Mar 13, 2015

Connecting with TrainerRoad

Detailed analysis of your indoor trainer rides

Hot on the heels of our new sync integration with Suunto devices last month, we are absolutely thrilled to announce we're bringing the same experience to TrainerRoad™ users. Starting today you can enable a link to your TrainerRoad account from SportTracks and all new workouts will be automatically brought into your SportTracks account. You can also import your entire history of TrainerRoad workouts into SportTracks for analysis.

Why is this so exciting? Let me count the ways...

1. Current TrainerRoad customers now have access to advanced analysis and planning tools including integrated coach communication, not possible through TrainerRoad alone.

2. Multisport athletes using TrainerRoad can now see a complete picture of their entire workout regime - cycling, running, swimming, crosstraining, and more.

3. Indoor trainer rides can be incorporated into fitness performance modeling via Training Load, just like your outdoor rides.

4. Finally, if you're a SportTracks user looking for a power based indoor cycling solution, here we have an option that "just works".

No more messing around with data import and export, inconsistencies in data or external sync solutions. Connect your account once and forget about it while you crush those Sufferfest videos.

Setup is simple like all of our sync partners.

1. Click the My Account link in the upper right corner of the app and navigate to the Sharing page.

2. Click the Connect button.

3. Select the TrainerRoad option.

4. Finish the activation by providing your TrainerRoad username/email and password.

Once authorized we'll check your TrainerRoad account every 10 minutes for new workouts. Your workout will be up on SportTracks.mobi before the burning in your quads goes away.

Comments

This is the main reason I joined ST mobi, when I hooked up to TrainerRoads, and Garmin Connect, I ended up with double rides, now that helped my monthly milage, but I'm pretty sure that's cheating.
Anyway to stop that?
Mike

Mike - no, that's not normal. The import system prevents duplicate workouts from being imported when they have the same starting time (within a few seconds).

If you're seeing duplicate rides shoot support an email with links to the duplicated workouts - they can look at your data, see why two rides got imported, and fix the problem.

Thank you for adding this. I would love to see a few features added to this to make it perfect.
1) rename the workout to something like "TrainerRoad - Workout name.". To be honest I don't care what you chose, just make it recognizable. Please do this retroactively.
2) Set the workouts to Indoor Cycling and Training. Please do this retroactively.
3) Make default gear definable by sharing source. If Trainerroad use one set, if Garmin Connect use another.
4) If workout data comes from two sources, please prioritize Trainerroad data over Garmin Connect and Trainerroad is the actual source data and thus more complete. Please do this retroactively.
Thanks!
David

I asked too soon. 1+2 are already done for new workouts. Thank you.

1. Done. We pull in the Trainer Road workout name. We don't prefix it, but we can add a note automatically to the source (we do this for Garmin).
2. Done. We currently categorize all TR imports as Cycling > Trainer. There are a couple other subcategories you can use (such as Rollers) if you need.
3. You read our mind. It's something we'll be working on soon (as in the next week or two). Gear auto-tagging will likely be by sport type and import source. The most obvious use for example would be auto-tagging your Forerunner for GC workouts, but it's really useful for TR as well.
4. Unfortunately this is difficult. We've got a "first one wins" policy that is fairly fundamental to our system. So it's dependent on import timing. With Garmin we'll get the workout sent to us immediately (ignoring when GC is not up), after you upload it. With TR we're getting the workouts every 10 minutes.

Trainerroad is the source of my FTP data. Can you use that to allow me to grab the information automatically?

The answer is Yes, eventually. It's doable, but a bit tricky:

1. We get FTP reported for *every* ride. But it's really only relevant for tests. Currently they have the 8-minute and 20-minute tests, so we could look at the workout name and only update FTP for those. There is no "test flag" for these, so we'd have to compare to known test names. A bit hacky, but not terrible.

The real solution is they shouldn't be showing FTP on non test rides.

2. I don't like the idea of auto-updating FTP without a prompt from the user. So we need to add a system to store away the recorded FTP and pop up a notification with a [yes] [no] prompt. Again, this is not impossible, we've got a lot of the building blocks there, but is a bit of work.

This is a very good idea.

Hi,
this Feature is really cool. Before this blog about TrainerRoad Integration I did not know about that tool. That´s a pitty: I would have liked to use this very good plans and workouts for my whole winter Training. As you allready mentioned you can now plan very exactly how a TrainerRoad Training plan effects your Performance. I´m very exited how my first MTB Marathon this year in May will be.
A very great and useful Extension for better planning would be the following:
- the best Thing would be of course if you could automatically integrate a TrainerRoad workout plan in sporttracks.mobi. But I think this is currently not supported by TrainerRoad..
- so the other Thing I would like to have is following: in TrainerRoads workouts you see the Training load with the IF and TSS values. So currently when I bring my plan with trainerRoad workouts in sporttracks.mobi I try to estimate this values into the intensity category in ST.mobi. Here it would be very useful if ST.mobi would provide a way to automatically calculate the intensitiy from a TrainerRoad workout. For example by entering the TSS and IF values from TrainerRoad ST.mobi knows how the intensity of that workout will be.

Hi
I am using SP with trainerroad for 2 years. perfect! but since this we, it does not work anymore. i did the procedure again and sporttrack hangs up in 'trainerroad sync in process'....
in fact the synch never completes.
any hints on what to do?
thanks. JC

Trainer Road changed their data sync API recently and we had to make some adjustments. It should be fixed now.

thanls a lot. it works now. JC

Anyone having trouble sync with Trainer Road? Sport Tracks doesn't seem to be pulling completed workouts anymore. I re-established the connection to no avail. Thoughts?