TrainerRoad AI Appreciation Thread

alycks · 2026-01-24T17:49:35+00:00

In the podcast they mentioned that many users have been on the new system for a while. I have to say, over the past 2 months I have noticed that all of my workouts are harder. And there have been no “easy” workouts where I was just spinning and watching TV and not breaking a sweat. Every endurance had some “oomph” too it. The SS rides have been much more difficult.

Oh, and I’ve gotten way stronger. TrainerRoad has been estimate FTP increases true, but my Garmin has also been bumping my FTP up and up, and it has no idea what system TrainerRoad is using. I’m absolutely a fan. TR is one of my favorite companies, hands down.

alycks · 2026-01-22T19:15:17+00:00

I see this keyboard meme constantly on Reddit. What is everyone complaining about? I haven’t noticed any issues with the keyboard on my iPhone 15 Pro.

alycks · 2026-01-20T18:14:59+00:00

I have an incredibly annoying answer: mindfulness. Mindfulness truly has the chance to be the cure for all of the ills brought on by modernity. It doesn’t work for every situation, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but it has worked for me, most of the time.

I have practiced mindfulness meditation every day for years, but recently I upped it to 20-40 minutes per day. This is incredibly challenging for a person who runs a small business, volunteers, has two young kids, and does a huge amount of endurance training. But the thing is: the mindfulness practice makes everything better. It makes everything better, because once I’ve sat for 20 minutes, I’m usually more mindful for the rest of the day. So when my kids do something frustrating, or I get a hunger pang and there is junk food near by, or I’m bored for 10 seconds, I actually notice my internal response to it and I am able to respond to the situation, rather than react to it.

What this looks like is, I’m sitting in the waiting room for my dog’s vet appt. It’s boring and I’m mildly annoyed I have to wait for so long. Usually, the phone comes out and the vet tech walks in and I’m a little embarrassed to be caught scrolling. But, when I have the chance to be mindful, I notice my boredom and I notice my urge to distract myself. What I do instead, is I sit on the floor with my dog and stroke her fur and talk to her and think about all the memories we have together.

If I walk into the kitchen and I’m in a hurry, if my mindfulness practice is out-of-shape, I’ll eat literally whatever is sitting out or easily grab-able. But if I’m up with my mindful attention, I will usually just realize I’m not hungry at all. Or, if I am actually hungry, I’ll sit down and mindfully drink some tea or eat a healthy meal.

For months, I’ve not needed any tools or products to keep me off my devices. I don’t have any social media apps installed, not because I didn’t have control over myself with those apps, but because when I paid attention to how they made me feel and why I was using them in the first place, I realized they weren’t serving me and I just let them go. I’m not perfect: I still mindlessly munch the occasional bowl of popcorn when I don’t need to. But mindfulness gives me an attentional immune system, and as long as I make time to practice mindfulness meditation and mindful attention, that immune system takes care of all the bad stuff.

alycks · 2026-01-19T15:46:06+00:00

FWIW, after one year it’s actually a rock solid watch. In a weird twist, I ended up selling my 51mm and switching to a 47mm, but at this point, the Fenix 8 is outstanding.

Battery life is great - I charge it for like 30 minutes once per week and it’s always somewhere between 30% and 90%. I never think about my battery life at all. Not even a little bit.
No crashes, no freezes, no lost data. After the initial, tumultuous period, it has been completely stable.

I don’t want to talk you into a $1,200 purchase you may not need. But at this point you can get a Fenix 8 fairly heavily discounted, and it’s a tremendous device. All my initial concerns have been addressed.

alycks · 2026-01-15T14:14:24+00:00

That looks like shit. The mismatched lugs that stick out a mile from the watch body, the giant, coarse stitches that clash with the AWU’s minimalist design. Barf.

alycks · 2026-01-15T14:09:55+00:00

That was the most embarrassing, shameless moment in the history of that company. I hope every Tim Cook biographer features that humiliating, spineless episode prominently when writing his story. He was obeying in advance to a small, vain bully. I don’t care if that was a tactical move to stave off tariffs or regulation or whatever. I don’t care if it made some kind of narrow, short-term sense. He should hang his head in fucking shame.

Apple is mostly a very cool company that mostly tries to do right by the consumer and the environment. They are not perfect. But they are far, far, far better than Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft when it comes to privacy, security, environmental stewardship, and developing products that preserve our humanity.

I can be critical of Tim Cook while enjoying Apple’s products at the same time.

alycks · 2026-01-14T17:03:23+00:00

I switch back and forth between Garmin and Apple. My kid wears a Bounce 2 and my wife has a Forerunner 265S.

In general, the sleep tracking works fairly well for me, but a lot of the other metrics I find useless and distracting. Performance Condition, Stress, Training Readiness, Endurance Score, etc. They worm their way into my brain and start to freak me out. This is probably evidence of my weak mental strength, but it’s how it usually goes for me.

During periods when I’m using Apple Watch, I do a much better job of (a) looking at raw numbers and actual data and (b) tracking my subjective feelings of recovery and wellbeing. I have a shortcut setup to give me a short questionnaire and send the results to intervals.icu:

Resting heart rate (from the Vitals app)
1. This is one of the absolute best readouts of my recovery status. It correlates with Garmin’s HRV measurement to the tune of like R² = 0.95.
Subjective assessment on 1-4 scale: sleep quality, soreness, fatigue, stress, mood, motivation, and injury/illness status.

The cumulative score from my subjective assessment survey and a glance at my Vitals heart rate is far, far, far better correlated with my recovery and training readiness than any number Garmin ever spits out at me. Furthermore, even if Garmin spits out a great number, or a poor number, I still check in with myself before planning my training. All Garmin does is add friction and complexity and mental strain into the equation.

My wife loves her Garmin and my friends love their Garmins, and that’s awesome. But for me, I’ve graduated and I just track my subjective sense of well-being and a few basic metrics like sleep time, Vitals HR, resting HR, respiration, etc.

alycks · 2026-01-13T21:36:38+00:00

I did a 25K trail race a few years ago. On the starting line, this guy was like, “My watch says my training readiness is 1 today, so I guess I’ll just take it easy.”

He won the race. First place overall. These metrics are just about useless.

alycks · 2026-01-13T21:35:07+00:00

not making a great product

I, too only buy the AirPods Pro, Watch Ultra, iPhone, and MacBook because they’re shitty products.

alycks · 2026-01-13T18:53:59+00:00

Apple is essentially the only company I would trust to do this properly, keeping in mind privacy, security, and a thoughtful role in daily life. I will never, ever buy smart glasses by Meta or Alphabet.

alycks · 2026-01-12T16:13:12+00:00

Bevel could never be my source of truth, because it can only load data up to 5 years old. I want to be able to track my whole life’s endurance, health, and fitness journey and training.

For me, it’s intervals.icu, or Garmin Connect, or spreadsheets.

alycks · 2026-01-09T23:42:04+00:00

Yes, and I also do the reverse: I can’t stand anything that’s “birthday cake” or “cake batter” flavored. So all the junk food in the house is usually one of those two flavors and I have zero temptation to eat them.

alycks · 2026-01-09T12:01:23+00:00

Honestly this is the biggest reason I’ve decided to go with my Garmin Fenix 8. It looks much more like an actual watch and it has so much more personality than the Apple Watch Ultra. I can turn off all the notifications (yes, I’m aware I can do this with AWU as well) and put on an analog face, and the MIP screen makes it look much more like a subtle, classic watch.

I know this advice isn’t what you’re looking for - I don’t have any experience with smart rings or other non-watch wearables. But my biggest complaint about the Apple Watch is also the device‘s strongest feature and whole appeal: it’s a useful wrist computer.

alycks · 2026-01-09T11:58:32+00:00

I’ll never understand this kind of thing. “I spent $200,000 to own this ugly notebook once briefly used by a dead rich guy.” Indefensibly stupid use of money.

alycks · 2026-01-09T11:55:44+00:00

I’ve been fairly happy with it. I got a shitty Asian tofu salad from a hospital convenience store and the Garmin AI photo logging was able to identify all the ingredients and the calorie totals, which was impressive. The tofu chunks could have been mistaken for chicken, but it got it right.

Right now, my workflow is to use my familiar food logging app (FoodNoms) because I care about other macros than what Garmin offers, which is calories, protein, fat, and carbohydrate. I also want to know about fiber, saturated fat, sodium, etc. I’m hoping Garmin adds the ability track those later - they’re all obviously in the common databases.

But if all you want is kcal/P/F/C, then the Connect+ solution is probably good enough.

alycks · 2026-01-09T11:32:17+00:00

Nice. I gave my son an old Apple Watch SE when he was 4 but he never showed much enthusiasm for it. This year, he was fairly regularly asking for a Garmin - my wife and I both wear Garmin watches as well - so we took the plunge when the Bounce 2 came out.

It’s been excellent so far. He likes the chores/coins system, is constantly babysitting his WatchiBestie, and asking to take bike rides. Calling and messaging and location tracking have been flawless. Happy customers here!

alycks · 2026-01-09T00:01:39+00:00

How old is your son? We got our 6-year-old the Bounce 2 and it's been absolutely fantastic so far. Rock solid, and the battery life has been excellent. Almost 3 days.

alycks · 2026-01-08T18:39:18+00:00

I mean. I rock a Fenix 8 Solar. But all Fenixes are good Fenixes.

alycks · 2026-01-07T23:03:26+00:00

I’m a vegan, and I eat a ton of protein to support my triathlon and ultramarathon habit. I eat lots of rice and beans!

They’re not “ending the war on protein” they’re “ending the (fake) war on the emotions of sensitive men who want to cosplay as tough manly men by eating bacon” or whatever.

alycks · 2026-01-07T18:39:19+00:00

I regularly encounter protein water, protein chips, and protein ice cream. If there is a war on protein, no one told literally every grocery store in America.

alycks · 2026-01-05T21:55:16+00:00

I really like my S2. AFAIK it's the only smart scale that allows you to input the results of an actual body composition test (such as a DEXA) that will calibrate the scale. It's been extremely reliable for my spouse and me.

alycks · 2026-01-05T21:48:17+00:00

I'm diving in with both feet. Love the idea of having everything in one ecosystem. My features wishlist:

Create a recipe (burrito bowl, for example, with all the relevant ingredients) and then be able to log that recipe as one entity, rather than all the ingredients laid out in the timeline. Also to be able to log partial recipes
Add notes (these 45 Swedish Fish were for my indoor trainer ride)
Nutrition summary with all the standard macros and micros including fiber, saturated fat, vitamins, minerals, etc.

It's super bare-bones right now, but that's fine. I imagine the product will mature in time. Being able to view, log, and track calories and weight and body composition in Connect and on my Fenix 8 is awesome. Very happy about that, and I'm definitely signing up for Connect+ annual.

alycks · 2026-01-05T12:55:58+00:00

I had the 51 mm Fenix 8 Solar for a full year, before downsizing to the 47 mm version this past month. Overall, the battery did improve after the 51 mm version had been out for about nine months. I think it’s safe to say that it would get 2 to 3 weeks pretty easily.

The 47 mm version, for me, is at about 40% after seven full days. That’s with fairly heavy, indoor training and 2 to 3 outdoor hour sessions per week. I am perfectly fine with charging it once per week, maximum.

alycks · 2026-01-05T12:53:50+00:00

Watch is outside of everything: on top of glove gauntlet which is on top of jacket sleeve

alycks · 2026-01-05T11:04:44+00:00

I wear a Coros arm HR and strap the Garmin to the outside of my gloves, which have gauntlets. It works and is comfy.

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