Intensity Factor and TSS when extending cooldown or warmup

TrainerRoad Software
1

As I was riding Bluebell today I extended my cooldown by 5 minutes which got me wondering… If I use IF or TSS to look at past rides and how “hard” they were, but also had extended warmup by 10 min and cooldown by 10 min, does this have implications on the IF, TSS, etc?

While on face value it may seem trivial, but if you have an hour VO2mx ride, and then add on 20 extra minutes at 40% FTP… it would seem to me that the overall metrics would be screwed up…looking like a failed ride if you didn’t know better? I know it doesn’t impact the “point” of the ride, but for those of us that are data geeks…

Not sure how this all interplays on the other metrics…

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I was thinking the same. Would be nice to have something like “IF for the relevant part”.

But this happens with casual workouts (with no extension of warmup/cooldown) too. Baird +6 for example is .92 IF (Baird +2) hidden in .86 IF :wink:.

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By extending your warm up/cool down with easy riding, you will likely see:

  • A slightly higher TSS.
    • TSS is a complex calculation that takes into account your NP, your IF and the duration of the workout.
    • I’ll put the formula here → TSS = (Time (sec) x NP x IF)/(FTP x 3600) x 100
  • So in short, the longer you pedal, the bigger will be your TSS. TSS would also increased if you rode harder for the same period of time.
    • In your case, NP would be lower but time higher, so your TSS will be slightly higher then prescribed.
  • A lower IF.
    • IF is the NP (normalized power) of your ride divided by your FTP (NP/FTP).

Overall, this should not change in any way the impact the workout has on your body. It’s just numbers :wink:

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I suggested this about a month ago. It makes it really tough to track improvements when the stuff in your past rides folder is all shorter time and lower IF.

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@Nate_Pearson Thinking about this topic again (seeing the IF of just the workout part without extended cooldown/warmup), at first I wanted to suggest to have an option for auto-splitting those extended parts of a workout into a setatate file/workout (like Zwift does for races)…so that you had a clear comparison of source workout and your work…but then I thought back at this:

When adjusting the plans you said something along compliance rates for workouts…so it seems you already have some nice alternative solution implemented internally :slight_smile:.

So…:drum: Could you show that compliance rate for my workouts related to the source workout (guess extended warmup/cooldown don’t matter for compliance)? That would be awesome!

BTW: If I did a workout at 103% for example would that get compliance 100% or 103% or even <100%?

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:no_mouth:

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Tease

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