For several weeks I have been using only TrainNow (3-4 times a week). I don’t train for any specific event, but only for myself to stay fit. Using a specific plan is troublesome for me, because I often have to postpone workouts because they interfere with my other irregular activities/work. I often take my bike outside, which also makes it difficult to follow a regular plan.
Please tell me if it makes sense to use only TN and if it will bring any progress? How does it look like with you? 
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Your example is a perfect use of TN. That is essentially the reason they made it, to give people quick access to training options without needing to follow a defined plan.
TrainNow is a quick and easy way to choose ideal individual workouts, catered to your fitness and abilities. It’s perfect for athletes who aren’t on a training plan…
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What @mcneese.chad said 
Yours is a perfect TN only use case. Ride what you want and have fun
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It’s been working great for me. I’ve used exclusively Train Now since mid-March, with huge gains.
Through summer, I did my two big outdoor rides every week and then used TR for whatever I felt I needed work on. Early fall til now, I’ve done mostly TR workouts, using Train Now with Adaptive Training to focus on threshold workouts for cyclocross.
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When you are using TrainNow exclusively, do you always use the “recommended” workout or pick what you beleive is the most appropriate of the 3?
I ask because I’m thinking of using TrainNow until the new year when I’ll start a new plan. Thinking I’ll ride roughly 4 times a week.
There is no hard and fast rule. Keep in mind that the recommendation is purely looking at your recent training history, and trying to suggest what it thinks is “best”.
That has nothing in mind other than a general goal to increase fitness with an attempt to prevent over-training. Knowing what your actual goals are may lead you to choose harder or easier rides than the “recommended one”.
It’s a nice tool, but it’s not magic and should be altered as the rider sees fit to meet their needs and even preferences.
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Does TrainNow take into account accumulative fatigue? I.e. would I have to plan in my own rest weeks?
AFAIK, it is not looking at longer term fatigue like you mention. It will likely suggest Endurance level work if you have had hard days before, but won’t lead to a “recovery week” in the sense that we are used to seeing in an actual training plan.
TN is meant as a more loose and less structured approach, which means it lacks “goals” and the related aspects of an actual training plan, like periodization. If people want that, they are better served with applying a training plan in one of the two main ways in TR (Plan Builder or manually added).
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TrainNow’s recommendations are not periodized the way a training plan’s are—in other words, they aren’t designed to progressively and strategically build you towards a goal. This means it does not incorporate rest weeks. It does look at short-term fatigue to make a recommendation for which zone would probably be most effective for your to train in today. For instance, if you did a very hard day yesterday it will likely recommend an endurance ride today, whereas a training plan might intentionally include a few tough days in a row knowing you have a rest day coming up.
Hope that helps!
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I’ve never seen TN suggest anything other than ‘Endurance’ level rides, which I almost always ignore.
I agree on how it should work, but I (personally) think something is broken/flawed in the way the TN recommendation works.
As ever, personal experience can and does vary. Case in point, here is what I have right now.
I have done minimal work lately, so TN sees me being open for harder one than Endurance.
Could be worth contacting TR support if you think TN is not giving you options you would expect.
Perhaps you ignoring them, and presumably always doing a harder workout, is what is leading it to consistently recommend endurance for you. It thinks your recent rides are all high intensity and as a result always wants you to try something a bit lower intensity.
Try doing an endurance ride and see if the next time it recommends something harder
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I do a crazy high number of miles/hours, so I mostly get endurance recommended. But I do occasionally see something else. So it isn’t always for me.
Not trying to single you out, no need to reply.
The May 11th TrainNow blog post states:
“looks at your recent training history to recommend an ideal type of workout for each day. The new “Recommended” label is based on the intensity and stress of your recent rides and workouts.”
how does TR define “ideal?” I have a lot more questions after observing TrainNow’s recommendations.
@trpnhntr and @JSTootell and @WindWarrior – so I did this evening just blindly follow the TN suggestion of Endurance… it gave me Cheaha (maybe because I did Oscar yesterday?)
TLDR: I wanted to poke my eyeballs out with an old 10-speed Shimano cassette covered in grease, WD40, and dried worms. It was so f**Ing boring. I know it’s not healthy, but I’d rather take a full rest day, or simply go blow myself up on McAdie than ride Cheaha again.
“Cheaha” is slang for not liking the highest point in Alabama? 
au contraire mon frère… I think it means the lowest point in Reno NV.
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Reading between the lines here, I would guess the reason you usually get Endurance recommended because you are doing more intensity as a general rule. So, right or wrong, I think that explains what you are getting from TN at least.
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I usually see Endurance recommended, but this is because I am fitting it in around a regular plan so it makes sense to me.
The only issue I had with it was when I took October as a bit of an “off” season, thought I would do the recommended TN ride one day following a rest week and 2 weeks of noodling around, got recommended a Productive Threshold workout and promptly died on my @rse 
. Was my first time getting the fail survey too… Stuck to Achievable after that before I re-tested and started a new plan.
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