I love that I got an endurance bump last night for doing a “3” work out. Never mind the 13 hours of endurance pacing I did for unbound. Im not mad I am just laughing at the system.
This might drive the perfectionist in me to once a week choose a super hard number work out to raise all these levels to where they should be.
Your scale descriptors for the Pass survey, 1 - 5, are great. Thank you Chad.
But I think that there are missing cases. Today, I completed Pinnacle, which is 3 x 20 at FTP with various breaks within the 20 min intervals. Last interval, I failed:
Two things:
[1] I got the “Pass” survey – how hard did it feel? AT seems to feel that this was more like a pass than a fail.
[2] But my threshold progression levels were not raised. Evidently AT thinks it was not a good enough pass.
No complaints about that. But your scale needs to include the case when you did not actually complete the workout as prescribed, but AT still rates it a pass.
Personally I rated this as Very Hard – more mental focus and muscle endurance than I had today. But I thought it was clearly not All Out: I wasn’t nearly dead, throwing up or any of that.
Just a suggestion for some more inclusive wording to the scale!
You basically addressed it here already. You didn’t fail, it was super hard and you rated it as such. No further overthinking required, thats close enough 
This is a good reference point and I will be using it except making a minor tweak to it. All Out for me means that I will need a recovery day for sure. then just shift All Out → V Hard → Hard
I agree with this a lot making my decisions much more simple. There is a TED talk where they talk about the fact that less is more. That is why Youtube went from a 5 star system to thumb up/down
Yeah, five levels of granularity is likely to send me into an overthinking it tailspin, but I’ll do my best! (when I get in).
I hate it when a post is materializing in my mind as I’m scrolling, then I realize @mcneese.chad has already written the exact same post.
Actually I don’t. It’s nice to feel validated.
The guidelines I wrote myself a while ago:
1 - no problem at all, thought about going harder, could have easily done more of the workout.
2 - Feelings of effort but not particulary tired at the end.|
3 - Consistent effort requiring more focus as it went on. Fatigued at the end. Could have done more but also fine with being done. Never in danger of stopping.
4 - Challenging. Serious effort. Maybe a couple of doubts, but able to complete 100%.
5 - Either had to adjust workout or it was a killer to complete at 100%. Don’t be afraid to give things a 5, it doesn’t have to be the hardest workout you ever did. Anything that feels near the limits of your ability deserves a 5.
Then there’s a secret, dreaded 6. Those are for the very few truly memorably difficult ones. Like maybe once or twice a year. The effort level that you really aren’t capable of very often at all because usually you give up before you reach that point.
Maybe I’ll make a new thread for stories about your LEVEL 6 workouts.
Hi B, I’m wondering if you ever tried this?
I’m trying to decide whether to do a workout indoors tomorrow or outdoors (with a Wahoo Bolt). Probably doesn’t matter too much either way, and I’ll just do what I feel like. But if anybody has had success disconnecting Strava and uploading Wahoo data either via Garmin Connect or manually, I could give that a go. But so far it still seems like only Garmin users have had success with this?
I have not tried it, so I’m not sure if it would work. Just a shot in the dark at the moment.
I’ve just been working around having outdoor workouts not counting in AT as I’m in the last four weeks of specialty at the moment and there’s only so much more I can do to be fitness ready. May give it a shot after my A event though!
Fair enough. I’ll do a post if I decide to try it, but I may not - I tend to keep my key workouts indoors anyway, but sometimes I get the itch to do one outside
Did an outside structured workout with my Bolt this week and manually uploaded the fit file. Didn’t solve it I’m afraid…
I received a very helpful reply from Support after contacting them for advice on the matter:
Intensity: this would be selected when the workout is asking for 350w per interval but you were not able to hit the target (ie. the target power is too high).
Training Fatigue: this refers to when you might have residual fatigue from previous sessions such as a long ride earlier in the week or if you haven’t recovered from yesterday’s Ramp Test. Training Fatigue only refers to fatigue that comes from training and is aimed at finding potential overtraining. If the only reason that prevented you from nailing the targets was a difficult day at work and not the effects of recent workouts, then this is not the option to choose.
Stress/Motivation: this would fall under “stress or motivation outside of training” - so if you had a very stressful day at work and your mind just wasn’t on doing a workout, this would be the one to choose. Stress/Motivation can be both mental and physical. While a long day of physical work definitely tires your legs, it’s certainly going to have some sort of effect mentally as well. That said, as this category doesn’t explicitly match your situation, “Other” is also a good response in these situations.
Other: this might be due to your kids begging you to feed them, a thunderstorm came through and flooded your garage, or anything else that is not within the above options. “Other” is the correct and most appropriate response to use when your legs are so tired from doing your job that you were unable to complete the workout.
Just want to give a shoutout to TrainerRoad Support.
I’ve been saving up my Adaptive Training and general App niggles until I thought it was worth contacting them. Sent my email yesterday and within the hour I’d received a response from a member of the team.
The email response I received broke my ramblings down into three clear objectives. Everything was very easy to understand and clearly explained.
I really liked the way that the email response encouraged me to continue the conversation. The member of the Support Team seemed genuinely keen to help me resolve my issues.
@Nate_Pearson @ambermalika @Jonathan Have to say that I found this very refreshing. The Support Team must be getting snowballed at this moment in time. This level of customer service might be a small thing but, for me as a consumer, it sets TrainerRoad apart.
Thanks for the heads up!
Soooooo… This might have been addressed already and I know it’s been mentioned in the podcast, but is it OK to skip the FTP test or not? The adaptations take place anyway, right?
I don’t mind testing but it’s between +25 and +30C in my pain cave during the summer and I’ve tried and the results are super bad due to the heat and the body feels horrible.
And no thanks, fan suggestions not needed, I have fans but doesn’t help when it’s that warm. Do most workouts outside now, but doing ramp test outside seems complicated/impossible.
Those are the conditions you train indoors in so yes
But for AT purposes you can manually set FTP as you feel
Thanks for sharing this response! Very helpful. The only thing that concerns me is the definition of Training Fatigue seems to point only at TR workouts. This makes perfect sense in a closed clinical AT world, but in reality, most people are going to throw in non-TR rides, non-bike workouts, things like going for a long hike, etc. If the goal is to identify overtraining and adapt before it happens, leaving all those things out is going to skew the results in the wrong direction.
Just be prepared for your progression levels to get thrown out of whack if you do…
I don’t know what would happen if you didn’t take a test but based on the way the system is supposed to work you would just continue up the workout type steps 3.3 → 3.7 → … → 8.0 etc. once you get to this point it may be highly recommened that you do a test.
Maybe if you had Pete Morris yelling at you that would motivate you through 
I concur! Really helpful recently and patient, when it was clearly my fault! 
I’m reading the reply as any fatigue arising from riding my bike - irregardless of whether it’s from indoor training using TR, outdoor rides following a TR workout, club rides or any other rides:
“residual fatigue from previous sessions such as a long ride earlier in the week or if you haven’t recovered from yesterday’s Ramp Test.”
I’ve done a few outdoor rides since joining the beta group and I’ve been able to rate each one.
