I’m sorry to have to make a post like this but these types of issues are why I don’t think a stand-alone AI trainer can work. At least not at this point.
In what world does it make sense for a training plan to have as much swimming as running eight weeks out from the event? I tried to tell it to adjust it to 10% swim distribution but it doesn’t help. It refuses to increase my long runs, still maxing out at around an hour and ten minutes but it will schedule a long swim at an hour and forty minutes. My longest bike on the schedule STILL is only 3 hours and we are eight weeks out from the full IM. I had to change mine to a 4 hour ride last week because it simply wouldn’t schedule anything longer.
The only advice I get on this forum seems to boil down to “add some of your own sessions”, which doesn’t help me.
All the support staff and folks who reply with ideas to these posts are very kind and I appreciate the help but this is a fail.
Before I get asked, the parameters I have set are:
*Up to 20 hours of training a week
*Runs scheduled on Mon, Wed and Fri(long run)
*Bike scheduled on Tues, Thurs, and Sat(long ride)
*Swim optional on Tues, Thurs
*Off Sunday
*I tried adjusting the modality percentages but AI just ignores that This is the third time I’ve done the full Ironman Chattanooga course and I finished the swim in 55 min my first time and 48 min the second time. With that in mind, there are significantly diminishing returns on doing a lot of swim prep. I wanted to use this reduced swim training time to improve my run so I tried adjusting modality to 42% Run, 46% Bike and 12% Swim but it just ignores that for some reason. I took off that setting today to see if that was the problem but nope, still the same plan after I forced it to update.
Out of curiosity, I see that my “fitness” jumped significantly and I assume that was the metric that you changed. Is that because it was calculated incorrectly before (and needed to be forced to update) or is that a manual adjustment (likely above my actual fitness) that isn’t really supported by my actual fitness level, in order to spur on more significant workouts?
This is my first AI training plan but I’ve done significant endurance events so it’s possible that I was always over-training for my actual fitness level and AI is seeing that correctly, despite my being accustomed to doing longer/more difficult workouts.
Just trying to get a better handle on all of this. One thing I’m learning is that my “print out a schedule and do it for six months” isn’t really a reliable method. AI is teaching me a lot about how my methods need to evolve to get better. Appreciate the patience and the answers (especially when I’m dead tired and angry typing questions!
I have similar thoughts like you about the number of swims. I kind of plan my own sessions and do less swimming than Athletica wants me to do. It results in me getting 3-5 swims per week which I do not all do and Athletica telling me I am not fit enough for the race.
So I tried to disable swims from the plan but Athletica does not allow me to do that as I get a red bar saying to many constraints and no new plan.
I just tested something else. I changed my sport from triathlon to biathlon and adjusted my goals to be biathlon races instead of triathlons. Now I have a plan without swims and with more running. Since running is my main area for growth that is great. I will still do swims, but they will become unplanned.
I guess this is not the intended solution (and not sure what @Prof thinks about this), but I think it is a good fix for me. Maybe worth a test for you as well if you are fine with planning swims yourself.
Just had another look at my plan now it is finished. In the biathlon plan I actually get 2 swims per week of around 1500m which fit my actual training. So I guess the biathlon plan is actually a triathlon plan with more focus on running and less on swimming
