Why did Trainer Road Group Workouts fizzle out?

TrainerRoad Software
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Like the title/subject asks, why did the Group Workout feature fizzle out – at least for the public?

When it first appeared during COVID-19 I thought it was great! I got to meet a couple of Trainer Road’s developers doing rides, and even made a good friend that I’ve continued to do in-person rides with, including the Triple Bypass in 2021. However, Trainer Road’s Group Workout Google Calendar (TrainerRoad Group Workouts) now goes empty for months at a time.

Do people just not know about this feature? Does TR need to create a calendar inside of the program? Would bringing the group workouts feature to their mobile apps, vice just their computer-based versions, make it more accessible and popular? Maybe some curated training sessions by “experts”? What other thoughts do people have, or is it something that just needs to die?

If anyone is interested, I have created a 45 minute recovery ride for 26 December 2023 at 8:00 EST in case you would like to check out how it works. Recommend having a camera and microphone to get the full experience. RSVP - TrainerRoad

Thanks!

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I have a few thoughts as someone who hosted/joined probably 10-15 of these.

  1. TR stated that these were intended to be launched after AT, presumably with each person doing a workout optimized for them. As such, what you really had was the host picking a workout and trying to find a good mix for everyone.
  2. It was really hard to find people. There was no sort of matchmaking, etc, so it as just manually finding people. Even posting on my YT, Insta, and in the onrunning thread, workout preferences + time zones just made it really hard to find more than a couple people at any given time. I think my largest workout was 4 other people.
    2b) No scheduling means sometimes I’d do all the work to get everything built up, camera and mic on, rush to show up on time, and then… nothing.
  3. While I personally enjoyed chatting with people, at the end of the day it’s mostly just struggling to keep an onrunning conversation in a very noisy, hard to concentrate enviroment. That’s just tricky.

A matchmaking or prescheduled event (a la Zwift group rides) would probably help. Even just 6 or 12/day prescheduled, with the option to join, would likely up numbers. It was a good idea that struggled to reach escape velocity.

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