I have read the Triathlete’s Training Bible and have set-up my annual training plan. The index has many workouts to plug into my weekly calendar. I understand that Friel is behind TrainingPeaks as well, does this mean the premium version is basically the same thing as the paper version in the book? Are the workouts provided in the Virtual Coach the exact same as the index of the book? Or are there more workout options with premium version of TP?
I’ve never compared TB workouts vs TP. Not sure how the virtual coach compares to the book, but any plan is almost better than no plan at all.
They are pretty close. You put in your ATP hours, start and finish dates, goals, and priority races. Then it calculates your training plan based on what is in the book. Starts with Prep, then base phases, build phases, peak, race, and transition. Its a decent guide but its not designed around you, its just general. There also isn’t any feedback from a coach. I use the premium account mostly for the dashboard metrics but I do use the ATP as a guide for volume but I follow different workouts depending on what I’m training for. I’m training for cycling only events like road, MTB, and CX. You can’t really tell the tool that. They are general like cycling 2 hours or less or mountain bike 2+ hours. Maybe for triathletes it would better as the workouts would be more generalized. They have triathlon 2+ hours or 2 hours or less.
The Virtual coach is good when your in a period not ramping up for a specific event. But it doesn’t really give you an option for say a half vs full distance tri. I use it as mentioned for volume and good work outs when not really focusing on anything but when I am ramping up for something I get a specific plan for that distance to help me.
The Virtual coach interface maybe more user friendly when it makes it over to the new site. The only site was a bit of a pain to find a work out and put it on the calendar.