Garmin Buys TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic

I’m very confused (normal state of life it seems at moment). Again, we’ve gone into a discussion on AI. Anyone remember 2015 when all we were talking about was the diverless cars that would have taken over the world by 2020.

Anyway, as someone that has had a WKO license from 3.X and still has it, also pays for TP premium my confusion with the AI conversation is that the USP of TP and Peaksware is the human coaches. That is the point of difference. To put this in non boomer speak, it’s the combination of Hinge and Whatsapp for athletes and coaches. Just the most effective way of letting an athlete and coach, potentially with different dialects when it comes to talking training communicate in a mutually beneficial way.
It’s value in supporting and sustaining the human coaching industry.

But, my belief is that it’s the TP virtual that was the golden egg. I’ve no idea, but I can imagine that the initial developers may not have wanted to sell to a giant, but saw a sale to TP was within their ‘principle’ for a training tool. But a year later, this was the way Garmin got their hands on what really was missing from Tacx. Which is ironic when you look back at the iMagic (I had one, was amazing) but it got totally overtaken by zwift, rouvy, etc. The worry here is that you’ve peleton creating (created) a closed ecosystem and Garmin long term sees that as a potential for them - bike trainer, outdoor powermeters, treadmill, virtual training system (software and hardware) and 24x7 monitoring integrated into nutrition/diet… It’s both a futuristic cliche but you look at it and there’s not many missing pieces in this from their current product line.

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I want to know how an AI training plan kills me (100% serious)? Does it make me buy a new bike that causes my wife to shoot me, does it route my bike ride off a cliff, does it make me swim 1.9k on one breath, or does it make me wear white bike bibs?

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Garmin is basically building an ecosystem. All of my devices are Garmin, I use TrainingPeaks with my coach, and record my indoor rides with TPVirtual. I came to these three “products” individually, but can see the convenience for someone starting from scratch. Buy a bike computer or indoor trainer and get a free 3-month subscription to TrainingPeaks (with included training plans) and TPVirtual? Yes please.

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So thats why Pogi switched to black bike bibs for a stage this week.