# Building a TSS-based training plan



## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

I'm trying to make the most of the winter months preparing for a very hilly century+ event in May.

I still ride outside most weekends, e.g. last Saturday our group covered an 88 mile route with 4,500' of climbing in about 5 hours.

With dark evenings and life commitments, I'm stuck on the trainer during the week, and discovered Zwift a few months back. I've been doing 3-5 structured workout rides per week this month.

I've also been voraciously reading the Training Peaks, Hunter Allen and Carmichael blogs and since I'm a bit of a numbers geek (handy with Excel), armed with a basic knowledge of TSS, I'd like to take a crack at building a training plan.

Thanks to Zwift's workout editor, I can see that my current indoor training amounts to ~300 TSS points per week. I don't have a TP account, and I don't know how to calculate TSS for the Saturday group ride.

I also don't have a power meter, Zwift pegs my FTP at ~3.6 W/Kg which I feel is somewhat accurate since my HR matches the Coggan zone chart, so that pegs me in the upper Cat4 range.

So my first question is given the above, is 300 TSS about right, too-high or too low as a weekly target to start a training plan?

According to Hunter Allen, we need to ramp up the TSS each week to ensure the right adaptations etc. He quotes a maximum weekly increase of 6*rr, where Ramp Rate (rr) should be no higher than 6, so basically add up to 36 TSS points each week. 

So far, so good, and using that formula a month from now I should be doing 444 TSS per week in a month 

I didn't find anything prescriptive about recovery weeks, so I updated my Excel formula to reduce the TSS by 40% every 4 weeks, and resume at the previous weeks TSS following the recovery week. Is this correct?

Continuing the above formula, I should be up to a weekly TSS of 660 in early May, which I find rather disconcerting, since it implies that I'll have to more than double my current 60-75 minute workouts (although I should also be doing more outside riding by then). I'm not sure I'll have the time to commit to such a training load.

Scaling back the ramp to 18 TSS per week (i.e. half) will require me to reach 460 TSS per week by early May, which is still somewhat daunting.

Is this is right approach, or should I abandon TSS and work using Hour-based training loads, which appears to be what many of the for-sale plans on Training Peaks use?

TIA.


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## floralagator (Jun 18, 2014)

Without a power meter and a measured FTP, it will probably be difficult to accurately determine TSS. The numbers from Zwift are using estimated power which is suspect/variable. 

However, if you wish to continue in this manner.....

For long endurance rides I'm usually at an IF (intensity factor ) of 70-75% which yields TSS of about 50-60 per hour. YMMV. If your 5 hour weekend ride was comparable effort you would be at 250-300 TSS but without a PM, who really knows. 

So, if you're really at 300 TSS on your weekly Zwift rides and putting in 5 hours on the weekend, you are already somewhere around 550-600 TSS. Or not. 

Also, you can increase TSS for your Zwift rides without increasing the time. Increase the intensity. But it needs to be structured, which is why most folks either hire a coach or buy a plan.

Good luck.


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## woodys737 (Dec 31, 2005)

Increasing TSS over time is exactly what you want to do for peak performance down the road. How you increase the TSS is where it gets tricky. When and how you blend the volume and intensity is a bit individual (IMO). So while increasing TSS is a good thing it isn't a predictor of performance by itself.

Also as you have been reading, FTP is a large part of how TSS is calculated so a reliable FTP will be needed to calculate a reliable useful TSS. I only say this as I have no idea how zwift calculates this.

I think 50 TSS/hour for a endurance ride sounds close or at least a reasonable place to start.

If your doing 10 hr/week at 300 TSS now I think you will just need to make sure you have the time to recover closer to May. Figure an hour increase in time per week to get the TSS rise. I only say this if 10 hr/week is tough to do now with family, job etc...


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

To get a guess of the TSS for the group ride, average the last 3 weeks of rides you do have TSS for and just use that. It's not exact but it's reasonably close- much closer than not counting those rides at all. The manual ride entry for GoldenCheetah offers both time and mile based averages to choose for your estimates, pick the one that's closer for that ride.

I do over 100 TSS/day for about 6 months of each season. For me it's a lot of climbing and group rides, and in the range of 15 hours a week. But unless you're willing to spend a couple hours a day pretending you're doing a 6000' climb it would be mentally difficult to do oudoors.

Can you get up early and ride in the mornings? I find that it's much less depressing to be riding in the dark with lights if daylight is coming soon.

Which ride is this that you are training for?


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## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

Thanks for the feedback, guys, much appreciated.

I'm planning on traveling to England for the Fred Whitton Challenge.

The 112 miles doesn't faze me, since our Saturday group ride usually averages 110-130 miles once the weather turns better. The part that I need to train for is the climbing; they quote ~4,000 meters = >13,000' of climbing i.e. almost double what I've done in a day, to date. Hence the focus on higher-intensity intervals.

I agree that not having a PM is less than ideal, and it's the reason I've not opened a TP account. I'm absolutely considering buying one, but it's not my first priority right now, however, I don't think that it needs to hold me back.

Another reference point in Zwift is that I often ride with PM users, and I can hold a pace with riders putting out similar W/Kg numbers as me. Not perfect, but I don't think I need an absolute measure right now, just to establish and improve on MY baseline.

I completed the Zwift 20-minute FTP test last November and all my workouts are tailored to that. I'm using workouts directly from CTS, Hunter Allen and TP. During the week, I focus on Threshold Ladders or Climbing Repeats, Speed Intervals, Power Intervals and OU Intervals; which as you can tell from the names are in the Tempo/Threshold/VO2 training zones.

I traditionally take Friday off, ride outdoors on Saturday and depending how I feel, if I'm not outside, I might do a Tempo, SST or Recovery ride on the trainer on Sunday.

Given the professionally created workouts and training plans, there seems to be some science behind the method by which Zwift ascribes a TSS score to a workout. Note: this is done when the workout is created, not by post-analysis. For example, for 100% FTP sessions, Zwift assigns a TSS of 91 for a 2x20, 105 for a 3x15 and 124 for a 2x30 workout, which includes warm-up and cooldown.

My interval sessions are currently running 60-75mins duration and Zwift assigns TSS scores in the range of 60-75 for these sessions. By comparison, the workout creator assigns a TSS of 25 for a 1hr recovery of 10min warm-up, 50mins @ 55% and 10min cooldown.

I can handle 75-90 minute sessions during the week, but 120 minutes might be a problem, and other than dropping Tempo workouts, it doesn't appear that I have much room to increase the intensity. Given the climbing objective, I think I need to focus on longer threshold sessions - ladders, climbing repeats, SST's and OU's.

Agree that I need to factor-in the outdoor rides (average HR last Saturday was mid-Endurance pace). If/when I pull the trigger on a PM, I'll also sign up for a TP account, since I understand that this will allow me to upload all my ride data (inside & outside) for analysis. Thanks ericm979 for the GoldenCheetah tip, I'll check that out.

Friends of mine don't use PM's and are planning to ride this event without a structured training plan, just lots of riding and hill repeats. I'd like to take a more structured approach and I've not found a for-purchase training plan that would seem to align to this event. I'm also interested in learning how to read and analyze the data, and build my own plans. Hence the seemingly basic questions about the specifics of how to ramp a TSS, but also scale it back for the all-important recovery weeks.

Thanks for reading.


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

I've done a ton of extreme climbing rides and races. Death Ride, Everest Challenge stage race, the KOM series in SoCal, Death Valley stage race, etc. all many times.

You don't need to do intervals that are shorter than 20 minutes for these. If you are going that hard during the ride you're risking not finishing. I've done well in those on a training diet of no short intervals, just group rides that have a long (25-30min) climb, SST workouts, and some weekend days of big mountain climbing repeats totalling 9-10k'. That's not a good training plan for road races but I wasn't doing many that year and was targeting some double centuries. In any case I'd rather go ride up and down a mountain for 5 hours than do a bunch of VO2max intervals.

Of course it's not like VO2max intervals will hurt. They're still time on the bike. And if you're sentenced to a trainer you need to do whatever it takes to make the trainer bearable. But you should not get close to VO2max on that kind of ride.

One of the advantages of GC is not having to upload my data to a server somewhere. I don't have to worry about the server being down or them losing my data. And I don't need to pay for an account.

Tapering: for an A race that's a super climb sufferfest like Everest Challenge, at a minimum I take it real easy starting 5-6 days before, doing just a few rides. I usually have done my last 5 hour 10k' ride the saturday before. Sometimes I have cut that ride down a bit depending on how tired I am. The goal is to start the race with a slightly positive stress balance.


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## Sumguy1 (Apr 5, 2008)

Your Saturday group ride is 130 miles. That's probably 250+ TSS right there. Add to that your 300 TSS per week from the trainer and you're already 550 for the week. I think you're underestimating your fitness already. 
How many hours a week are you riding? How many will you be riding as you get outside more this Spring? 
And what about base miles? 
DL Golden Cheetah and start using it. It will help make sense of all this pretty quickly.


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## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

Thanks ericm979 and Sumguy1 :thumbsup:

I much prefer outdoor rides, and once the evenings lighten up a bit, and the temps start rising, I'll try to get out more. I try to average 200-225 miles a week, and totaled just over 8,000 miles last year.

Per above, I do a century most weeks, but the part that worries me is building a pair of GOOD climbing legs in the next 3 months. IIRC, the route has us doing ~14 climbs, including tackling Hardknott Pass = 33% max grade, with ~100 miles in our legs, followed by another couple of climbs before the finish 

I've had the trainer for a few years, but always hated it. Until last year, I was doing about 10 hours of spinning classes a week during the winter months. It was only after poking around in Zwift ~3 months ago, that I dusted off and started using the trainer again, thinking it might be better preparation for this event.

I always thought Cheetah was an online tool for sync'ing other accounts. Anyhow, I've downloaded the current version and will play with it in a vmware window to familiarize myself with it.

In the meantime, I created a TrainingPeaks account last night and dragged/dropped in my last 3 months worth of .fit files from outdoor and Zwift-indoor rides. I do like the online tool, since I can use it on all my devices, including the app for my cell phone & tablet. Plus it's supposed to sync with my Garmin Connect account.

I've already learned a few things;

1) Looking at a sample of my recent workouts, the Zwift workout editor appears to underestimate the TSS of each workout by ~12% relative to post-analysis of actual data in TP. And yes, I do have accurate data in my Zwift account, plus not having ERG mode, I tend to exceed the power targets by ~5W to ensure I hit the numbers.









2) TP ascribed a TSS of 283.5 to last Saturday's group ride. Good to know. The previous Saturday ride was less hilly and scored slightly lower.

3) For the last couple of weeks, TP consolidated my workouts (outdoor+indoor) to a TSS of 641 and 656, with the higher score last week, so my ramp was well within the Hunter Allen guidelines.

4) Based on ericm979's advice, I probably need to shift my focus to longer e.g. Nx20 intervals at SST, Threshold etc. to maximize my time on the trainer.

5) If I understand it correctly, CTL is a proxy for fitness, and so looking at my TP graph for the last 3 months, the blue-shaded area is increasing steadily. However, I still need to understand and analyze the data in order to build a climbing-focused training plan.









Thanks again, guys. I feel like a kid with a new toy


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## floralagator (Jun 18, 2014)

Looks like you are heading in the right direction. RE the climbing; this is where a power meter would really be beneficial. Even if it meant finding a hub based powertap used, I would strongly recommend it. You can probably score one for $300 or so of you look at right places. 

The benefit of the pm is that it allows you to know exactly the effort you are expending. It has improved my climbing tremendously because I no longer "blow up" by unknowingly going to hard. Also, it will allow you to tailor your training plan to specifically work on building your FTP and replicating the efforts that will be required on your ride. 

And I guess it goes without saying.....if you've got any spare baggage around the middle, taking it off before your big ride will be huge in reducing the suffering up some of those climbs!


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## Sumguy1 (Apr 5, 2008)

You're riding 12 hours a week and you're currently at, more or less, 70 CTL and it's the last week of January. I think you are worried about your big ride in May for nothing. 
As long as you can keep that up and not over do it you'll be more than good.

If you want to geek out more, read this...

The Science of the Performance Manager | TrainingPeaks

And get a power meter. I'm not sure how TP is calculating your TSS without power data. Are you estimating it based on time and speed or time and HR/RPE?


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

I'm usually at a CTL of 110-120 all summer until the end of my season. 120 seems to be my limit, if I go much above it I get too tired. At that CTL I take a rest week every few weeks, but that 'rest week' is more like a day off and one or two easy rides replacing mid week hard rides. OTOH a friend of mine is a really good long distance climber and rarely runs his CTL over 80.

A PM is useful but I have had some of my better rides/races with no power data. However I've always been good at pacing myself, probably due to distance running when I was in high school and college. Even so the PM has improved my pacing for these long events.

To me the biggest benefit of the PM is in training, both for pacing on long intervals and for the CTL telling me I need to rest. I'm not so good at deciding that based on feel, and will too often keep going when a break would allow me to recover.

That 30% is in the hairpins. If it's like roads I've seen elsewhere the inside of the hairpins is much steeper than the outside. Of course it's still not going to be easy.... if it's "only" 13-15% for long stretches that's still way hard.

Which brings me to one more piece of advice- bring low gearing. Ideally a gear lower than you think you'd need. I.e. if you can do Hardknot on a 34x28 in training, bring a 30t cog for the ride. I've done that for many of my rides and it's saved my ride a couple times. It's easy to either go too hard early on or to lose power later on due to not eating/drinking right. (my events are often in serious heat which makes eating and drinking more difficult).


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## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

Thanks for the article. It has a good explanation of the math model behind the PMC, as well as the benefits and limitations of same. Definitely worth reading for a geek like me :blush2:

I'm starting to understand the terminology and, until I read that article and saw eric's response, I had no idea what a ~70 CTL meant. Now I understand it's not too bad, especially in January. I also understand that I should be talking about CTL, not TSS.

Unlikely I'll be able to get over there to ride the course before the big day, but if a business trip gets me close, I'll definitely take a bike and try to get up there.

I'm certainly interested in getting a PM, but thinking about options that could easily be switched between my (dedicated) trainer bike and road bikes; pedal options seem to be the way to go, so I've been looking at Garmin Vector2's and the PowerTap P1's hoping that others like PowerPod and the rumored Shimano PM (Spotted! Is this the new Shimano power meter? - Cycling Weekly) will start nudging prices downward.

From the article, TrainingPeaks seems to be calculating TSS = duration (h) x IF^2 x 100), so in the absence of Power data (i.e. my outdoor rides), they must derive intensity (IF) from HR. My zones are entered in my TP profile.

I did a set of 3x15 OU's last night at 95%/105% intensity. Once again Zwift underestimated the TSS, rating a 92 vs. the 105 calculated by TP. Note that Zwift does provide Power data, in my case zPower. After uploading to Garmin, it automatically sync'ed to TP, which was great.

I'm also liking the planning feature of the TP calendar. Inserting placeholder entries for my Saturday group and other training rides allows me to plan my CTL profile.

I have no idea what my CTL needs to be, or where my plateau lies, but certainly encouraged by eric's comment about 80 being good. My biggest limitation is time. I prefer to train in the evenings mid-week, and I think my life would be difficult if I devoted 2hrs a day to training.

Since CTL is nothing more than a 6wk rolling average of daily TSS, to get to CTL=100 would ultimately require doing daily workouts >100 TSS to allow for a rest day. Last night's 80-minute workout accomplished this, so that's encouraging. The next question is if my body can handle it.

I have two major objectives this year. The first is to place well in a few GranFondo-type events and the second, if possible to get my FTP up to 4W/Kg.

It's going to be an interesting journey for sure. Learning how to train properly, planning daily workouts, rest and taper weeks etc. At some point, I expect I'll want to simply maintain rather than increase my CTL.

I checked veloviewer and found Harknott's is not quite as bad as initially thought. It's still >25% at the bottom and 3/4 of the way up, but averaging 11.5% over 2.6Km Segment Details for Hardknott's Pass - VeloViewer. I'll also check out some of the other climbs.

Thanks eric for the tip about gearing. This has been a hot topic of conversation in our riding group. My rain/winter bike has a 32-tooth cassette, and IIRC, I have a 28- or 30- on the other bikes.


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

A CTL of 80 is good for my friend, who is faster (and younger) than I am. It's lower than I like for myself. 

It's one of those things where you need to experiment and see what works for you. I've always needed to train more than other riders who are roughly the same speed- I have little "natural talent".

I switched from evening to morning rides during the week long ago. For my life and work schedule they allow me more time to ride. I can get three hour rides in before work, though in the winter I'm riding in the dark for an hour. Also, the races I do and all organized rides start in the morning. The longer organized rides start really early. I'm already used to that so it's one less stressor.


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## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

I'm starting to get the hang of this and wanted to share an article I discovered re: phasing a training plan; How to Optimize Your Indoor Training Plan | TrainingPeaks

I also found a (tri-oriented) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SFuG0KJuN8 that provides some upper limits on ramping the plan, specifically;

Daily TSS load during "work" weeks = CTL + 30
Daily TSS load during "recovery" weeks = CTL - 20 (every 4th week)
Max CTL Ramp = 10 per month

...which means that assuming I don't plateau first, with CTL=70 today, I shouldn't try to push my CTL beyond 100 before May.

Beyond that, I assume it's simply a matter of mixing up the workouts to ensure adequate time in each zone, building endurance and FTP etc.

I'm also rather enjoying TrainingPeaks, especially the Garmin integration and the ability to plan ahead (workouts and ATP). Not sure if I'll subscribe when the free trial expires, which IIRC, means I lose the planning capability.

The end of the TP trial will be my impetus to try Cheetah, and/or I can revert to Excel for planning training in the above parameters. I can do a PMC in Excel, the tricky part seems to be calculating TSS for my indoor (zPower) and outdoor (HR) rides until I pull the trigger on a PM. TP does this rather nicely.


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## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

So, if you're using a combination of Zwift's virtual power (inaccurate, questionable consistency) and outside rides I don't think you are within the error of margin of being able to accurate predict your weekly TSS.

That being said, why don't you base your training load on HrTSS? Training Peaks' free accounts will display your ride HrTSS (only I believe if power data isn't available). It has happened to me when my power meter has run out of batteries mid ride of when I've ridden a bike without a PM.

The annoying part would be to make sure Zwift doesn't export it's zPower in the file so HrTSS gets displayed in TP.


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## crit_boy (Aug 6, 2013)

deviousalex said:


> So, if you're using a combination of Zwift's virtual power (inaccurate, questionable consistency) and outside rides I don't think you are within the error of margin of being able to accurate predict your weekly TSS.


Agreed. I don't know how you can derive any real TSS from a group ride without measuring power - way too many variables.

You are trying to apply power meter based training to training without power. 

Will you get some results, most likely yes. I don't think there is much doubt that following a structured training plan will yield better results than just stochastic riding. 

However, if you want to accurately plan/track training based on TSS, you need to train with power. HR is not a good indicator of what you are really doing/did (anaerobic efforts, cardiac drift, fatigue, etc.). 

As an example: Training session with five sets of seven minute intervals around FTP ridden to maintain same power. My heart rate will rise a couple beats a minute from the beginning of a given interval to the end of the interval. Furthermore, it takes hr the first minute or two to stabilize at the power level. Comparing first and last intervals, my HR will ramp up a bit faster and rise to a higher level than it was in the first couple intervals. Result is X TSS based on power. 

OTOH, if I was trying to maintain a HR level for those 5 intervals, my power would actually be dropping slowly (have to drop power to keep hr in same place) across each interval and average power for the last interval would be less than it was in the first interval. Result is a hrTSS number that looks like the TSS from power, but the training dose was actually less. 

If you are invested in cycling (as you appear to be), spend the cash on a power meter. Don't kid yourself into thinking that TRIMP and HrTSS will give the same numerical results as training with power. 

Golden cheetah is pretty useless without power. With power, the data analysis is amazing. 

FWIW YMMV, etc.

PS here - People will disagree here. At 3.5 w/kg, I would expect that you should be destroying all but about the top 10-15% of relatively serious cyclists. If you regularly make the selection on hammer fest group rides, then yeah 3.5 may be reasonable. If you get dropped more than occasionally (on the hammer fest/Wednesday night worlds/and the like), then no.


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## pittcanna (Oct 2, 2014)

Just throwing this out there.

Get strava and the below chrome extension it can calculate a training impulse score based upon heart rate.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stravistix-for-strava/dhiaggccakkgdfcadnklkbljcgicpckn

Training Impulse | Training Impulse

then try to ease into a trimp number as shown in the training peaks blog
The Science of the Performance Manager | TrainingPeaks


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## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

As I've stated all along, I'm still very much at the thin end of the learning curve here.

My first priority is to try to add some structure to my training, rather than blindly following my ride buddies (none of whom have a PM) simply riding when they can and promising to do a few hill repeats at some point.

I got onto this path after doing a few structured workouts in Zwift and then adding and completing more interval workouts from Carmichael, Hunter Allen and others. Then I noticed that Zwift assigns each workout a TSS based on intensity.

Since I'm not comparing my numbers with others at this point, Isn't it more important that I establish MY baseline and try to improve on that? This despite the obvious gap between indoor and outdoor rides.

Surely that renders the perceived accuracy or otherwise of zPower moot? If my setup is repeatable (I regularly check tire pressure etc. on the trainer bike), and any software, including Zwift will be deterministic for a given set of sensor inputs, so I'm not following the comment about _questionable consistency_.

I completely agree that not having a PM is a hindrance, and stated that this was holding me back on using TP/GC and/or other tools. I'm exploring options for an easily transferable PM e.g. pedals, watteam etc. 

In the meantime, the greater learning opportunity for me right now lies in creating a repeatable process more than a using a measuring device. When I do pull the trigger on a PM, I'll have to establish my absolute FTP baseline and train from that.


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## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

apn said:


> I got onto this path after doing a few structured workouts in Zwift and then adding and completing more interval workouts from Carmichael, Hunter Allen and others. Then I noticed that Zwift assigns each workout a TSS based on intensity.
> 
> Since I'm not comparing my numbers with others at this point, Isn't it more important that I establish MY baseline and try to improve on that? This despite the obvious gap between indoor and outdoor rides.
> 
> Surely that renders the perceived accuracy or otherwise of zPower moot? If my setup is repeatable (I regularly check tire pressure etc. on the trainer bike), and any software, including Zwift will be deterministic for a given set of sensor inputs, so I'm not following the comment about _questionable consistency_.


Let's assume that Zwift is consistent (ignore accuracy). Assuming you have done an FTP test and have a consistent number, your TSS for the workout will be correct. The problem is that you aren't only training on Zwift, you are adding in outdoor riding. TSS is almost impossible to estimate based on these scenarios and since you are following a TSS based training plan, it's clearly important that this figure is very accurate.

Let me give you an example of how much TSS can vary. Last week I did two rides.
Ride 1 - 29 miles, 3k ft of climbing. I was riding conversational pace but definitely put in some efforts (15 min at threshold, 11 at Vo2, 5 at anaerobic). Average HR 120
Ride 2 - 40 miles, 4k ft of climbing. I rode easy for most of the ride then did a 20 minute power test all out. I pushed up the rollers on the way home. Average HR 125.

Can you guess the TSS for these rides?
Ride 1 was 104, Ride 2 was 170. That's quite a difference. There is no way I could have estimated that. I would have likely overestimated ride 1 and underestimated ride 2.

What I would recommend at this point is not to base your training plan on TSS until you get a PM. Base it on ride volume. On the trainer do focused intervals (mostly tempo/threshold) and outside make sure the rides get in some good volume.


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## apn (Mar 1, 2012)

Thanks for the additional explanation, deviousalex :thumbsup:

I mistakenly thought you were referring to Zwift, which is what I see as the most consistent part of my training. I did their FTP test back in November and try to maintain a very repeatable setup; tire pressure, coast-down time etc.

Yeah, the outdoor rides throw a huge curve ball into the equation, and thanks for shedding further light on this.

Since I now have a TP account, I've noticed that planned workouts are time-based, so your suggestion about focusing on volume and targeted (indoor) workouts is good.


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

One of my friends has won the 55+ Everest Challenge (two days, 29,035', CA state climbing championship) twice and also LOTOJA in the 55s. He doesn't know his TSS for every ride, or any ride. He doesn't even use a bike computer, except for a couple years where he was sponsored by Strava and had to post his rides.

Doing the work is more important than measuring it. When I forget my computer or my power meter is on the fritz I remind myself of this.

I agree with Alex's recommendation to forget TSS until you have a PM. I don't use Zwift and thought that there's a PM involved.


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## deviousalex (Aug 18, 2010)

ericm979 said:


> I don't use Zwift and thought that there's a PM involved.


Zwift and Trainer Road have virtual power. They use the power curve of your trainer and a speed sensor in an attempt to figure out what the equivalent watts would be. I'm not sure on Zwift, but I think on Trainer Road you can tell it specifically what trainer you have and it uses that to make it more realistic. There was a thread a while back where a TR user got a real PM and noted that he couldn't hold his FTP as tested by TR without the PM. One of the TR employees came in and said that this doesn't translate to the road.


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## ManxShred (Mar 6, 2009)

The problem with the Fred Whitton, as I'm sure you know, is that the climbs are shorter and steep, rather than long sit and grinds. For example, at 150km, you get the Hardknott and then Wrynose passes.
Hardknot maxes out at over 33%, going up 298m in 2.2km. Segment Details for OFFICIAL 100Climbs No84 Hardknott Pass - VeloViewer
Wrynose is 146m in 1.8km, but max gradient is 31%.
Segment Details for Wrynose Pass - VeloViewer

A large number of the riders walk there. So, low gearing (compact with 11-32 cassette) and a lot of low cadence, power work will help.
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/3768661


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