Hammerhead Now Helps TrainerRoad Exterior Exercises

After what looks like the longest interval of flirting in sports activities tech historical past, the 2 firms lastly unlocked the connectivity between the 2 platforms. This had been teased, hinted at, and borderline leaked for seemingly years. However hey, now it’s Tinder Official!

This new connectivity primarily mirrors what TrainerRoad has in place with each Garmin & Wahoo already, merely permitting you to finish TrainerRoad exercises on the Hammerhead Karoo 2. Particularly, so-called ‘Exterior Exercises’. Most exercises will be toggled from inside to exterior, and admittedly, there’s actually no good cause to make use of any bike pc to manage your sensible coach for indoor exercises when the TrainerRoad native app (telephone/pill/pc) expertise is much better.

I’ve given issues a whirl on the Karoo 2 with a structured exercise final weekend, after which once more right here this afternoon with some tweaks.

Getting it setup:

That is the best half (primarily since you don’t must endure in a high-power zone but). To get began, you’ll see a brand new tile over on the Hammerhead dashboard that lets you hyperlink it as much as TrainerRoad. Whack that.

It’ll redirect you to TrainerRoad momentarily, which would require your username/password authentication, after which from there TrainerRoad will ask you to authorize Hammerhead’s request to infiltrate your account, whereas concurrently reminding you to not be Chris Froome.

Assuming you succeed, you’ll see the TrainerRoad emblem then present up on the left aspect of your Hammerhead dashboard, in addition to it present related (implied by the ‘Disconnect’ possibility).

From there, you’re mainly going to disregard the Hammerhead web site and simply use the TrainerRoad app/platform to manage the interactions. It’ll routinely ship any deliberate Exterior Exercises from TrainerRoad to your Hammerhead Karoo gadget. You may also manually push it to, if it’s essential. Right here you possibly can see a exercise I did final week, “Mount Deborah +1”, and if I choose ‘Push to Hammeread’, it’d do this. However actually, it’s going to do it in any case. You’ll additionally discover it’s chosen as an ‘Exterior’ exercise (decrease proper aspect under ‘Schedule’).

With that executed, you’re able to roll. And once more, you probably have a TrainerRoad plan, and it has Exterior exercises throughout the plan (like my triathlon one does), these will routinely simply present up in your Karoo. You don’t have to the touch/do something. Simply go…effectively…exterior.

Out on the street:

After powering up your Karoo, you’ll faucet the ‘Exercises’, which is similar place exercises from different platforms (similar to TrainingPeaks) have traditionally proven up. Now, TrainerRoad joins that membership. Exercises scheduled will present up right here, together with the deliberate date. Likewise, any non-scheduled exercises you’ve pushed right here will even present up. This seems to ship the subsequent 3-4 days of exercises, however not past that.

Now looks like a prudent time to say that I didn’t specify these exercise names. Relatively, TrainerRoad does. Enjoyable trivia: Each TrainerRoad exercise identify is named after a climb/mountain someplace. Together with this one. You’re welcome.

Subsequent, go forward and faucet the exercise of your alternative. It’ll then present you mainly the identical factor it did earlier than, however you possibly can faucet the ‘+Observe Exercise’ possibility, which mainly hundreds it into the journey you’re about to do. Likewise, you may also unfollow a exercise too. On this context, ‘Observe’ means ‘Do’.

When you faucet that, it’ll open up your common journey screens. For those who swipe although, you’ll discover this default structured exercise display:

As you possibly can see, this display isn’t tremendous superior. It’s lacking a ton of data you’d in all probability need, like lap averages, one thing aside from on the spot energy (which is usually ineffective), and…effectively…all the pieces. Severely, it’s unhealthy. The excellent news is which you could make your individual customized display, which takes it from Horrible to Largely satisfactory. TrainerRoad had some options on this, and I’d agree with them.

So, I did that. It takes only a minute or two, and is listed underneath: Profiles > (Your Profile Title) > Information Pages > Add New. Be aware that annoyingly, you possibly can’t meaningfully customise the ‘Exercise Card’ structure construction. Simply the information inside it, which isn’t a lot. So, you’ll make a brand new one altogether. This makes it a lot simpler to observe inside every interval.

Now, begin your exercise. For those who’re on the default web page, you’ll see the graph on the backside of the exercise. Sadly, you possibly can’t add this graph to another customized knowledge pages, which might be good. So that you want this web page to see what the final plan is, then you definitely’ll need to change into the customized web page to truly do the interval.

In any case, like Garmin, Hammerhead will wait so that you can set off the subsequent ‘Work’ interval. TrainerRoad mainly sends it a command that tells it to attend in your lap command. That is tremendous helpful out on the street, so that you aren’t pressured to begin an interval as you method a pink stoplight or one thing. As an apart when evaluating these three bike pc leaders, sadly, whereas TrainerRoad sends this command to Wahoo within the file, Wahoo doesn’t at the moment honor it.

In any occasion, to begin your subsequent work interval, you’ll press the ‘Lap’ button within the decrease left.

After which off you go. It’s fairly easy.

Right here’s utilizing the customized web page as a substitute:

Throughout an interval, it’ll additionally present you the period remaining as effectively. You’ll be able to see this higher on my longer interval units this previous weekend, which have been three minutes in size every. The issue right here is which you could’t tweak that focus on (higher left) to be a smoothed worth, so it’s mainly continuously wobbling (as a result of that’s how energy meters work).

All in all, fairly easy. I’ll observe that you just’ll see the time on the principle display and try to see the exercise construction on the backside. The coloring (gray atop black) within the solar is inconceivable to see/makeout the precise interval chunks. Right here’s an instance on the finish of the journey. The remainder of the web page is trivially simple to see within the solar, however simply not the tiny darkish on darkish interval chunks.

As soon as accomplished, you’ll see a abstract as effectively (observe even within the shade, it’s inconceivable to make out the gray blocks which might be hidden under the yellow):

And once you finish the journey, you’ll discover TrainerRoad will get a replica of it:

In the meantime, again on TrainerRoad, it’ll routinely hyperlink up the deliberate with accomplished exercise in your calendar/profile, similar to regular:

And with that, you possibly can go about consuming ice cream.

Last Ideas:

That is nice to see, and hopefully, it means Hammerhead is seeking to improve its concentrate on structured exercises in some method. As I famous above, whereas that is useful, the fact is (and at all times has been) that the Hammerhead structured exercise function merely isn’t that nice. It’s not unusable, however might actually profit from some legit focus and love. Hammerhead does unbelievable UI work in different areas (like mapping and navigation, in addition to the general interface). However this function appears undercooked at finest.

TrainerRoad’s options on a particular customized display do vastly assist the Karoo’s plight, however there are nonetheless gaps there requiring you to modify forwards and backwards between pages, or simply take care of lacking data. The excellent news is that these are all frankly fairly minor tweaks, albeit ones that can make a giant distinction (and ones folks have been begging for, for years from Hammerhead). Notably, this isn’t uncharted business territory. Wahoo & Garmin each do a superbly good job right here, as do different firms like Levels. Likewise, there are seemingly one million coaching apps on the market on different telephones/tablets/and many others that one can copy the core bits.

Hopefully although, with having TrainerRoad exercises on board, we’ll proceed to see the updates to the exercise participant (a lot of the final bi-weekly firmware updates over the past two months have had updates there), so whats’ one other few tweaks?

Thanks for studying!

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