I recently upgraded my Garmin and I haven’t fully set up everything like entering my ftp and training zones. During my ride it will randomly give a performance alert and in big letters it says POOR. I really don’t need that 2 hours into a 5 hour ride.
1 Like
I think that’s really good advice that I’ve always struggled to follow! 
Just yesterday I said, ‘That last one was hard but I’m gonna do one more.’ and somebody had to reach over and yank out the emergency stop.
3 Likes
I continue to make the same mistake.
The difference is, now I simply do it less frequently.
Humans, we sure need some repeated learnings, it’s a miracle we’re still here.
2 Likes
Tss is a nice way of monitoring power over time. That’s it. It often correlates with long term stress, but not from ride to ride. I disagree that the “stress” term is accurate though. I don’t think it would be hard to argue that RPE on a 20 minute sweet spot pull in the first 30 minutes of your ride would be less than the same pull 3 hours into your ride. On the 2nd example, your RPE, hr and respirations are probably higher, or more stressful, than the first. But based on tss, that was the exact same effort
1 Like
That is a common complaint about TSS, but I had not heard of many alternative metrics that address the concerns until oTSS (Fascat Optimized Training Stress Score.). I guess oTSS is proprietary at this point, but I believe in their explanations they take into account how far into a ride the efforts are performed, fueling strategy (i.e. doing 20min SS 3hrs into a ride with no fueling is going to be more impactful than if hitting 90g/hr CHO) and some other factors I forget.
XERT has been doing this for quite a while now. They call it XSS.
1 Like
Don’t use fascat so I don’t know for sure, but I think their OTS is just TSS but taking recovery into play?
To add, tss is totally fine over a 40 day avg. one interval of 1 ride doesn’t really change the big picture, but I do think it’s an inaccurate representation of acute stress. Certainly tells you your overall load. And yes, I’m just armchair quarterbacking. I don’t have any suggestions to improve haha
- Frank says there is more to it than that. The 2nd part of their 20 Year Anniv. podcast touches on the TSS issues and their attempt to address the reality that a given effort at the start of a ride may well be different than the same one at the end of a ride. They may also cover it in the original OTS podcast, but I listened to that long ago and don’t remember.
2 Likes
Very cool! I’ll have a listen, thanks!