Not meeting hrTSS on hiking with BW | Uphill Athlete

Not meeting hrTSS on hiking with BW

  • Creator
    Topic
  • #61490
    kazu.ishidera
    Participant

    Hi,

    When I hiked in Hilly Terrain (Zone 2) with BW PACK, I almost always don’t meet planned hrTSS by 10 to 20 points. I live in the SF Bay area. So, I can find hilly trails. I usually run those trails to meet the training requirements. Most of my trails have a section of long steep sections, but not steep and long enough for the training that are longer than 2 hours. Especially, if I hike instead of run. Does anybody have the same issues? What are you all doing? I know the best solution is to suck it up and drive one to two hours to hike steeper trails around here. Do you have any other solutions?

    – Can I hike it longer to acquire hrTSS? or does that defeat the purpose of the training plan?
    – Join a gym and use a machine? (I love being outside.)
    – Run with weight instead of hiking? (I am worried about my knee.)
    – Increase more weight? (Again, does this defeat the purpose of the training plan?)

    My issues are a tight schedule and old knees that I can’t stress too much. This is more venting than questions. Thank you for listening.

    P.S. When do I renew this mountaineering group for the next three months?

  • Participant
    Nate Emerson on #61527

    Kazu, If you are referring to seeing a difference between planned TSS and your hrTSS, please make sure to add in additional TSS for the pack weight and vertical gain loss, as outlined in this article:

    Understanding and Using the TrainingPeaks Metrics CTL and TSS 


    Looking at your last hilly workout, you can add a significant amount of TSS to your hrTSS value. With future workouts, the more vertical gain, the more TSS you’ll be adding.
    The important part is focusing on steep terrain with the targeted intensity and duration, not the exact hrTSS.

    If you are referring to the continuity of hill climbs, it’s ok for some of the longer days to include multiple loops/laps or hill repeats to get the vertical gain. I’d prefer that mountaineering athletes repeat a steeper section several times rather than do a longer, less steep loop hike. A lot of our athletes have had a lot of success on big peaks with many of their workouts comprised of lapping their fire stairs in their high rise or doing these sessions as repeats on smaller steep hills.
    If you are really running into a problem accessing steep hills, you can certainly do some sessions on a stair machine

    Participant
    kazu.ishidera on #61548

    Hi Nate!

    Thank you for sharing the article! I remember we touched on this topic during the zoom meeting. But, I missed or did not know/understand hrTSS “Fudge Factors”. Also, it clarified the concepts of using CTL and TSS a little more. Thank you.

    Moderator
    MarkPostle on #61559

    Kazu, As Nate mentions here after some fudge factors your TSS scores will likely be more in line with goals. Additionally I would say its good to use the TrainingPeaks metrics to help guide your training but don’t get overly caught up in them. In this instance the sport specificity of something like a pack carry with weight in hiking mode will benefit you much more for a mountaineering goal than always doing an unweighted run even though the running might result in a slightly higher TSS score. At some point in the later phases of training before a goal doing things that look as much like your goal as possible outweighs other considerations.

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