Yeah, I agree.

I had a lengthy exchange with a TP rep last year at this time about this exact same topic. I got a lot of "we're working on a lot of infrastructure stuff to enable new things..." garbage. Now, its been another year with nary a noticable new feature.

However, I DID notice just this weekend that the mobile app allows me to add workouts from the Library. I don't know when that happened, but that was nice to see.

Also, as mentioned the Garmin Calendar / TP sync WAS a new feature this year. THAT was very nice, but most of the heavy lifting there was on Garmin's side of the fence.

Otherwise, if SOMEBODY / ANYBODY would please come up with a viable multi-sport alternative...I've tried all of the other's that I'm aware of, and just re-upped my annual TP premium again (reluctantly).

How does the Garmin know what you need to focus on? I’m guessing it would look st training you have done but then compares that against . . . against what, exactly?

TP have a fairly clear separation between WKO being the analysis tool and web being a lightweight logging system with some analysis.
I shudder to think of the server resource they'd need to be able to replicate much of WKO to the web.
WKO is so much more fun than the web tool, they offer a free trial that you could have a look at.

So, what kind of event are you gearing up for?

That works fine if you've got nothing in mind, but if you've got an event........I'd rather not have something tell me to focus on something irrelevant (or not the focus) for the event I'm about to do.

I'd never want it telling me to go out and do a bunch of low aerobic a couple weeks before a set of cyclocross races..........uhhmmmm, noooo.

Agree. Also, with the November Butterfly Challenge, I would like insights to include total yardage by stroke. None of the platforms I use can do that.

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Hillary Trout
San Luis Obispo, CA

Your trip is short. Make the most of it.
https://www.slogoing.net/

I'd be willing to spend a lot more than I do now per month w/ TP to have a scheduling system & wko like analysis system in 1 place so I'm not flipping back & forth.
So far though all the platforms I've tried that claim this fall short on one side or the other, if not both.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Or just put WKO on the cloud.....that would be the bees knees.

That's what I do for a living. Massively scalable, cloud computing is not much trouble at all in today's environment with scalable pricing structures to match. But, most of what I want is simple UX stuff, not more deep complex analysis.

I'd like to know this too.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Isn't Garmin's "load" a different way of getting to CTL? How much real science is there behind their EPOC method vs CTL? I haven't seen a CTL/ATL equivalent from garmin. And as others have mentioned, if you want more metrics, TP has WKO+

I find Garmin's estimation of recovery times to be total bunk. More metrics that do not accurately model the reality inside my body in a usable way is useless. I would also be interested in knowing how it knows which aspect of energy production you need to work on more.... I have not seen anything about that. It would need to know soooo many things like what kind of event are you training for and when it will be, what the planned purpose of each workout was, what phase in your periodization you are in, how your performance in previous races was in really subtle ways...

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Exactly its all bullshit. It does not lnow what you are training for, ypur training needs etc.
Same with their recovery estimate, its complwte shit.

This is exactly why I wish TP would innovate. Garmin have by no means got this completely right, but at least they are developing, pushing the envelope and trying new things. What they have done is not rocket science, and certainly whiting the scope of TP. What TP could do is take it further, link it to your training objectives and make it more specific.

I don’t want WKO - to me this is a step backwards from where we’re going. We should be at a stage now where artificial intelligence can interpret our data, and provide us with simple, clear actionable insight ... slow down, run faster, take a break, go for a ride...! I was born too early 🤔

Take another example, Ramp Rate in TP. It’s just there. As I understand it, there are numbers you’re not supposed to exceed - you’re increasing the training load too much. Instead of making me view the graph and conclude that, why don’t I get a message to say “your ramp rate is higher than recommended. You have previously had a maximum ramp rate of x. Increasing your training load too quickly could lead to injuries, consider slowing things down” ... or something along those lines.

Or, “you’re in the base phase and have chosen traditional periodisation. Your current training is highly anaerobic. You should build in more aerobic bike/run”

If anyone from TP is reading this - would be awesome to have structured swim workouts exporting the garmin calendar same as runs.

I really wouldn’t want software to tell me that. I just want it to enable ME to plan, and tell me how I’ve done against that plan. I can also see situations that this would lead to conflicting opinions, eg coach tells you to do one thing and the computer tells you to do something different.

There are improvements I’d like to see though, like the colour coding of completed workouts. Be nice to be able to see the colour coding based off multiple variables.

And swimming is crap in TP, but then it’s crap in every pice of software I’ve looked at.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Then TrainingPeaks is probably the tool for you. Every user is on a change curve, but many of us at a different point. Many people prefer to shop on the high street, yet Amazon is growing exponentially. Face to face is preferred communication, yet mobile is growing similarly.

The biggest challenge historically has been collecting data. Now our devices collect an unprecedented amount of data. The challenge has been presenting that data. Visualisation has improved a huge amount. Next step (for me) is to provide insight from that data. Not to say that it will or should replace a coach, there’s lots a coach offers that AI can never replace, but the two can co-exist.

Actually, TP handles swimming so poorly that there’s no point in it for me.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

First, one has to decide whether coaching is an algorithmic or an ML use case. My suspicion is that it can be an ML use case - ie infer the optimal training plan based on a vast sea of data collected, according to the features/traits assigned to the trainee.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

"Coaching" is a suite of disparate practices of which what you describe - assigning a pattern of training stress - is one. And that one may be enough for some people, but coaches do lots of other things.

Such as? Life advice? Being an improvised shrink, a supplement salesman or a nutritionist? I am sure that it takes place and is being perceived as a value add but for most part people hire coaches to tell them how to train and to assess their progress without too much bullshit.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Pretty much nothing will ever happen. There isn't much money in it. You can sell sport clothes to millions, but number of people who even understand what 'training' is is very small.

Software development is expensive. You'll have to charge $1500 per month for a Training Peaks account to make it profitable with amount if you want a decent platform.

It does, but you may not realize it, or perhaps understand the relationship between Ramp Rate and CTL/ATL/TSB:

1. When creating an Annual Training Plan, TP will give you that exact error message when it is necessary for ramp rate to to exceed a certain threshold in order to achieve a target CTL. I can't recall if that's the standard 5 TSS guidline, or if there's some margin.
2. On the daily training "home" where your current CTL/ATL/TSB are listed, you will get a warning when you TSB drops below a certain threshold. Again, I don't recall exactly what that threshold is. A ramp rate of +5 is equivalent to a TSB of -20. In fact, TP will give you a different message for different ranges of TSB.


That assumes several things that are mostly untrue, or reflect a simplistic view of what a "base phase" should consist of. Ie, in your example, "...that doing intensive training during base phase is ill-advised." 'T'ain't that simple.

AI/ML probably has a place in coaching (Alan Couzens is doing some interesting stuff), and probably has a very viable place in online platforms such as TP. BUT, and this is huge to me....these platforms need to get the basic planning, and analysis UI/UX workflow nailed before adding more crap on top of crap.

Seriously, the workflow for all of them sucks balls. The UI is a jumbled mess. The ATP is a waste of space---a useful activity that serves a valuable purpose, but that is just completely ruined by the TP implementation. The fact that TP is the "leader of the pack" says more about the pack than it does about TP. The Bereda training UI/UX for the ATP was a thing of beauty...it was exactly what the TP should have been.

The last thing I want them to do, is divert more resources AWAY from the UI/UX usability issues into some other squirrel. Frankly, I'd assumed that Peaksware was diverting their resources to the Coaching Platform (as perhaps their primary revenue stream) and ignoring the self-coached athlete. But, DD's comments, above, have me questioning that theory. If he's just as unhappy with the coaching platform, as I am with the self-coaching platform....THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY WORKING ON?

Garmin is a long way from getting it right. Yes, they tell you what they think you need to work on, but it's like a stopped clock. If you do periodization, Garmin's analysis is only right coincidentally during a certain brief moment out of the year. (Garmin, I really don't need to do a massive amount of anaerobic work starting the first week of early base phase. Yes, I'm supposed to have accumulated a lot of low aerobic work at this point. Stop nagging me to do things I'm not supposed to be doing now! Come back during Build Phase!)

Although a couple years ago I felt TP and WKO had become stagnant, they've made some big improvements in the last year or so. The TP (pay version) analysis is a lot better and more meaningful than it used to be. And WKO's interface and approach is a lot more user friendly. I get a lot more out of it in its current iteration than in any previous version.

But I don't use anything for swimming.

Here's one thing that seems trivial to do, to me. Why do they let me add multiple bikes, under Equipment, but then offer no way to link a bike to a sub-sport? Zwift rides come in to TP already tagged with #CyclingVirtualActivity, #Virtual, and #Cycling, so why can I not automatically put Zwift bike mileage against a designated trainer bike. Same thing for CX bikes, or Gravel, Mountain, or unicycles!

Same thing with shoes - I wear one pair of shoes equipped with a BT cadence sensor for running on an indoor track and on treadmills. Why do I have to identify it to TP as the correct shoe for an indoor run EVERY.SINGLE.TIME? It comes into TP already tagged as #Running & #RunningIndoors.

It seems at times like TrainingPeaks and Strava are having a competition to see who can deliver the fewest enhancements per year.

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I'm closer to the feathered end of the spear than the point.