I’m sorry if I came across as critical of the app in any way. My ramp test comments weren’t addressed to TD. I really like your app and am appreciative of what TD offers.
I don’t like the ramp test though. I think I’m going to keep doing the 30 minute test and also recognize that I need to do more challenging intervals to so I can get better at longer efforts.
Dave
Oh no I understood what you meant. I was just saying we are big fans of the ramp test. Not so much in it’s absolute value of accurately predicting FTP but more just that it is so repeatable and that it’s very accurate from test to test. 212/175 is rather extreme, even more than me but still from a training perspective if you see your FTP in ramp test go to 220 then doing training based on 180-185 should be fine.
Alex, I am new to TrainerDay and have tried the HR functionality on 2 rides the last 2 days. I am very excited to use the HR mode for Zone 2 training this winter.
My experience on my first 2 rides is good overall, except for the initial few minutes. The “ramp rate” was pretty severe for me. I was running TrainerDay from my iPhone, but also used the TrainerDay website on my laptop to view the live workout there on a bigger screen. I’m not sure if it was a software bug or intentional, but on my laptop it didn’t show the target heart rate in one of the boxes, but it did show target watts. (Could be a good trouble shooting tool?) My FTP is set at 200, my resting HR is low 40s, but maybe as high as mid 50s or 60 when I got onto my trainer. My target HR for Zone 2 in the TrainerDay app was 117.
After starting the HR mode, I reached my target HR of 117 in about 5-6 minutes, but it was not what I would call a Zone 2 effort at all. I saw on my laptop that the target watts were over 180 after 3-4 minutes, a bit painful without a proper warmup. When I looked closely at the Training Peaks plots, I saw values of 190 watts just after 5 minutes. Based on what you stated above, I should have started at 40% FTP or 80w and increased slowly from there. A 5w/30sec increase or 10w/min, it would take 10+ minutes to get me to 180w, so something is off.
My concern is in not going over Zone 2 limits into Zone 3 and losing or delaying (for another 30 minutes) to get back into true Zone 2 levels. I realize that Zone 2 HR is based on HR of course, but this must also apply in some way to the leg muscles as well. My thought is too just build or find a proper warmup workout that will more gradually bring me just a few beats below (5bpm below?) the target Zone 2 HR, and then start the HR mode.
Please let me know if this sounds reasonable or it there is already another solution out there or in progress.
Thanks,
Randy
Hi Randy, welcome.
Yes this is the problem with HR training is that each person is so unique. I changed it so warmups were much more gradual and I got a lot of complaints so I revered back to this faster more aggressive warmup.
The good news is there is a very simple solution that we have done recently, which is just create an ERG workout with a nice warmup and then once you get close to your target HR press the HR button. Soon we will allow automating this process of it switching to HR mode automatically after an ERG warmup.
Here is example of how to create it.
Here is a link to that workout you can add to your library
We should have this “automatic HR” switching feature in the next few weeks.
Secondly, I want to build a second option for HR warmups that is more gradual but that seems to be a bit more complicated.
Perfect and thanks for the incredibly fast response!
Really enjoying my first couple of days using TrainerDay and can really see it’s potential in helping me achieve my goals.
Hi Alex, I used your new HR workout file and it was a big improvement for me to more gradually ramp up the watts more slowly to my target HR before switching over to HR mode.
In my case, I needed to take it up a little higher to 75% FTP, so I modified the file that you sent me and extended the ramp time from 10 to 12 minutes. This worked beautifully, and when my HR reached my target HR (117 bpm) around 11 minutes I think, I switched over to HR mode. Unfortunately, then both the watts and my HR started dropping and the HR mode didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. I waited at least 5-10 minutes, but by then my HR was down under 100 bpm and watts were down from 140+ when I switched to HR mode to below 100w. I had continued pedaling constantly this whole time.
I do remember hearing the software beep at me when it switched to the second interval at the 12-minute mark. I’m not sure if this has any bearing or not, but for trouble shooting reasons, wanted to include it.
After both my HR and watts feel below the 100 mark, I switched back to erg mode for a couple of minutes and then switched back to HR mode.
From that point on, everything worked perfectly again. I’m not sure what caused this. I remember a prior post where someone entered the HR mode when their HR was above the target and they also had a problem. It is possible that my HR was 118-120 bpm, which is just a couple of bpm above my target when I switched to HR mode, but I don’t know exactly.
Please let me know if you need to see my workout file (and let me know how to send it to you if you need it for troubleshooting.) Thanks again, and I want to help out to make this work as well as possible. I know that you are working on making this with automatic switching in the near future so maybe taking a look at the problem that I had can help out.
Sorry, I forgot to mention when switching to HR you have to quickly press + until you get to your target HR. Did you do this? We tested this and it worked for us. Maybe we need to test more. The new build coming soon will remember your previous target so if you always keep it at 117 you should not need to adjust this target. Let me know. It should work the same for you as us, so I should not need your workout yet.
When I started the workout, my target HR was already populated at 117 bpm and I didn’t touch this. When I entered HR mode, I know my HR was very close to 117, within a beat or 2 either way. At that point, there seemed to be no control of the power, almost like it was in slope mode with the resistance only being determined by my gearing. I didn’t change gears though, and the resistance was too low so both my HR and the watts kept dropping steadily. I kept pedaling hoping the HR would kick in and take over but it never did. After 5-10 minutes, I switched back to erg mode and I think I did hit the “+” a couple of times and I felt the resistance kick in. At that point I switched back to HR mode and all was good the rest of the workout.
I didn’t know or haven’t read anywhere about pressing + when you enter HR mode. I’m not sure why this would be necessary when your target HR is already set correctly, but maybe I am missing something. For the final release I would recommend eliminating this step and just use the correctly (already established) target HR.
Being a little nit-picky I would say that it lets your HR fluctuate a bit too much up and down, so I would recommend making adjustments more frequently to keep a tighter range. Not sure if this is a computational resource concern, so that may come into play.
Oh, ok, yes if HR is already set it should be fine, although this could be the bug, that HR mode might not go into affect without the + button. We will test it and hopefully find the problem quickly and fix it. We obviously want this to work perfectly.
A very good move with remembering the set goal, I was already going to postulate this feature. 
Quick feedback on today’s ERG/HR workout
https://app.trainerday.com/activities/65440a0b509b8b93d473b9b9
I switched to HR when the HR was stable and at or below the initial target HR, but like the other user resistance dropped dramatically and did not come back up. It actually looked like it was dropping the power value to the HR target!
I tried the +1 with no success, and tried the whole sequence 3 or 4 times throughout the workout and each time it did the same, so i gave up and did the workout in ERG.
The only different thing I did today was when i selected “Ride” for the workout, I flicked over to HR before i stared pedaling and moved the HR target from 120 to 125 bpm. I then went back to ERG and started pedaling.
Ok I am feeling pretty recovered from last weeks fun hospital trip and I will test this today. It works perfectly for my tester and really should be the same for all users, it should not be device dependent other than if any one has trainer + power meter and/or possibly the effect of power match. This might create some strange results. We need to test this more and improve it.
Ok I tested, I agree something is wrong and it seems like target BPM turns into target watts. This should be fixed in the next 2 days.
Alex, thanks for checking on this. Just a little additional information, based on your comments about potential device dependencies like power meters or power match.
My system is about as “vanilla” as possible.
One question that I do have is there a “Setting” that I can check or set myself within TrainerDay that is my target Zone 2 HR? The first time that I used the HR mode, I had a target HR that was populated on the screen that certainly looked to be in the “ballpark” for the various methods used to calculate Zone 2 HR upper limit. I have left this alone since I thought it was something that TrainerDay calculated, so I didn’t really want to mess with it until after testing it a few workouts.
Was this an actual TrainerDay calculated HR target (and if so, can I adjust this myself in Settings?), or just a random Hr that happened to be in the ballpark for me?
Thanks again, I feel you and your team are getting closer and circling in on solving this.
Randy
I also planned to ask that but forgot it.
I think it is standard 180 - age - 5?
I think we start it at 70% of threshold HR. Nothing more advanced than that. But next week it will just remember your last setting. Maybe in the future we will get more advance 
Mine worked out to 75% of my Threshold HR. My threshold HR is 156, and it populated my target HR at 117, or 75%.
Randy
It seemed to me that the standard was 180 - age. On the other hand, -5 when you are sick or injured.+5 when you’re on the gas.
In my case, when I have had an infection for a week, today during the HR2 training I noticed that the power dropped a lot from the average order of 220W to 180W.
Oh yes maybe it is 75%, I think that is what it is. I changed it and could not remember.
Maffetone more is talking about big picture health and consistency for -5 or +5 not short term changes like illness. But still it’s probably not a bad idea to -5 when you are recovering from sickness. I guess your power drop will come back quickly.
