Just came back to TR a few days ago and I see a lot of nice stuff like the calendar and a power curve chart. Only thing it’s missing for me is fitness/freshness like Strava. I use it to monitor my fatigue to good effect and would feel a bit lost without out now.
They have this, sort of. It’s a different take on it than you see elsewhere, and in my opinion, a bit less user friendly.
You see this as the 6 week average TSS on your Career page (you can see the graph of it and see relative fitness, etc).
As I said up front - not as good as fitness/freshness you see elsewhere (I actually track for free in Wattsboard) but they have ‘something’ already in there
If you have an understanding of what fitness is then you already (sort of) have that in that graph. Fitness is your average daily TSS over the prior 6 weeks - so you can take the trainer road 6 week average TSS and divide that by 7 to get your fitness.
Fatigue is your average daily TSS over the last 7 days - so you can take your week TSS and divide by 7 to see your fatigue for a given week
IMO the trainer road implementation is less helpful since it only shows it weekly instead of daily (this is great for the long view but stinks on a short term day to day view)
@trpnhntr Ah so I can work it out! Suppose after a while you can get a rough idea with just a cursory glance once you’ve run the numbers enough times. I do tend to like things laid out nice and simple for me though!
@craigmanning oh yes, forgot about that. They could always just come up with their own system and terms. Their coding seems to be excellent, this forum is a great example of that. Not sure I’ve seen a forum so well done anywhere. So many clever little touches. /tangent
Technically, Fitness and Fatigue aren’t simple 6-week and 1-week averages, but are exponentially weighted averages, so more-recent events have a bigger impact and events longer than 6 (or 1) weeks ago still have an impact, just small.
At least, I assume Strava’s Fitness is based off of CTL, which in turn is based off of Bannister’s TRIMP – since that’s what everyone does. I don’t know if TrainerRoad is using simple averages or exponential weighting, but for their purposes, I don’t think the two are all that different.
Using the Calendar TSS graph, you can visually estimate Form. The grey line on the graph is 6-week average TSS, which is roughly Fitness/CTL. The green bars are one-week TSS, which is roughly Fatigue/ATL. Form/TSB is the difference between the two. So, green bar above the grey line is negative Form; green bar below the grey line is positive Form.
You can work it out numerically, too, but note that Fatigue and Form change substantially in just a few days, so trying to pin an exact number on those using data that has a granularity of a week isn’t necessarily productive.
Thanks for adding that clarification, jpowers. I was going to do the same and then saw your post.
Personally, I also really enjoy the charts and graphs of CTL, ATL, and TSB, but not really interested in paying a premium TP account for just the numbers. I have a training log spreadsheet I’ve used for a few years now and it calculates it for me. I just have to manually input my workout, the TSS, and I have the same metrics without paying for it
For those interested:
CTL = TSS*(1-EXP(-1/42)))+(Yesterday’s CTL*(EXP(-1/42))
ATL = TSS*(1-EXP(-1/7)))+(Yesterday’s ATL*(EXP(-1/7))
TSB (Form) = Yesterday’s CTL - Yesterday’s ATL
Another option is to have the workout hit Strava and use that. If you do not have Strava “Summit” you can use Elevate for Strava. That will also provide what you are seeking.
And another option, my favourite, is Stravistix plugin for Google Chrome which sits over Strava and gives all sorts of data analysis including the graphs you are after.
Not sure about Golden Cheetah since I have WKO4, but Strava and Elevate, as far as I can see, don’t allow you to add in future TSS to help plan a season, so you can only really see where you are right now.
Obviously TrainingPeaks lets you do that for a fee but I think it would be great if TrainerRoad added the functionality since it’s now so easy to add workouts and rides to the calendar. The 6 week average is not really fine grained enough for my liking.
I have a spreadsheet that I use as a planning tool as well as a diary but to have the functionality built into TrainerRoad would be great.