with the workout.
I’ve done this and haven’t noticed much of any impact - I don’t know that an hour where the power varies in block format in a TR workout vs organically in a pacer ride can matter much as long as the IF is close. What I’ve done is just do the same time and IF and called it a day. I don’t do it all the time but just when I want to mix it up a bit.
