Trail running Plan

General Feature Requests
1

Good Day,

I am still in my half marathon training phase, but already started planning for the next goal :wink:

The next goal will be some trail running.
I looked through the forum, and people talked about trail running here and there, but never actually in the context of

  • Is Athletica capable of training someone for a specific trail run?
  • If not, is it planned, is there a chance to see it in the next month?
  • What are the considerations why its not yet implemented?
  • If Athletica is not suitable, any suggestions from the community to train smarter for it?

Based on the threads I read, I understand that elevation is a problem. Most devices used are not accurate enough as it seems, this means HR and power will be the only values that really counts - I assume.
But perhaps with some more manual input, Athletica would be capable of calculating the load close enough? I am thinking of extending the “feeling” of the run with information about how steep things felt, or a way of “adjusting” the elevation for a recorded run after import.
For me, I am planning most of my routes upfront using tools capable of telling me the elevation (up/down) upfront. This could be a good indicator if the synced data is off.

Also considering power as an additional metric, even though every vendor calculates it different, but within a brand it should be fairly standardized and therefor aligning it to my personal me with zones should not be that hard and therefor usable?

What do you think, as trail running gets more traction all around the world, is Athletica planning to be incorporating it too?

References

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I think you answered your own question and HR/Power is the way to go to measure effort during trail running and especially with a lot of elevation. For easy/aerobic runs I wouldn’t focus at all on pace and just use HR as a measure of effort or power if you’re familiar. You are correct that power can be for your watch as long as you’re comparing the same watch power data to itself. You also have to get “best efforts” over a few different durations and keep the data fairly current to maintain an accurate power curve and estimate of critical power. For hard workout days you can alter then plan to swap some track/speedier sessions with some hill work. You can save these from previous hill sessions in your workout library. Maybe a good feature suggestion would be to have hills sessions in the workout wizard as a swap choice for running “hard” workout session days. Good thoughts in your post and Athletica certainly has the capability to train for trail running.

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@mgiven thanks for the feedback and also thanks for backing my thoughts :wink:

Anyhow, having a training plan to stick to, coming from our AI coach would be awesome. As I realized it is way easier for me to stick to Athleticas Training Plan than the one from Garmin or any other ones from running athletes and their offers.

The option to move trainings and let the AI “compensate” it, is amazing :slight_smile: and this would be even more important for trail running as the distances get longer, time on the trail gets longer and more unforeseen things can happen to make a workout go bad.

I also think that more core/strength workout would be necessary either with exercises at home/gym or on the run :wink:

But yeah, having a trail running plan with our AI coach would be AMAZAING ! in my opinion!

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