Via numerous forum posts and podcast comments, TR officially takes the “Keep It Simple” approach in general and says “Rate it how it feels”. Here is their official support article that adds context and possibly nuance.
I’ve spent more than a little time on the survey ratings topic. Through the lengthy discussion in the related topic, I generated the following guide around info from Ivy, that I and others use regularly.
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I’d have to search to find it, but do NOT recommend taking into account general issues like bike fit, saddle comfort or other factors not actually related to the real power and effort applied to the workout.
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Let’s say you do a lengthy Endurance (Z2) workout that is Achievable/Productive Difficulty, and you find that it’s functionally “Easy” from an effort perspective, but you have notable saddle pain from a bad setup and you mark the workout “Hard”.
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TR AT will look at that and likely stall or downgrade your pending workouts in that training zone. It’s a negative adjustment from the wrong input and could lead to problems in your actual training progression.
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IMO, you need to keep the rating purely about the “workout”. If you have issues like saddle pain and the like, those should not be included in the survey. They are legitimate points of interest that should be addressed with a separate review process to be fixed if at all possible.
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That depends…
- If you rate an Achievable workout as Hard, it may downgrade future workouts. This is because it should not have been Hard from TR/AT’s current info about you and the workout.
- If you rate a Stretch workout as Hard, it may well keep the existing progression that was already in place. This is because a Stretch is expected to be on the higher end of the survey ratings
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It is all relative to the Workout Level in question, related to your Progression Level at the start of the workout, that drives the Difficulty Level. The end result is that you can’t make a blanket statement and need to look at each workout with respect to the rider and how they rate it at the end.
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Maybe, maybe not. Above all else, TR says “Be Consistent” with your ratings. They apparently have some “learning” component in play that should take into account your trends over time to make your own ratings work best for you with AT.
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My recommendation and what I try to do, is pick the more difficult rating if I am ever “on the bubble” and waffling between ratings. My guide above generally gets me to a proper selection, but I still hit a split on occasion. If I know the difficulty was a fluke or result of something I can “fix” in the next workout, I will likely pick the easier one.
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If I am unsure why I had a harder workout than I might have expected, I pick the harder one. That can drop the pending workouts and maybe keep me from a downward spiral. I’d rather crush the next one than have a 2nd one go off plan.
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It’s certainly mental and something that I have struggled with in the old days with the old plans and lack of AT. So I take the “easy” road by picking the “harder” rating whenever I am in doubt. I feel that ripping a slightly easier workout has more benefit (mental and physical) than having another tough one on a harder workout. All gut feel with no backing, but that is my take.