TSS and training hours???

BlueJersey

How you guys go about relating your TSS to your training hours? Does maintaining let say 500 to 600 TSS a week allows you to cut down your training hours? I ask because this whole week I have been doing zone 4 power intervals on the trainer. If I ride 5 days on the trainer doing 2x10 zone 4 interval work a day, adding maybe 1 day doing 3 to 4 hours ride outside, I can reach my TSS in the upper 500. However, I won't be getting more than 10 hours on the bike. I started off my off season doing close to 15 hours a week though. I just feel I should try to get more training hours.

frenchyge

I use TSS as my primary indicator for overall training load, in place of the word 'hours' or 'miles' as I would have used last year. You can ramp up TSS as the season nears, just as you might ramp up training hours or training intensity (only it's much easier since TSS includes both).

500-600 TSS/wk is a fairly mild training load. Back when you were doing 15 hr/wk on the bike, I'm sure your TSS was much greater than 500/wk. Even if all 15 hrs were at an IF=.75, that would yield 843 TSS/wk, so your gut feel that your training load is much lower this week is correct. 2x10 in zone 4 doesn't yield a lot of training stress. Sometimes after a 2x20 set, I'll do another 30 minutes of Tempo just to reach my TSS goal for the ride. I feel ~125 TSS/day on average is a sustainable load for me without pushing too much.

RapDaddyo

I have been monitoring my TSS points for about 6 months and have developed increasing confidence in what it represents -- a linear value that consolidates ride duration and intensity relative to FT. It is helpful to build a spreadsheet and work out several hypothetical rides to see the relative impact of duration and intensity. One thing to be a little cautious about is that as you increase duration the difficulty of a ride is not quite linear IMO. For example, I structure my rides to attain specific minutes in each level, L4-L7, as well as a total ride NP. But, my max power declines over time (as everybody's does) and continues to decline after 1 hour. My estimate is ~5% decline in MP for each hour after 1 hr. So, my 2hr MP is ~95%FT, my 3hr MP is ~90%FT, etc. Typically, I have a target NP of 85%FT for a 1 hr ride, ~80%FT for a 2hr ride, 75%FT for a 3hr ride, etc. But, TSS uses FT irrespective of the ride duration. No big deal, but I think a 300 TSS points ride is more than 2x as difficult as a 150 TSS points ride.

rmur17

RD,
on your last point. FT is FT is FT (^TM). Andy's training levels already account for the fact that longer rides imply lower power.

Scaling/normalizing things to one's FT is just a way of normalizing the work to one's current hour capacity. It's like scaling an electrical system to generation capacity. Just plain ole scaling to make it easy to compare TSS scores from training year to year, or season to season, or from rider to rider.

AC can describe things better than I ...

rmur

beerco

TSS is very enlightening isn't it?

peterwright

How do you guys calc TSS on a weekly basis - I use CP but is there an easy way to tally it?

Also some of my rides do not have power (tandem or races) so how can I factor these in to my weekly TSS score ?

Thanks

Peter

asgelle

To calculate weekly values for TSS, hours, miles, etc. take a plot of the variable vs. time (either an existing one or a new one) and go to modify this plot/details. There is a box for days per data point, change this value to 7, and you'll get a plot of the seven day total for the variable. The numeric value can ge gotten by putting the cursor over thee data point. The seven days for each point begin with the first day of the time range being plotted so if you want a Monday-Sunday total make sure the first day in the range falls on a Monday. For example, I plot weekly totals throughout the season so I make sure my season begins on a Monday.

You may be doing this already, but if not, reading the cyclingpeakssoftware.com/forum gives lots of useful tips for using the features of CP.

frenchyge

Mathematically, the TSS formula can be simplified to IF^2 x 100 points x ride duration in hours.
During my ride planning, I like to get a feel for approximately how many hours I'll need to get a certain TSS value, so I use data from Andy's chart on page 11 of http://www.peakscoachinggroup.com/P...ningChapter.pdf to approximate as follows:
Endurance Ride - IF ~ .8, TSS ~ 65 pts/hr
Tempo Ride / Hard group ride - IF ~ .9, TSS ~ 80 pts/hr
Threshold Ride - IF ~ 1.0, TSS ~ 100 pts/hr

Above threshold, the recovery durations have a bigger impact on NP than the work power, so I use a separate spreadsheet to approximate IF for a certain routine. Anyway, you're probably not asking about higher intensity rides, so I hope the above helps.

Spunout

I've added a custom chart to my Athlete Home Page. Uses the whole season starting from day 1 of my seasonal plan. Plot on a bar graph TSS with 7 days per data point. I'll post it (can't right now) later if you want to see)

peterwright

Thanks for the help guys - have got the 7 day chart setting working well but still struggling with non power tap rides and how to factor them.

frenchyge

Unless you know the NP of the ride, it's guesswork at best.

RapDaddyo

I haven't had the need to do this, but if I did have the need to include non-PT rides for TSS purposes, I would build an Excel workbook with a set of macros or VBA code to generate workout files as per a set of inputs such as total minutes by level. So, if I did a ride that consisted of 2x20s at 100%FT with 5 mins recovery between each 20, that's how I would put it in and then the macros or code would generate the workout file. Import the file into CP and you're done. With the right macros or code, should be a 3 minute procedure. Or, if you're fluent in C or BASIC, just write a small program and generate a csv file.

Old Junker

Thanks spunout
i had it at 1 day 7 days makes more analytical sense

frenchyge

That'd be a good way to get the ride TSS to feed into all the charts and such, for sure. For a structured ride, I might have an inkling of the minutes by level, but for an unstructured ride I think guessing the overall zone would be easier than guessing minutes by level.

IMO, the estimation guidelines I posted above work pretty well. I'd guess anyone who's been using power for a couple months or more would have a good feel near the end of a ride which zone their total ride NP would fall into. Even if you're off by an entire zone, that's only a difference of 15-20 TSS/hr. If that amount still bothers someone, they can even split the zones into upper/middle/lower by zone and use the IF estimations from Andy's paper. TSS still equals IF^2 x 100 x hours, and for TSS purposes there's no need to account for how the minutes were generated -- overall ride IF works fine.