Newbie here, I was hoping all you lovely people could help me decide if TrainerRoad is for me. I used to do a lot of mountain biking when younger and thoroughly loved it with the odd road ride thrown in, strictly for fun with mates, never really got into any racing. For personal reasons this had to stop for about 3 years now, but in that time I have built up my running fitness pretty reasonable,
I want to get back into cycling but keep my running going to a lesser extent (do not want to stop running, but appreciate I will reduce my running load to adding some cycling training). I have never done any structured training in cycling (I have for running) and I have done sporadic rides on Zwift but not more than maybe once a month.
As I would like to do both disciplines (cycle and run) I figured I could start training for a Duathlon (I can’t swim and do not have access to a swimming pool so no Triathlon). As I already have a Zwift subscription I started looking at their training plans, they have one suitable one that includes running and cycling (called multisport mixer). My intention was to do all bike rides indoors but sync the run workouts to my Garmin watch and do the run part outdoors. However, it looks like the run workouts in zwift will not sync to my watch and I do not want to have to create them manually before each run. Also, as there is only one plan I think Zwift is limited for what I want to do.
I also looked at Sufferfest but dropped that idea quickly when I realised they do not have an Android app. So that leaves TrainerRoad, which looks very good and I think it could do what I wanted.
I read on this forum that typically people use the Triathlon plans and just drop the Swim workouts. Does this work well? Does the planned TSS not drop because I skip all the swims or is that OK?
Can TrainerRoad sync run workouts to my Garmin watch (fenix series) for me to just follow blindly? I don’t want to have to put any work in to create them manually as I think I would just end up not doing it.
If it can sync run workouts, will they be based on HR zones (which is what I normally use)? I have read that they are RPE based which just confuses me.
Appreciate all comments and opinions and apologies for lots of text! I think TrainerRoad is for me but just need info about the above points before committing all my hard earned money (will likely cancel Zwift).
Thanks for the quick response Chad, do you know if it is ever planned for development at all? Or is there a reason it is just never going to be a feature?
Yes, you can do that…
just add easy running on those days and presto.
I am personally doing a tri plan with TR. I put run/swim the same day. you could easily just delete the swim and maybe add extra 20-30 minutes of run on those days (probably you would be good by not adding anything)
There is a plan to implement Run & Swim connections at some point. But there are no real details on what that will really mean. At a minimum, we expect TR to import those workouts from Garmin, Strava and such. Beyond that, there is an open feature request covering the issue with some recent discussion (sparked by questions from Nate) about what people want to see in an initial release for initial/minimum product release.
Drop the swims, if i have 3x swims i replace it for 1 strenght/gym session, one hour Z2 bike session (like Pettit) and one easy run session (40 minutes easy!)
Hi Chad, given the new beat software on the Forerunner 945 are you able to comment on whether or not TR is working on run workouts to be part of plans moving forward?
Hey! It looks like Nate has spilled the beans that uploading run and swim workouts are on our roadmap, but we don’t have a timeline for rolling out this feature just yet. We’re working on improving our support for runs, but can’t yet share details as to what all that involves!
In the meantime, please keep putting what features you’d like to see for run/swim workouts in this Feature Request thread. It will be a great resource for the team to comb through while building this feature!
I still do not know of a way to do this in TR, I don’t think it is supported. Looking at SYSTM’s website does not confirm whether their system can do this either (implies that it can’t as it talks about RPE in it’s run workout section; nothing about uploading to Garmin which I would have thought would use HR rather than RPE).
I am not aware of a platform that does this currently - let me know if you know of any.
Well, I know TrainingPeaks does. Garmin allowed third-parties to push structured workouts to Connect last year (?). I can’t find the DCR post about that broader functionality, but TP does have an app that does this:
But, again, I think there is a way to push workouts without an app now too, and TP uses that.
