I was delighted to discover that TrainerDay has separate profiles/FTP settings meaning you can use it with a RowErg as well as a bike (though why no SkiErg! 
see my other post…). I already know how useful TrainerDay is from using it on an indoor bike, but to be able to use it with my RowErg; great joy! This is a brilliant development, it frankly baffles me that so many training platforms have been missing such an obvious feature, given that it adds almost zero development overhead. Yes the rowing community may be tiny compared to the cycling, but it is still another source of potential subscribers…
Anyway, preamble aside, so I went ahead and subscribed and connected my TrainingPeaks, which has a Indoor Rowing training plan on the calendar. And it started appearing in TrainerDay on WOD, so far, so good.
Sadly the workouts are being transferred completely incorrectly/have corrupted data. To be precise, they are almost entirely two times the duration and double the TSS. My theory is because there is a bug relating to the fact that TrainerDay does not properly understand workouts that have a combination of interval definitions/steps based on both time AND distance. The TrainerDay workout creator seems to only allow specifying each step/interval based on an exact duration. See the screenshots below for an illustrative example of this bug/issue. The first shows the TP workout as it is/should be:
The second shows the workout as it appeared in the TD app:
As you can see, the total workout duration has almost doubled to 88 minutes from around 46 minutes, which also accounts for the fact that the resultant TSS is nearly double too, as makes sense, despite me having the same FTP value on both platforms.
If we look at this particular workout, it combines both distance and duration steps. So it starts with a 1000m warmup, then four 500m steps. So all distance based. It then has 3 * 8 minute intervals with 2 minutes recovery before cooldown.
Anyway, if we look at even the first portion, 1000m in 17 minutes is clearly way way off. So there is an issue with the power to pace and therefore time/duration conversion.
The short result of all of this, is that the training plan in TP is 100% unusable in TD, which is a massive disappointment, it would have been fantastic to have had the benefit of the TD training graph for completing these workouts, and it would have also meant zero time programming the PM5 (either via another app or directly) to set all of the pace/power targets.
So close yet so far…
Let me know if you need any further specifics to aid with debugging this.
It also shouts to another potential upgrade: enable the workout creator allow the creation of intervals based on either time or distance, based on a conversion formula. For bicyles, that’d probably be something like the 2000cm wheel circumferance, etc. In the case of Concept 2, and therefore for RowErg or BikeErg (and hopefully SkiErg), we know that the conversion factor they use is the following:
- watts = 2.80/pace³
- pace = ³√(2.80/watts)
In other words, take a look at the free Concept2 ErgData app, and the way it allows “variable intervals”, rather than simply just a specified unit of time with a given watts value. At the end of the day, all of these metrics are convertible based on predefined formulas and constants; e.g. if you specify 3km and a given (constant/average) watts, on the RowErg you can determine precisely to the tenth of a second how long that set distance will take.
Anyway, I suspect that the import/conversion error and this workout creator limitation are actually one the same underlying codebase issue; i.e. solving for it would soon very easily allow an “upgraded” workout creator.
Thanks
Aren.
Can you send me a link to your workout?