I’ve now been using Athletica for a few months. While the indications I see on form via intervals.icu are nothing but positive, I reckon the proof will be in performance on the ground in the New Year’s Day ’10’ - about 6 weeks away. Here's a banner from Athletica, proclaiming "Train Smarter, not Harder". Does the app live up to that billing? Read on...
The whole training plan seems rooted in science - every so often I see a link to a publication or at the least an athletica blog article. This makes the app seem much less of a black box than, for example, TrainerRoad. There is a regularity about the training plan: each week has a recovery session; a 30:30 short HIIT session; a Threshold session of 4m intervals set at several watts above threshold; two tempo/sweetspot sessions, one of which is at higher gear/lower cadence as a strength training session. Interspersed are endurance sessions, often long enough that I’d prefer to do them outdoors. I’ve also noted that while I sometimes struggle to complete sessions (particularly the Threshold sessions), I am more able to do so than I was with TrainerRoad. Every few weeks, there are threshold and power profile tests scheduled. I’m unsure how these play out in terms of fine-tuning the various parameters, but as far as I understand it, the system looks at the power profile graph as a whole (or maybe specific points along the chart).
