The release of RLGL has re-emphasized for me the discrepancy between TSS calculated using heart rate and power. My volume isn’t that impressive (9 to 15 hours per week), and I rarely get yellow days when I’m using a power meter. If I ride without power, the most unremarkable effort will result in a yellow or even red day.
I finally got around to running a little experiment. I uploaded a ride to TR, both with and without power. I’m including screenshots, but the TSS from power and heart rate are 97, and 173 – a factor of about 1.8.
I have a relatively low maximum heart rate, 181 (observed in a 20min FTP test), but artificially increasing it in TR to 220 hardly changes the TSS calculated using HR. I suppose it’s possible that my FTP is artificially high, but switching to AI FTP detection this year resulted in a 20w drop from when I tested.
I try to always ride with power but occasionally I run into issues and am forced to only use heart rate. Interested in possible explanations, recommendations, thoughts of any kind.
My trail bike doesn’t have a power meter and I tend to see the same. I attribute it to the downhill as the heart rate stays up (due to the chunk) but in terms of “power” is considered “coasting.” On routes that are flatter the TSS estimate is closer.
Not a current TR user, but HR estimations for training measures that aren’t HR based have always been close to random number generators regardless of program. My recommendation, ignore RLGL if you don’t feel like it is the right recommendation.
I am taking a look at your account and I am not seeing the ride above. On what day does it fall?
Could you also give me more examples of where RLGL is giving you Yellow/Red Days on the most unremarkable effort? I’d like to dive into this one!
The Red Days I am seeing on your Calendar are after pretty massive 7-8-12 hour rides. In those cases, I would expect a Red Day and some good rest to recover
For the Yellow Day, there are also few and they tend to follow about 4-hour rides where your average ride falls roughly between 2-3 hours.
Oop yeah I guess I could have given some actual identifying info for this ride rather than just the profile – it was on May 31. I’m interested in what you’d think about it!
Examples of red and yellow days after easy rides will be hard to find because I’ve turned off HR TSS to specifically avoid it. May 27 is a good example though. It’s the day after a race, and the PM broke on this ride so I only have heart rate. If I use HR TSS for this ride, I get a higher TSS than that of the day before’s race, which was much more intense and twice the duration. Doing this also results in the assignment of a red day (which, to be fair, is for sure largely due to the race)
Can you clarify one bit? I want to make sure I am understanding which Red Day you’re talking about.
Let’s take the example of May 27. You did a race on May 26 and went on a ride May 27. Is the Red Day you are talking about on May 27 (after the race) or May 28th (after the ride)?
May 28 is the day that switches to red if I use HRTSS instead of RPE. I made lil video of this phenomenon. (Also happened to see Lachlan zipping through Nederland CO during the May 27 ride – delightful.) Here’s a video of the change occurring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anofgEwfxTY
If you have a TrainingPeaks account, you could check out the ride in TP and go back and forth between TSS and hrTSS to see if the discrepancy is as large there as well. You can upload a ride with power and heart rate; TP has an option to switch between tss and hrTSS in the workout card.
Is 181 your threshold heart rate that you observed in the test or what you saw as a max? I like using hrTSS during mtb races to see how close it is to my TSS especially if I have to get off, hike-a-bike etc. More times than not, my hrTSS is pretty spot on to my TSS.
Ooh I’m interested in that if it’s a different formula from TR. 181 was my maximum observed heart rate during the test (and the maximum I’ve ever observed).
Max HR is not a great measure, and you’re unlikely to ever see it while on a bike.
Imagine you are running faster and faster, and at some point your HR stops increasing. And still you run a bit faster, but your HR does not go up. That is your max HR.
It is not what most people imagine it to be, ie the highest HR ever observed, or the peak number on your watch.
Lactate threshold heart rate is a different matter, LTHR is what I use when I’m thinking about HR. I think you can use that in TrainingPeaks too.
Sounds like my true max HR is probably higher that what I’ve observed? After reading a little about LTHR, I think I could make an educated estimate, but as far as I know TR doesn’t use LTHR – so should I set my max HR higher than what I’ve observed?
Circling back! A little late… I been on vacation but I did some digging with the team and we can verify that all is working as intended.
RLGL does use HR TSS, but in the case of a your MTB ride with a lot of descending, this isn’t likely the best use case for using HR TSS so RPE is a good alternative!
Thank you! Awesome video.
but I did some digging with the team and we can verify that all is working as intended.