TSS scores during grand tours?

mises

Does anyone have any numbers for pros during the Giro, Tour or Vuelta? I got curious after my last ride was over 600 and I certainly didn't feel up to doing it again the next day.

acoggan

Are you certain you have your functional threshold power set correctly? A TSS of >600 would require riding at a decent clip for ~12 h, possibly more. Certainly, that can be done, but if that's how you racked up so many points its hardly surprising that you didn't feel up to doing it again the next day.

mises

Could be off but still correlates with where the dropoff occurs on my last 28 day time vs power chart. On the other hand it did only take me a shade over 8 hours. On the third hand I was tempo or higher the whole time with a number of intervals and was generally trying to kill myself the whole time.

acoggan

I think you've misunderstood one of the ways I've suggested for estimating your functional threshold power. The "dropoff" or "shoulder" in question refers to what you'll often (although importantly, not always) see in the power frequency distribution, i.e., in a bar graph showing what percentage of time you spend producing a particular power/range of powers (e.g., 250-260 W). From the sounds of it, though, what you're basing your estimate on is a marked deviation from a quasi-plateau in the power-log time relationship. I'm not sure what, if anything, that value might signify, but clearly it doesn't represent your functional threshold power. (Usually such a dropoff is simply due to the fact that one stand-out ride has elevated the curve up to, but not beyond, that time point.)

mises

Curiouser and curiouser. I suspected that my threshold number might be off but the power I can sustain on long climbs is also consistent, though maybe 5 watts higher than the overall number. The dropoff point has also been consistent ride to ride, as long as there were enough data points in the relevant zones.

There were a couple points where my pedaling and everything else felt good for the first time in almost a year so maybe it was a breakthrough ride and once I come out of the coma everything will be ratcheted up to where the numbers make some sense.

mises

Forgot the original question - I don't know if there are enough power meter files made public to come up with the numbers or not but the IF/TSS numbers for tour riders would be very interesting. Clearly many of the riders are over their limits based on how they deteriorate over the course of the race and I just wonder how much over they are and/or can be and still get to the finish.

toa

Some studies have been done using HR as a power-proxy, getting data from all the grand tours and calculation TSS-like scores:

http://bjsm.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/37/5/457
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...0600&query_hl=5