I’d like to request a manual lap button in Free Ride.
I appreciate the benefits of structured training, but over time I’ve come to believe that very granular planning at the session level is often less than ideal. Understanding the parameters and goals of a training period is important, but mapping out every session in detail can be impractical because of life, recovery, and the simple fact that you often do not know how you will feel until you are actually training.
Personally, I try to optimize consistency and maximize aerobic volume. That usually means one or perhaps two structured workouts per week, with most of the remaining work easy and guided by feel. A lap button in Free Ride would be useful in both cases.
For example, I may begin a workout intending to do 3 x 10’ at threshold. If I load the structured version of that workout, I am essentially locked into that structure. In Free Ride with a lap button, I would not be. That allows for things like an extended warm-up or modifying the workout based on how I actually feel.
What happens if I feel less than ideal four minutes into the first interval? With a structured workout, my options are basically to cut the workout short or reduce the intensity. In Free Ride with a lap button, I could instead modify the structure to something like 6 x 5’ and still accumulate the intended 30’ of threshold work.
Similarly, I may start a ride with only the basic idea that I want it to be easy, e.g., after a couple of harder running days. Even if I track sleep, recovery metrics, and morning feel, I do not know with certainty how I will feel on the bike after 20 minutes of warm-up. The best time to decide whether to stay at 60% FTP or include some extended periods at high Z2 / low Z3 is often at that point, not before the ride begins.
A manual lap button would make Free Ride much more useful for this style of training. Thank you for consideration.
I ride TruTrainer rollers and control everything with my phone. I haven’t rode a trainer in years so I forget but I assume you can control the trainer this way as well. I believe TrainerDay allows you to control the resistance in slope mode during free rides which would be simpler.
I’d just like the ability to mark a lap in the file. I end up doing a lot of my runs and rides this way…basically figuring out what I’m going to do during the warm up based on how I feel and generally what I’ve done over the past couple of days (training distribution goals).
I am completely with you. I am a strong supporter of dynamic training. We do a lot to support dynamic training now. Like Dave mentioned you can always just click on the slope button and manually control it with your cadence and gears. The other thing we have is we have a skip button and you can skip forward we’ve got a plus button to add. You also can just start our warm-up and while you’re doing your warm-up, you can then select the ride you want and merge it into your warm-up so you can build up a library of interval sets that you just grab one of those interval sets as soon as you know what you wanna do and if you’re not happy with it in the middle of that interval set, you could just go switch to another one.
The other thing you can do is you can design intervals longer than you want them and then when you get to the right point in time, you just press skip and it will go to the end of the interval. It’s kind of the reverse way of thinking about the open, ended lap button.
Let me think on the lap button for tracking purposes meaning I think you can do everything you’re wanting to do now in our app regarding dynamic training once you learn how but you can’t track your own laps.