I have to think there is some competitive angle blocking progress on the progression levels and wahoo outside workouts. How are we months into the train now product release - not to mention the AT beta - and no support for a platform previously supported and with huge market share?
The “we’re actively working on it” line sounds like crap at this point.
I’m guessing bad blood between Nate and Sufferfest/Wahoo may be blocking things here - can anyone at TR provide evidence to the contrary?
My subscription renewal is coming up and I’m also eying the new bolt, and if these two companies can’t work together, I’d prefer they be up front about it so we can make informed decisions about the platforms we commit to. I’ve given up on AT adding any value this year, but would like to at least see train now in a usable state for Wahoo.
He is talking about the limitation where TR workouts performed on Wahoo head units are not “counting towards” the Adaptive Training Progression Level changes. The Garmin ones are working right now.
There is some issue they TR is working on to resolve this issue. We don’t have any real details about how or what is the real problem, from what I have seen.
I think this is mainly due to TR waiting on something on the Wahoo or Strava side to be fixed. I think that’s been stated or at least implied.
Garmin files only work when the data is coming straight from Garmin Connect. When data files come from Strava they have been modified, with some data removed and some reformatted. So that is apparently where the issue lies.
Both Wahoo and Strava have had big product launches recently, so their teams are presumably tied up with high priority internal stuff and not prioritizing work to help out TR with a beta feature (AT).
IIRC there was a similar issue that took a bit longer to get outside workouts to even sync to Wahoo devices.
Right. And it’s been this way since day 1 of the AT announcement - which is kind of amazing, and suggests to me there is something more than just a bug here, and may be indicative of a more serious breakdown between the two companies - which is not that surprising given they are competitors.
If we’re being pushed into a choose TR/Garmin or choose Wahoo situation, with Wahoo having a fantastic new BOLT on the market, I’d really like to know that - and at least know more than hear “we’re working on it” for 5 months + the fact that it was broken even when they announced.
It’s just totally unacceptable to me to leave a substantial portion of the userbase swinging in the wind here with zero meaningful updates or outlook. The beta excuse doesn’t apply anymore either, when we put the non-functional TrainNow progressions in the mix.
For what it’s worth: you can’t even push regular SUF workouts to any headunit not to mention adaptive load calculations… so I doubt it’s bad blood between suf/wahoo and tr
i glanced back at the issues reported for AT, they said any other headunit via strava. as someone else mentioned its probably the middleware integrations
While I am not convinced there is bad blood between Nate and Wahoo, I would like to know a little more about what is going on here. From April to November, I do all my workouts outside, so the fact that this isn’t solved kind of sucks. I am not on the beta at this point, but it wouldn’t do me any good until I’m stuck indoors on the trainer.
I understand your frustration, but I read silence differently. I read it to mean “there is something wrong that is outside our control and we’re not going to talk bad about company X”.
…I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’ve noticed that since Wahoo bought the Sufferfest, no one on the podcast uses a Kickr any longer. None of them use Wahoo head units.
I honestly don’t care one way or the other given my needs right now - I use a Kicker and an Elemnt Roam, and everything I need works great. Just an interesting tidbit interesting from a business perspective.
I don’t think anyone on TR really ever favored the kickr, Jon is about the rollers, Nate has always been a hammer guy, not sure about chad. So I don’t think I’d read into that aspect.
Listen to the old podcasts and the Kickr is mentioned with decent frequency. Neo gets a few comments, but Kickr ruled the roost for years. The Hammer took it’s place for Nate at the very least, and Chad was using a Hammer at one point as well.
The one other angle here may be that TR is probably a tempting acquisition target for Garmin - and maybe that is where this is all really headed. Throw in the life changes among the leadership team and could totally see it being cash-in time in the near future. If you’re Garmin, you can blunt Wahoo’s head unit progress and strengthen your closed app ecosystem, if you’re TR, you have an excuse to not spend resources developing other platforms, a strong Garmin tie-in will make it that much easier to win against other training platforms…
But no matter what’s going on and what they will or won’t say, it remains the case that you’ve got a lot of TR subscribers that might be looking to use TrainNow who are riding outside and continue to get no useful value whatsoever out of it. I’m actually in a perfect situation to use it - don’t like the new plans, coming back from a crash, and just looking to challenge myself a little bit workout to workout. Without progression levels from outside workouts, it’s useless, so back to manually making things up as I go. AT also has no outlook to work if it ever gets out of the never ending beta for Garmin users.
If I do have to buy a Garmin to fully utilize TR - it will also open the door to finally explore Xert as an adaptive alternative that does work for many people.
My take as a Wahoo user along with many others is that the new plans are no good for experienced users unless you spend time modifying them to more reasonable progression levels manually because AT is not available to fix the new plans yet and won’t be anytime soon for Wahoo users, TrainNow as a possible summer filler waiting for things to come together in AT is no good unless you have a Garmin… essentially I think the whole user experience has gone totally downhill in the past 6 months with lots of grand promises and new features reaching only a small subset of people and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel for Wahoo users.
So now I’m really struggling with whether I want to re-up another annual rate in August given the total lack of clarity and support on this subject. It was bad enough how long we waited for outdoor workouts on these devices. If I was monthly market rate, I would have long since canceled. I never imagined I’d be asking myself do I really want to re-up $99 for TR this year… with the additional cost of a Garmin to use TR when the BOLT is such a fantastic and device. Anyway, not much more to say other than let’s see if anything changes by subscription time.
My speculation is that Garmin workout/lap structure is more rigid whereas with wahoo you can jump intervals back and forth more easily.
(I like the wahoo workout implementation much more).
This in combination with the actual AT system/implementation (they said it is iteration/version 1) which was told to be a bit inflexible with regards to ride structure (I assume it’s bound to some predefined intervals / lap structure per workout) compared to the coming AT iteration 2 (which will be flexible and able to analyze every unstructured outdoor ride).
So I speculate with „we’re working on a wahoo fix“ they really mean „we’re waiting for AT iteration 2 to handle wahoo outdoor rides (as every other unstructured outdoor ride)“.
Who knows, it might be something simple like the name of the workout coming from Strava (because Wahoo doesn’t send to TR). I’m in software biz for 30+ years and you never know….
I’d be curious if garmin sends the fit files directly to TR or if it’s via some API like with strava. With strava I get data using the API with various ‘streams’ and not by any type of direct file download, so if garmin is using a direct fit submission maybe there’s more data that TR can use. Of course they may also use the takin api and render this whole conjecture moot lol
This could be a TR issue, and just as likely the fix could require a change on the Wahoo side that Wahoo isn’t prioritizing as the fix would only be useful for TR.
Given that Garmin workouts only are correctly recognized by AT if sent directly from Garmin and not via Strava, my money is on the fix / change needing to be done by Wahoo.
Yes, I don’t see a Strava API to download the original FIT file…. Just the streams.
However the Strava website has “… Export Original” and I believe that is the same as Garmin’s workout FIT file. And TrainingPeaks allows you to download the original binary FIT file that came from Garmin.
not to mention adaptive load calculations… so I doubt it’s bad blood between suf/wahoo and tr
coming from Strava (because Wahoo doesn’t send to TR). I’m in software biz for 30+ years and you never know….
