Are all TSS points created equal?

Triathlon Forum
1

I posted this elsewhere but my computers down and I’m bored so…

I think that the theory of TSS/IF/FT … as spelled out by Coggan etc… is that all TSS points are equal - or at least that’s my understanding. Also, I recall on Gordo’s forum Coggan made the comment on Power/Duration curves that in general it was easier to lift them from the top i.e. raise the power you can hold at longer durations by raising threshold, rather than raise threshold by training longer at lower powers.

This is the idea behind shorter/higher intensity training rides then dialing it down for the race.

So lets take it to the extreme: Assuming swimming and running are all being trained appropriately, are these two weeks equivalent:

(1) 3 rides - time/if/Tss: (4.5 hrs, 0.82,300) (3.5, 0.76,200) (1.1, 0.95, 100)
Total TSS 600/week then ride Ironman bike to sub 300 TSS

(2) 6 rides - (1.1, 0.95, 100)
Total TSS 600/week then ride Ironman bike to sub 300 TSS

Now you could argue that you would not be prepared for a 270-290 TSS ride because you have not done one. But… TSS is TSS right?

My wife did a smaller version of this experiment last week when she rode the IMC course off of 1 3 hour ride per week then ran 4 miles. I just calculated her target power based on her FT and an expected TSS of 280. Her longest ride lifetime before that was 60 miles and she felt the ride was fairly easy.

So… is a TSS point a TSS point, and a weekly TSS volume equivalent even if your goal is to race Ironman?

2

The short answer to your question is NO.

Some training sessions are more specific to the event you’re training for than others, which doesn’t mean that you should only do sessions that are specific to the event you’re training for. I find TSS a good tool to compare different training sessions of the same type, but I’m not a big fan of using TSS to religiously quantify overall (cycling) training load.

3

It’s training stress score, not training performance score. Or, to put it another way: specificity still matters. (See point #8 under “Applying the Performance Manager concept” in this article: http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/performancemanagerscience.asp)

5

Not really.

How you arrive at a certain CTL (the aggregate of all those days of TSS) has a lot to do with what you did each day. Specificity, as been mentioned here.

Example that’s been given elsewhere: a dude trains for track and has a CTL of 100 then trains for road races and has a CTL of 100. The training he did to get to 100 CTL on the track is different from how he trained for road races.

Train for the way you race.

6

Example that’s been given elsewhere: a dude trains for track and has a CTL of 100 then trains for road races and has a CTL of 100. The training he did to get to 100 CTL on the track is different from how he trained for road races.

Or dudette. :wink:

7

I’m sorry… I keep forgetting about that jersey that hangs in your home. :slight_smile:

8

Clearly I need to upgrade my Cyclepeaks version.

I know (believe?) specificity matters, but in the example with the track vs. road dudette I would imagine better results would be obtained road-racing on track training than track racing on road training. Its easier to race at lower powers than you’ve trained at than higher.

I know I can train effectively for the Ironman bike on weekly rides 1 to 2 hours shorter than my intended bike split, but with similar TSS. So if my goal is a 6.5 hour steady wattage race at an intensity below my training intensities, where is the cut-off for specificity, 5 hours, 4, 3…?

I thought all efforts longer than a minute were aerobic so as long as a my rides are more than a minute long I’m stressing the correct systems.

10

Only if you count the recovery phase of my pedal stroke.

11

I’ll throw in a “qualified yes.”

Depending on what you consider an acceptable margin of error, yes a TSS point is a TSS point.

Could you have an acceptable iron distance performance by training only super short super hard efforts? Depends on what you consider acceptable, if your range is wide then yes you can.

It’s not optimum, not by a long shot. It depends on the alternative. If your circustances dictate that for some reason you can only do rides of 2 and 3 hours, rather than rides of 3 - 5 hours, well then by all means do the shorter rides.

Also, if for some reason you HATE rides of 3 - 5 hours but really like rides of 2 - 3 hours, you have to ask yourself if you are willing to accept a performance detriment in the name of ot being miserable. But it can be doe.

12

Only if you count the recovery phase of my pedal stroke.

And PowerCranks will cheat you out of that!

As for TSS, I can only say that there’s a huuuuuuuge difference. A 400TSS week where I ride 30’ of Z5+ intervals 2 days and another 4 total hours or so of Z2 can leave me so tired that my eyes feel heavy. Meanwhile, a 600TSS week with very little above Z2 may be “easy” and allow quick recovery.

13

I liked your reply before you edited it … the width of my “rage” is something I like to track.

FWIW I love long rides but logistically they are becoming more and more inconvenient.

I dislike short hard rides, but they probably do me the most good.

14

Bob,
I wrote a reply to your post on my board but apparently didn’t actually post it or something. Over there you mentioned a bit about how I do business. I’ll try to recreate the post here, post lunch and pre-ride :slight_smile:

I think your discussion with regards to weekly TSS is largely an intellectual exercise. In my experience, weekly TSS us much more a function of logistics. For example, you ride 1.5hrs on Tues, 3-4hrs on Sat, 2-3hrs on Sunday because that’s what life gives you. As you know from my plans, my template for at training week is entirely based on what I’ve found to work best for the most people. My Sunday second long ride is an attempt to shift the athlete from solo on Thurs in the dark before work to in the sun with their friends on Sunday. The volumes of the Sat and Sunday rides have zero training volume considerations (that is, I don’t say "this ride MUST be 4hrs) but rather these are the volumes I’ve found to be manageable by age group athletes week after week for most of a season. So training hours on the bike vary little, for the most part, from week to week. I realize this and so I focus on intensity to change/increase the training stimulus.

However, by focusing on TSS on occasion I’ve developed the feeling of “if we can achieve 300 TSS in 4-4.5hrs, why would I want them to ride easier for an 5+ hrs to achieve the same training stress? Why would I want to waste their time?” For me, it’s more an issue of time efficiency and less a training issue. That said, it also happens to fit nicely with my theme that if you want to ride fast you need to ride fast.

Anyway, my broad points are:
600 TSS, for example, is largely chosen for us by logistics and our lives.There are different ways to get 600 TSS and this points to specificity mentioned by earlier posters. For me, the specificity issues that need to be addressed are the ability to hold steady watts in YOUR position on YOUR bike at YOUR calorie and hydration rate. However, in my experience these abilities are quickly trainable and should not come at the expense of training focused on lifting FT for the majority of the season.
FAST is FAST. Lifting FT from 220w to 280w means you can largely fall asleep at your old FT of 220w.
If you have fast, it’s relatively easy to put far and specificity (see above) under it. But the amount of “far” required to build “fast” is largely out of the range of possibility for most age groupers. I certainly don’t feel it’s time efficient.
When I ride (I say ride cuz I haven’t “trained” in a while), I ride very non-specific because I want to maximize my time on the, it’s much more fun, and I know that training myself to ride steady is a pretty simple matter.Ok, this isn’t really close to what I wrote before but there you go :slight_smile:

15

But the amount of “far” required to build “fast” is largely out of the range of possibility for most age groupers. I certainly don’t feel it’s time efficient.

I love this quote. I think that is one source of the disconnect between people arguing intensity vs. JFR for building speed. For those where JFR works, they probably JFR a LOT.

For those of us with 4-6 hours a week to spend on the bike, we can freaking hammer most of that and still recover for other workouts. Or, I can, at least. :slight_smile:

16

I believe Paulo owns the title to the best summation of that… more is more… more aerobic stress=more adaptation. Of course given a 40+ hr work week and the additional life stress it brings attempting to stress do stress overload in it’s most optimal manner is out of reach of your average consumer.

17

Same contribution as www.endurancenation.us:

Specificity is significant, imho. Here’s the extreme example but should make my point quite clear.

A guy who consistently does 600 - 800 TSS points/week on his road bike should, generally speaking, be pretty well prepared to do the IM bike in 5:30 with an IF of .73 (there’s some obvious assumptions within that statement). HOWEVER, put him/her in a relatively aggressive aero position on race day and ask for the same and they’re likely going to struggle holding or, better yet, building power in the latter part of the IM bike.

I’ve talked about the importance of specificity when it comes to establishing your FTP in the past. I also address this detail in my latest doc (which still isn’t complete). I think people, in general, really underestimate the importance of specificity wrt this topic. I love Coggan’s 7 Deadly Sins approach to helping one establish/estimate your FTP but feel some additional consideration to specificity needs to be considered for IM.

Thanks, Chris

18

Also on endurance nation.

First, I’m not recommending a “best” plan for anyone, as I think that Rich Strauss’s IM plan with power pretty much covers that (did it, highly recommend it), or a short cut that someone without multiple Ironman finishes already under their belt could use to get to the finish line.

Second, this is not an intellectual exercise. I’m trying to deal with balancing the satisfaction I get from having the fitness to complete an Ironman every year (for 12 years) and: (1) my young family, (2) my wife training for her first Ironman, and (3) frankly having training as a pretty low priority, outside of health, to use up my spare time.

My standard long day of training (4.5 bike / 40 min run) this year was usually followed with 1-2hours of carrying my hefty 3 year-old and/or hefty 1 year-old while “we” walked to the playground and hung out.

So… I think TSS is a reasonable place to start looking at what it would take as far as bike training to have an Ironman finish in 2008 that doesn’t suck. I think its entirely reasonable to take the Rich plan and my completed % of it and say a repeated weekly (weakly )TSS of 600 is a reasonable training stress to get fit enough to be happy at the start of the run – if you pace the bike correctly.

I don’t want do to wild-ass training, as its unlikely work. Given that, here are my two end members: (1) The Rich plan, that clearly works, but I can’t do this year because I don’t want to miss pancakes with my kids every Saturday morning. Vs. (2) 6x 100 TSS workouts of slightly over 1hour in length that is physically impossible for me or probably anyone else who doesn’t sandbag their FT.

My thoughts so far:

(1) Whatever approach you used for 600 TSS points/week, I would think that you would need to do two Race Rehearsal bricks (112/4) to test/improve your fitness before an Ironman.
(2) There is something unique to the bike that allows you to push the boundaries of your power/duration curve, i.e. you are more likely to pull off a correctly paced 6 hour bike on multiple 1 hour training rides than a 4 hour run on 1 hour training runs.
(3) Mental strength is key on race day (ok, and hydration, nutrition etc… things I hopefully have from experience). Ironman this year was a huge effort to stay in the bars and not deviate from the power-pacing plan, but only a mental/emotional effort as physically there was no difficulty sticking to my wattage goals.
(4) I have no doubt that if you could do 6x100TSS in 6-7 hrs/week you would be one fit MFO, and would have little difficulty getting to the start of the run ready for a marathon.

Thanks for all the feed back.

19

Given the specific context in which you are looking to leverage TSS, then yes, all TSS points are created equal.

Thanks, Chris