Hi all, I wanted to give a summary of my Athletica results as a beta user since starting in May, then ask 1) how is Athletica working for you, and how do you measure that, and 2) how are you all using Athletica during the off-season?
So, overall – my goal was to beat my all-time Strava PR’s in local climbs of 9-25 minutes, which would keep me in the all-time or at least the current year top 10-20 riders in my age group for those segments. I did not achieve that goal. But, I’ve come really close: 15 seconds slower than my best time on a 9 minute climb, set back in 2018, and my 5th best time ever on a 25 minute MTB climb. It seems that my performance has improved more for shorter efforts (10-12 minutes), then longer efforts (25-30 minutes). I attribute that to a whole lot of VO2 max and short threshold interval sessions from the training plan.
I can’t say how my FTP has been affected if at all, as testing FTP is no longer part of the program and I haven’t tried it on my own. Though I really would like to know so I might do that anyway.
The training has been tough but doable – I generally have two interval rides per week on the Athletica low volume plan, when I used to do one per week on my own training program. It’s been hard to fit those two interval rides in with two strength training sessions and longer zone 2 rides. Barely enough recovery if I do everything right – eat correctly, sleep enough, meditate and otherwise manage stress from work and life. Some days I needed to do an easier ride than what was on the plan.
For the app itself, I had some difficulty getting started but then it’s mostly been pretty smooth except when the A/I engine wants to schedule two intervals in one day, or suddenly give me three interval sessions in one week (which I didn’t do), or when it randomly wants to change my heart rate or power zones (which it seems to get mostly wrong). Outside of that it seems to be getting the progression right. I have to say I don’t understand most of the graphs and charts well at all – the Performance Potential, Power Profile, Time In Zone (I almost never get a close match for this), and Session Chart. I’ve been staring at them for months and I’m still not sure how to apply what I see in the charts.
Some improvements I would like to see are:
- Use of hours slept (from a wearable such as Whoop) and resting pulse (probably needs something more accurate than Whoop) every morning to gauge recovery, and use it to automatically modify the training plan. I’m convinced HRV is not good, but resting pulse could be.
- Allow for some free-form riding built into the program every week, for example a Saturday group ride. And allow for automatically recalculating the rides for the rest of the week if I want to do something that’s off-plan such as make an attempt at a PR.
- More understandable and cleaner charts and graphs.
- Continued refinement of the ride scheduler so it knows not to schedule 3 interval rides in one week (I’m too old for that!) and so overall it sticks to the schedule I gave it in the beginning better.
- Simplified U/I – there’s so much in there and most of it I don’t know how to interpret and I probably don’t need to. I’d rather have the A/I engine interpret it all and give me really good recommendations and modifications to the plan. Some people will want to see all the numbers, and I do look at them after every ride. But I can’t say that looking at them makes them actionable or helpful to me.
- Some way I can gauge my progress, built into the plan. Since there’s no FTP tests (for good reasons), I don’t have a way to see if I’m on track, getting stronger, getting weaker, or staying the same for specific durations and effort levels. Unless I go off-plan and try for a PR. Seeing progress is a really important motivational tool when I’m doing hard intervals every week! This kind of progress in a chart could be very motivating.
- Lap data so I can compare my average power for each interval with previous rides to gauge progress (see above bullet point on gauging progress).
- A way for the A/I engine to run experimental training blocks and customize the plan more for my physiology. Would 2x15 or 3x8 FTP threshold intervals work better for me than 7x6 minutes? Would 4x4 VO2 Max intervals work better than 30-30’s? Would two FTP interval sessions per week work better than one FTP and one VO2 max session at certain times in the training plan? And even, would alternating blocks of Sweet Spot intervals followed by Polarized blocks work best for my particular body? The plan seems to stick to the same types of intervals each week but it would be so cool if it could run intelligent experiments on me and optimize the rest of my plan based on my specific training response.
- Built in transition to off-season training, and back to in-season training.
All in all, using the app and following the plan does seem to have made a big difference in shorter (less than 10 minute) efforts, and also in my average speed for zone 2 rides. I may yet be able to break my PR for the shorter hill climb this year. But, it’s been a grind with all the intervals and no “fun rides”, group rides, motivational comparisons, or free-form rides built into the plan. At this point in the season I feel burned out following the plan every ride, and I want to go out for some rides and just do whatever I feel like some days. Truthfully, I’m asking myself if I want to follow an automated training plan at all. This is a problem with any automated plan (not just Athletica), but perhaps there could be a way to build in free-form fun rides, auto re-calculation, and still generate a progression.
Big thanks to @Prof and the developers for working on Athletica, being patient with me, answering all my questions, and to everyone who responded to my posts and questions so far! If you read this far, good on you and please share whatever thoughts you have, and how Athletica has been working for you. Last but not least, I’m wondering how I can transition into an off-season training program in September. I don’t think I have it in my to keep doing two intervals every week year-round. I’m thinking of going onto a Sweet Spot/zone 2 program but I’m still debating.
Thanks for reading.