Sweet Spot Progression

Nope. Weirdly, it’s just not something any of the computers seem to do. The best workaround I could find was to hit the lap button on stretches where I knew I could stay in sweet spot, then end it when the terrain hit a point I couldn’t hold the power steady anymore, like long downhills or lots of rollers. Then just keep a running total of time in zone in mind.

It’s pretty annoying considering how common SST training is across training apps, platforms, and philosophies.

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https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/95fc3b69-6c3c-4618-a2de-f68ffca35360

This certainly isn’t perfect but you can set a custom floor that you have to exceed (just can’t give a ceiling).

Thread here: Announcing "Endurance in Zone" for Garmin devices

@torhovland is the creator

I have not tried this but could you use Garmin’s native Time In Zone and customize your power zones?
Default:


Sweetspot specific:

Yeah, I’ve considered that but I do occasionally use it to track time in zone for Threshold, too. And just knowing the zones were off would inevitably kick up some kind of Telltale Heart scenario on the bike and drive me a little crazy.

I was just checking around on the Connect IQ store and there’s a decent looking time in zone datafield. I may reach out to the developer and see if he could add Sweet Spot in there, with donations forthcoming.

Garmin has native TiZ data fields too, just not a SS one.

Anyone currently making use of the “More Sweetspot!” Team’s library of “SS90” workouts might want to take a look at this:

No reply from TR so far to my questions about this, heightening my concern that this extremely useful feature - which in effect provides us with shared libraries of Custom workouts - is one step nearer to being binned for good. :astonished:

If this is something that you make use of, and would be impacted by its loss, I suggest speaking up…

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Seriously? I may have to turn off the new calendar in that case.

Edit: realized I can do it from the team page the way I always have, so not a huge issue for me (at least at this point). Didn’t even realize you could do it straight from the calendar.

That won’t work forever. If they’re planning on deprecating teams, then it’s only a matter of time before they move everyone to the new calendar and turn off the old calendar entirely.

The only real “solution” is to make them aware of how useful teams are and hope they adjust plans to keep that functionality somehow.

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You can stil add them from the Workouts page. At least I’ve just been able to.

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Yes, I mention that in my Calendar thread post… but unless something changes, or some assurances are made, the direction of travel appears pretty obvious: this feature is destined for the chop.

Seems totally crackers:

  • Why wouldn’t you want a feature that enables users to share Custom Workouts?
  • What’s the point of having everyone create their own individual workouts, duplicating effort, and wasting time?
    :person_shrugging:

Unless the direction of travel means that Custom Workouts themselves are also being lined up for the chop?

Can you imagine if TR developers weren’t allowed to use software libraries and instead had to create everything themselves from scratch? Maybe that’s why WLV2 is taking 3 years :joy:

I created the sweet spot team workouts I use in intervals.icu and push them to indieVelo. TR isn’t necessary for these. And creating workouts in intervals.icu is so much easier than TR’s workout creator.

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I don’t really wish to abandon TR, or add more complexity, but everything would ultimately be in play if changes by TR (feature removal!) meant that I became unable to do the workouts that I wished to…

I currently only use intervals.icu for post-ride analysis. Regarding its use as a repository for workouts, does it support shared libraries of workouts? I can see it has groups that might facilitate this but unsure…

Ultimate question, I suppose, is whether it’s possible to get all of these SS90 workouts over into a library on intervals.icu and then have them be publicly accessible, so that anyone can make use of them (not just members of a closed group of people who happen to already know each other).

Is that possible?

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I know you can share a folder of workouts on intervals.icu publicly (but not proprietary workouts), but I don’t know if you can copy or import that folder into your own library. Is that possible @davidtinker? And to be clear these are not TrainerRoad-created workouts.

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IMHO, intervals.icu workout creator is so good, I don’t even bother big and/or shared library anymore. I have library with various workout type templates, simply drop intended workout to target date, update title/intervals/durations and sync to headunit for both indoor and outdoor rides.

Yeah, I lose PL updates but progressions for SS/Z4/Z5 are discussed in various topics here, so I can adapt next workouts myself depending how I feel :man_shrugging:

Basically, I visit TR mostly for RL/GL and AI FTP updates only nowadays.

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Thanks for that, @svens .

I tend to manage my own progression blocks, and prefer simple workout structures (don’t most people now?!), so what you’re describing sounds like it could be feasible for me.

Definitely not that keen on using my headunit for indoor workouts, and would prefer to use a workout player on my Android phone. There’s probably a way around that also if necessary, eg. pushing workouts to something like Trainerday.

There’s more complexity going down this route of combining various tools (vs. simply using TR as at present), but if feature removal means that’s what’s required in order to retain full control over workout selection then c’est la vie. :person_shrugging:

NB I don’t have Windows or Mac OS, so cannot simply (easily) recreate all these SS90 workouts as Custom workouts for myself within TR. That’s why I’m so vocal about this (apparent!) move to deprecate the “shared Custom workout” facility that Teams provides us with. :angry:

Seems crackers to me to be removing such a useful & basic feature, but WTFDIK?

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Positive update from Sean on the Calendar Beta thread, regarding the omission of the Teams filter when adding Workouts within the new calendar:

So, while the Teams filter option is still missing currently, sounds like this will be fixed in the near future.

Reprieved, for now :pray::wink::ok_hand:

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Yes you can. You can drag the workouts onto one of your own folders or onto your calendar. That creates a copy.

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For what it’s worth, TrainingPeaks workout creator is great. Not as colorful as Intervals, but if you’re a subscriber there already it’s super simple to make a library of simple workouts like the sweet spot ones we have here.

If you have TrainingPeaks and TR linked, you can just drag them into your library, too. Then you can load them on your head unit or direct on TR and/or Zwift. Everything plays so nicely together these days.

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…and the free alternatives would be Intervals linked with IndieVelo. Seemsmesly good.

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Indeed. And as a bonus, TP workouts are synced to TR calendar and you’ll receive PL updates as well. But whoever goes this direction, should know few gotchas and stick to simple workout structures, no fancy combinations like late sprints in otherwise steady Z2-Z4. While it might be good workout, it tends to get inflated PL assignments that will screw up TR recommendations later.

Anyway, I personally like intervals.icu workout creator because being software devel, I like textual approach that is easy to manage. I mean, this snippet for SS/4x10 is really nice and understandable :slight_smile:

- 5m Z1
- 5m Z2
- 3m SS

4x
- 5m 40%
- 10m SS

- 2m 40%
- 40m Z2
- 5m Z1

It has possibility to add some text to display on headunit, but I haven’t bothered with those.

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Just a reminder that if you love the intervals workout creator and library, not to mention the workout analysis, it’s always a good idea to throw a little money David’s way.

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