Garmin WTF – Tacx Cloud gone?

Turbo training season has just started. I’ve got a Tacx trainer and use the Tacx Training app, which had any accompanying website called “Tacx Cloud” which is used to build your own workouts – and it had a really nice, fast graphical interface to do this. I had a “library” of loads of workouts I’d created which I could browse in the Tacx training app and call up really quickly.

I’ve just discovered Garmin (who bought Tacx a few years ago) killed Tacx Cloud about six months ago without notifying users in advance AND deleted all their data. No email and no announcements that I am aware of. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that it was timed for the end of the turbo training season for most users….

Anyway, Garmin’s “solution” is a crappy UI in Connect to create workouts which you have to add to your Connect calendar to sync with Tacx Training.

Whilst that in itself is less slick, my main issue is that the workouts are based on absolute power numbers now, rather than as percentages of FTP (eg I prefer workouts based a percentage of my FTP so that I don’t have to “re-build” the workout when my FTP improves [or plummets!])

So:

(a) I’m pissed off at Garmin at HOW they went about this without giving users a chance to export their data first

(b) I’m pissed off with the inferior solution they’ve foisted on users

But

(c) Does anyone know of a method to get .zwo files into Tacx Training? (I’d be quite happy to use ZWO Creator to create/maintain a library of workouts)

I’ve just discovered Garmin (who bought Tacx a few years ago) killed Tacx Cloud about six months ago without notifying users in advance AND deleted all their data. No email and no announcements that I am aware of. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that it was timed for the end of the turbo training season for most users….

I had probably half a dozen emails over the space of 6 months with various levels of urgency and doom and gloom about the death of tacx cloud (and a couple of other tacx facilities that i wasn’t using anyway). That was probably 2 years ago? I guess they stopped after i did all the stuff they asked…

You’ve either unsubscribed at some point (as i have now with zwift, the mails they send me are getting beyond a joke!) or they are buried 2000 mails ago in your junk mail folder/deleted items.

The removal of training plans/Tacx cloud was repeatedly made to anyone actually using Tacx.

You can create workouts using % of FTP in Garmin Connect and these will appear in Tacx.

Nope – I’ve just checked my emails. Nothing in my inbox about terminating Tacx Cloud (and I don’t routinely delete emails).

Nearest I got is an email telling me to use my Garmin ID and password to log into Tacx. Maybe I was somehow un-subscribed or wasn’t actively using Tacx during this notification window (I only use the trainer when the weather is truely shite and if this was two years ago, I may have been using Zwift at the time??)

Anyway, what’s done is done, I guess.

@scotroutes – I missed that Connect can use %FTP so that’s helpful but it’s still laborious to create workouts compared to ZWO Creators more visual methodology…

I found this https://whatsonzwift.com/convert/workouts which would allow me to use ZWO Creator to design the workout as a .ZWO file and then convert it to a .fit file – but the power values would be absolute rather than %FTP. Grrrr

Ultimately, I’m torn between IndieVelo and Tacx Training for this winter.

IndieVelo allows .ZWO files to be imported with %FTP (though it’s still clunky as I run it on an Android phone) but IndieVelo makes my phone very hot and stutters a lot. Not sure why yet. But it doesn’t update my training status in Connect (EDIT: even after manually exporting a .fit file from IV and importing to Connect)

Tacx Training will update the training status but the clumsy workout creation in Connect seems a deal breaker to me at the moment

I don’t find it clumsy, but I do wish it was possible to share workouts with others. It’s likely possible by sending the relevant workout file to my watch then using something like Windows File Manager to make a copy of the .FIT file, send it via messaging of some sort and then have the end user upload it via File Manager again. Bloody long-winded though.

I’m curious why you’d want to share workouts as they won’t “work” for the other person unless they have the same weight and FTP as you (presuming these are power-based workouts….)

As you say, there are other types of workouts.