What is the real problem with TR / Wahoo? [Adaptive Training]

[triggerdog]

I will repeat this again.

TrainNow IS NOT IN BETA

[bobw]

And breathe …

And relax …

And have a panda …

[Cleanneon98]

TN is not a beta, but Progression Levels are part of AT, which IS beta, so you’re really mad that TN is not able to make perfect recommendations based on data from an incomplete beta software. Your beef likely lies with Wahoo for not making their stuff very easy for devs to work with, not with TR for some made up conspiracy that is being pushed so desperately here

Wahoo outdoor rides not changing progression levels is an AT issue, TN just happens to use progression levels to recommend workouts, which it cant properly do for some users because of the hole in AT.

[triggerdog]

I don’t think there is a conspiracy, thats OP.

However, it is 100% on TR for failing to address a bug that’s been around for this long, and especially leave it unfixed even though they have mentioned repeatedly that it is “high priority”.

Your wording, at least for my case, is a lot more than “perfect recommendation difference”. The workouts suggested by trainnow were something like 10-15x3 mins in tempo, 3x8 @ 85-90%, etc. Workouts with a total TIZ of like 20-40 minutes. Conversely, where I am at (level 8ish, depending) its more like 80-150 minutes in zone. 2x60 tempo, 4x20 SS etc. That difference in fitness isn’t ‘minor adjustments’. And the fact that TN is never going to adjust my levels appropriately because every ride I do is recorded with a wahoo is just the cherry on top.

This isn’t some minor issue with TN and me, in my case none of my data as it stands is ever going to fit into TR’s algorithm, and therefore progression is entirely frozen. For those of you in this thread saying TN works great for you. Well at some point it won’t, as your progression is stuck permanently if you ride outdoors enough. If you DON’T push out of your current level then you probably shouldn’t be riding TR either, as the whole point is to get faster. The workouts in any program should probably start feeling too easy after around a month. If you do some indoor rides that may help, I’m not sure where it would start diverging, but it will eventually.

[Cleanneon98]

Once again, progression levels are part of AT BETA, and TN just happens to feed off of the BETA which is incomplete. No, TN isn’t going to give proper recommendations because of this, and while it’s high priority, at the end of the day TR is a training platform and is going to prioritize the folks training indoors over us wahoo users who want to ride around outside with no structure.

The whole “TN is never going to work for me” seems like a premature conclusion to reach based on the flaws in an unreleased product not being 100% able to give you progression based on outdoor rides and making TN less than ideal as a result

[hvvelo]

@AlphaDogCycling

This is a fact free post

@RexSkeleton

That’s quite the conspiracy theory that you have fabricated for yourself to justify your frustration.

It’s what happens when you don’t communicate with your customers - they are left to idle speculation

I’d love nothing more than for a TR employee to come on here and actually share a meaningful, credible time-based outlook so we could make better informed decisions about head unit purchases and subscription renewals.

@Flea_v2

I can’t imagine Wahoo are in a massive rush to help what is effectively a competitor in the training app market. Probably as simple as that.

This is my fear exactly… that there is something more intractable here and it’s not going to get better anytime soon. That’s not a conspiracy theory - just recognizing a reality that competitive pressures and consolidations risk us ending up with walled garden scenarios that are bad for everyone.

The total lack of communication and transparency on this would be consistent with a scenario where the two companies are no longer working together constructively, be it because Wahoo doesn’t want to spend resources enabling TR to be more useful, or TR is preparing to go all-in with Garmin, or ???

I have the same complaint to Wahoo - if you’re not supporting what these platforms need your device to do - do you really want to frustrate me so my next purchase is a Garmin instead of Bolt V2?

@triggerdog

Because it hasn’t been fixed TR is essentially useless for training. I’ve learned a lot about training structure over the past year, and base building is pretty damn straightforward, so I don’t need TR’s workouts. I can easily set up some basic progressions and work myself forward. I am not doing a plan because I actually want to ride my bike for fun, not just train every single ride. TrainNow doesn’t work if you ride outdoors, and AT would obviously not work either, so there is no point in the product right now. And since it’s been months with literally 0 communication, I was not going to sit around and keep paying hoping TR would get their shit together. Basically TR turned into a glorified calendar with TSS; I’m not paying $20 a month for that.

Totally sums up my position at the moment as well. I learned a lot - now I could easily make plans / workouts on my own. What keeps me subscribing is continuous improvement and exciting new features to make that process super simple. When none of those features work (TrainNow / progressions), the stock plans are mucked up in a way that depends on progressions to be useful, and all the potentially cool stuff isn’t coming (AT months after the hype and indefinite on Wahoo) - it’s hard to justify buying software as a service forever for what is pretty static / declining functionality.

[triggerdog]

I would say a large percentage of people do a lot of structured rides outdoors. I don’t think this is some small and insignificant group of people. It’s pretty well established that sub numbers go down significantly for zwift during summer, and I would be TR is similar.

You also completely misunderstand me, almost willfully. I said TN is never going to work for me…when this bug is in place. If the bug was fixed I would use TN all the time. Its easy to turn a regular ride into a workout, and it would be great to do workouts that did not push too much or too little. Most of the time i’m flying blind on feel in terms of intensity. Progression levels is excellent for that. However under the status quo I will never have data that can adjust my progression levels. At least not until ~oct-november when it gets cold and snowy for 6 months outside again.

Progression levels are now a full release. They are used by AT beta, but they are just like TN, clearly established as a full release, not a beta product.

[voldemort]

honest question, and sorry if you have already addressed this, but do you think TN is possibly recommending lower PL workouts because you are doing so many hard rides? For me, TN recommends easier rides if my last ride was particularly difficult. Yesterday I did a 2 hour long vo2 max workout and today it is recommending essentially a recovery ride. I would be surprised if it recommended anything else, tbh.

Not trying to minimize your frustrations, but just a thought!

[mattonabike]

You used the product for the last year paying that price without any of these features. This is not a cult where anyone actually cares what anyone else does. Stop your membership, go do your thing with the other platforms, get a lot faster and if they get it working in a way that works for you in the future give it a shot.

[berto2cj]

I vaguely recall when outdoor workouts first became a ‘thing’ they didn’t support Wahoo. And I believe they still are not supported on Hammerhead units. I’d suspect this is all about working through various APIs and where do you put resources. Progression levels being reset properly or Whaoo?

I can see both sides of this and the AT argument overall. Its right here on the masthead of this site as announced, but still in beta. Great communication from TR in some aspects, less in others. We can get near weekly updates on the AT beta issues and user count, but no details as to what the issue is with Wahoo integration or moving rides = broken plans.

With that said - if you used the platform before these features (Outdoor workouts, TrainNow, Progression Levels, AT, Plan Builder, Calendar for that matter) you can figure out how to make it work for you despite what flaws are lurking out there. Listen to your body when adaptations come. Dial-up the % if it feels too weak or too hard, use the alternatives (which is way better than variants - we all gotta be honest on that one) to pick something that is more aligned to where you feel you are.

[triggerdog]

@voldemort

honest question, and sorry if you have already addressed this, but do you think TN is possibly recommending lower PL workouts because you are doing so many hard rides? For me, TN recommends easier rides if my last ride was particularly difficult. Yesterday I did a 2 hour long vo2 max workout and today it is recommending essentially a recovery ride. I would be surprised if it recommended anything else, tbh.

I did see that some days, but it would do the same thing even after several days of recovery. It just doesn’t have a good picture of my levels, if we were in march/april it would be in the ballpark. I was much closer to level 4 back then, and when I was doing consistent TR training, especially considering it would incorporate a ‘drop off’ between then and now. This was all before the new ‘recommended’ thing, where I don’t think the climbing/attacking suggestions get modified by fatigue. Just the recommended workout being endurance.

@mattonabike

You used the product for the last year paying that price without any of these features. This is not a cult where anyone actually cares what anyone else does. Stop your membership, go do your thing with the other platforms, get a lot faster and if they get it working in a way that works for you in the future give it a shot.

One point of a forum like this is to communicate with the people who make the product to make it work best for the users. If you bothered to read you could see I quite clearly have already cancelled, and have done what you suggested. I am complaining because I do like the product and would like to continue to use it, and can’t. Just because a problem doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean it isn’t okay for me to complain about it.

I stated several times that I have learned to build my own structure. That doesn’t mean I learned that out of a hat. TR has been very very useful for me. But it’s usefulness, as originally intended, has ended. I wanted to use the new features, as that would keep me around because they are exciting. If they didn’t come out with AT/TN I would have cancelled months before.

[Pbase]

@triggerdog

I am complaining because I do like the product and would like to continue to use it, and can’t.

I get your frustration, but these things are all new things. You CAN use it, you just CHOOSE not to because you can’t use the new things, right? That’s a perfectly understandable decision, but it’s different from can’t.

[triggerdog]

No I absolutely cannot use it. Why would I ever ride a ride at progression level 2.5 when I should be doing a 6+? I would quite clearly not improve from that ride. And secondly, that data would not feed back into the system to eventually get me to the progression level I should be at.

The only way for me to get TN to adapt to me again start up with doing trainer rides again.

I could go start selecting workouts from the workout tab and ride them outdoors like usual yes. However,

1. I am just guessing at my prog levels which is hard. I suspect I do a lot of my sub-ftp workouts on ‘stretch’ rather than achievable. It would be nice to eventually figure that out but not yet. This is the critical point where I’d like TN data. Sub-FTP work is very hard to judge in terms of intensity. By definition it’s very sustainable, but with the idea of minimal effective dose I am pretty sure its very easy for me to do more of this work than I actually need to improve.

2. I don’t really need a program to tell me how to ride endurance, tempo, SS. The structures for those rides and to get adaption is really straight forward; pick the power and ride at it, and the intervals are so long at this point that there just isn’t that much need to worry about little deviations. Knowing exactly how long is a bit uncertain but you can get a pretty good idea on feel. Yes there could be things added to these workouts to spice it up and keep it interesting, but riding out doors is enough in terms of that. That would really only be an issue for me if I was trying to do these rides indoors.

I really like TR for any work above threshold. There’s sooo much variety in their workouts, and lots of ways to focus yourself for event specific stuff. The issue is I just rarely do work on the bike like that at the moment because I like riding my bike so much that any intense work would certainly overload my legs too much. My weekly riding is very much tiered toward volume, and adding too much intensity would lead to overtraining. If I was doing more intensity though I would certainly use TR’s workouts still.

[bluescatjm]

as does mine. Original wahoo elemnt user here.

[Pbase]

So again, you COULD use it, just like you’ve always used it, you just choose not to, which is fine, that’s your choice, but that is very different from CAN’T.

[triggerdog]

This thread is about trainnow buddy. Not trainerroad. I hope you recognize there is a difference between the two.

[Pbase]

Ok, fair enough, buddy. That’s just not the context I see in the paragraph I quoted which talks about cancelling TR because you can’t use it. Probably just the way I read it.

[bbarrera]

@ellotheth

I get a FIT file from rides recorded on a Garmin watch (Fenix 5) and a Wahoo head unit.

I’m curious how the Garmin and Wahoo fit files on Strava differ.

My Garmin Connect is configured to send completed workouts to TrainerRoad, TrainingPeaks, Strava, and RideWithGPS. Using the web interface for TR, TP, and Strava, I downloaded the FIT file and found:

• Garmin Connect, Strava, and TrainingPeaks have identical files
• TrainerRoad FIT file has less information, and replaces speed with EnhancedSpeed (whatever that is) and at least one other edit mentioned below
• my 1 hour outside workout from Monday 5 July 2021 has the following dowloaded FIT file sizes: 240,353 bytes original binary FIT file from Garmin and Strava, 128,707 bytes TrainerRoad, and 115,727 bytes from the compressed TrainingPeaks download (gunzip)

A few things I found interesting with outside workouts and the TR FIT file:

• TR deletes information that I want, making it unusuable (for me) as an archiving tool, for example TR drops left/right balance, original workout’s intervals, power targets, and zones
• TR lap messages curiously replace subsport “road” with “indoor_cycling”
• TR does keep temperature data, just not displayed on TR completed workout UI

For those with a software background thought that info might be of interest.

Back to the topic at hand. Would be interesting for someone to compare the two FIT files from dual recording a TR outside workout. Someone with a Garmin computer/watch and a Wahoo computer.

[bbarrera]

@iamholland

Does TR get data from a FIT push or something else?

Garmin pushes to TR.

[hvvelo]

@berto2cj

I can see both sides of this and the AT argument overall. Its right here on the masthead of this site as announced, but still in beta. Great communication from TR in some aspects, less in others. We can get near weekly updates on the AT beta issues and user count, but no details as to what the issue is with Wahoo integration or moving rides = broken plans.

I think that’s a very fair summary - and we have historically seen much better execution from TR than this, which is why it’s very disappointing.

AT clearly turned out to be way harder than they expected - yet still surprising that it’s being heavily marketed. And I think the AT delays have absolutely spilled over to hurt a lot of other things that were dependent on it like TrainNow, the newly released “starter level” plans and immediate removal of existing plans, now requiring a lot of manual replacements when I’m sure the plan was that AT was going to be there to manage this seamlessly… maybe time at TR to focus on Wahoo is just a casualty of all that. Or maybe for business reasons Wahoo sees no reason to help TR extricate themselves from a public debacle. Which also doesn’t make me happy as a Wahoo customer. I don’t want to give more $ to either company in this state.

@mattonabike

This is not a cult where anyone actually cares what anyone else does.

It’s definitely a cult… - and the fact that so many unpaid users are compelled to comment / defend suggests that they care… now if only the company collecting our subscription $$ also did