Is TP worth the cost
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As with everything in training, the answer is “It depends.”
What are you looking to do? Just build a static training plan or are you just reviewing files?
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I’ve used golden cheetah and I have found it very useful, not willing to spend the extra $$ on TP.
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I know many people who really like GC, again it is just a case of what you prefer. I would suggest using CG at first and then if you find it lacking, move to TP.
I found the UI of training peaks to be much harder to figure out.
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I found the UI of training peaks to be much harder to figure out.
I’ll second that. TP is hard to use, GC is easy to use. GC does everything I want and it runs on all desktop platforms. Not sure why TP even exists when there’s a clearly superior competitor. Better marketing? Perhaps there’s something about TP that I don’t know and someone can chime in to enlighten me.
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Training Peaks is only worth paying for if you have a coach that communicates your workouts to you through it. Otherwise Golden Cheetah is more powerful and it’s free! If GC intimidates you with its options and UI then I’ve found https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ to be the best paid option. It’s prettier and far more intuitive than everything else.
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Going on the above thread, I have used Golden Cheetah (still do), Training Peaks, and Cycling Analytics. For being free, I have found that GC has been more than sufficient once you play around with it and figure out all the settings. My coach used to use Training Peaks and luckily for his athletes, he found GC to be just as good and now he charges less to his athletes since he doesnt pay for his subscription any longer. All this being said, my teammate swears by Cycling Analytics and always ttys to convince us to use it.
I recommend going with GC since its free and see if it meets your needs before dropping some coin on the paid subscription services out there.
One thing that is not totally clear to me is whether GoldenCheetah also supports run activities. Not so much for the analysis of individual activities, but for things like the Performance Management Chart.
Is GC suitable for keeping track of activities other than cycling?
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One thing that I’ve found useful on GC (and I haven’t used TrainingPeaks or Cycling Analyitics) is that the “Train” mode in GC works pretty well, and you can get it to do a lot of different things - like estimate power and build a power curve for those of us who are poor and can’t afford a power meter. Useful in the winter months when you’re sitting inside 6 days/week wondering if you’re actually getting anything done.
I have been using GC for a few years and like it a lot.
You can enter in other activities and it can estimate things like TSS, etc. or you can manually put those in too.