Higher vs Lower Progression level tracks?

TrainerRoad Software
1

Hi folks,

Question about how the AI adjusts progression levels — specifically, whether it has goal levels in mind.

For the past year or whatever, I’ve trained consistently and let AI do its thing, updating every 28 days or so. Usually my progression levels (sweet spot and threshold, mainly) would start each new cycle around 3-4, and they’d top out around 5 by the end of the cycle. Then my FTP would increase and they’d go back down to 3-4. This had the effect of giving me workouts appropriate to level 3-5: sweet spot intervals that wandered from from 88-94% FTP, and interval length of 10-20 mins.

But I’ve found myself in a weird situation. I took a couple of months off of cycling, but the time wasn’t off of training — I was doing intensive running and rowing. When I returned to TR, it thought I’d been lazy and dropped my FTP 40 watts. I said fine and accepted it, but the workouts were easy and I attempted to tell the AI as much by cruising through a series of breakthrough workouts, after which my progression levels in sweet spot and tempo were around 8.

At the next AI FTP detection, it bumped me up 10w or so, but my levels only decreased to 6.8 or so. Now, for each training block, they go from high 6s to mid 7s, and the workouts suuuck. Sweet spot workouts are basically “hold 94% for an hour and shut up.”

This may or may not be effective, but my question is: shouldn’t AI have a goal range of progression levels for what training block you’re in? I mean, maybe my FTP should be 20w higher — where it was last year — and my progression levels should be at 3-5 (where they were last year). It seems kind of arbitrary and weird that just because I did some breakthrough workouts, I’m now consigned to live forever at 94% FTP, which is fairly thankless.

Maybe I need to fail some workouts to get it to adjust, but it all seems rather odd. Like, I’d have expected AI to say: how much do I need to raise FTP to get progression levels down to where they should be at this point? But it doesn’t seem to do that.

Cheers,
Damon

2

I also have complained about this couple times (but haven’t talked to TR support what can be done about that, though).

For me it is even worse, SS PL jiggles around 9-10 and higher with Marcus Baker, Pendleton but TR does not take it into account. After every AI FTPD, SS PL drops to low 9, in 1-2 workouts it gets back to 10 and then AT can’t help anymore, need to plan own progression. I think this situation is corner case with high TTE. I trust FTP is correct, at least corresponds to expected RPE and LT2 HR. Once even double checked with Kolie Moore FTP test. I can do those higher PL SS workouts but frequency of it is mentally quite tiring.

Luckily there is new AI FTPD feature, it becomes automatically available whenever you finish workout with that high PL. I am currently in recovery week, haven’t had chance to try this approach out yet. And even then, I don’t think FTP increases are high enough to drop SS PL into more comfortable range. Plus AI FTPD might start overestimating with some FTP/TTE combinations.

I can see it might be time to move on to other progression (VO2max, Z4?) but this is something that Plan Builder can’t help with plus if you want to peak for specific date, it might be too early.