I see a lot of discussions on here about FTP estimation and pricing, but I am surprised that no one is talking about the other feature that @Nate_Pearson mentioned on the latest podcast.
This is the ability to tell Plan Builder what days and how much time each day you want to train and it will create a plan to fit your schedule.
I am super excited about this as I often wish there was a plan in-between low and mid volume (I know they say to just add a ride to LV but I train more consistently if I know that I am supposed to do a ride that day rather then having to do it myself)
I think itās a really nice addition, and I would use it, but if you asked me if I would pay more for it, probably not, when you can just use train now or alternates as a workaround.
Iām super excited about this. MV plans start adding 90 minute weekday rides which I cannot do. Itāll be nice to cap days to a set number of minutes.
Hereās an example. This is a mid-volume plan but I have the week-day workouts very short. And then I have a 60 min Saturday ride then a longer 2 hour outside ride to round it out.
I like this feature but for slightly different reasons.
Being a 50+ athlete I long for plans with less days of intensity but the standard reply of ādo LV + enduranceā means all weekday sessions are only 1 hour Iām not time crunched so dont want to be capped at 1 hour all the time, so now presumably I can indicate I want longer sessions on a LV plan and now not have to edit every single workout in the planā¦
Now, if we could only have a base plan that just uses 2 intensity sessions a week but isnt stuck in those weird Pol intensity choices
Might be the greatest thing ever. Iāll admit Iām not too excited by it BUT BUT BUT when calendar was new I wasnāt too excited at the prospect of that eitherā¦as soon as it went live and I poked around a little I drafted an email to support asking if I could lock in multi-year pricing because I thought pricing was likely to go up. (I had no clue about the super cool Nate Grandfather Pricing Retention Plan)
So, maybe. It might be great. Letās start a crowd-source to pay Alex or Dylan to make a TR-critical Youtube video so TR will do an early release!
From my perspective, I donāt really need anything as far as volume adjustment. As folks have said, alternates are great. I do SSB HV and my Thursday workouts are default 90mins and I always use alternates to get it to 2hrs, or in todayās case I subbed in a 2.5hr sweet spot workout. What would be interesting to see is if, in conjunction with adaptive training, how good this is with either ramping up or scaling back volume based on how folks are doing.
I love this idea! canāt wait. I have always just added to the LV plan because the longer weekday rides in the MV plans donāt work for my schedule. But then on the weekends, I can easily fit in a 2+ hour ride.
L/m/h volume as base descriptions seem like a good thing, but then maybe have it ask if they expected more or less and go from there.
I did a cycling plan for the first time last year since I wasnāt racing any Tris. I was annoyed going from low to mid volume that it went from 3 to 5 days, was expecting 4 like the trip plans I had done. L/m/h volume can still set an expectation of commitment to the plan but then someone on a low can bump it up to 4 if they want it spread out. Or someone on high can bump it down to say 5 If they need it condensed.
The problem with alternates is that they donāt play well with AT, because when it adapts the workouts itāll undo any changes youāve made to workout lengths, which makes it basically impossible to plan your alternate workouts in advance. Iāve been using alternates since theyāve been available and Iām very excited to be able to set a default duration for my workouts when setting up my plan.
I love the concept. What do you do about the new users with no experience training who either drastically overestimate or underestimate what they can handle and then say TR either destroyed them or didnāt raise their fitness?
Now that I think about it, even experienced users are guilty of this.
Does AT ramp their PL or hourly volume up/down to get them back on a productive plan? Would it tell you you need to skip a workout or add/extend one?
Would that rely on us picking whether a day is hard or easy, or would it be intelligent enough to work out that if x āhardā days exist there needs to be an āeasyā day before another āhardā one?
I think keeping the low/medium/high plans as a starting point would make sense for beginners who may not know exactly how often and how long they should be working out, or for people who just donāt want this much fine-grained control over their plans.
As a 50+ athelete, I would love to be able to say to the builder, I want 2 high,1 medium and a couple of low, and vary the lenght on them, as I cannāt couple with 3+ high intensity, but can do more than 1 hour per day (multiple workouts per day option ?) and Iām in no way time crunched
My long term dream would be what Xert kinda sorta loosely almost does: you set a goal of hours/week and a rough ramp rate of increased XSS (TSS). Then when you do a workout it recommends your next workout based on how hard the previous workouts in the week have been and how much XSS you have left in the week, with rest days when youāre ahead of pace.
If AT could build out a full plan 8 (or however many) weeks ahead, then make adjustments on the fly like swapping out a hard day for a rest day if you did a hard day on your rest day, itād be amazing. Also, of course, insanely complicated to code.
And like Wombiehunter says above, being able to designate X days workouts a week with your flags for hard/easy/etc. would be huge.
Iām not time crunched so dont want to be capped at 1 hour all the time, so now presumably I can indicate I want longer sessions on a LV plan and now not have to edit every single workout in the planā¦