[Michal Wegrzynski]

I generally record my walks on my watch even if I don’t hit Zone 1, so they end up showing up in my TrainingPeaks calendar. I noticed that the hrTSS value for this kind of a long walk is much higher than the rTSS TP originally uses. Is this skewing my results towards making it seem like I’m training more than I am? Should I stop recording those recovery-level activities?

Topic

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on December 3, 2021 at 8:39 am #60223

Those walks count for something of course, but if you consider that an hour of AeT is worth about 50 hrTSS, then a one-hour Zone 1 walk would be a lower TSS value. How much lower, I don’t know.

Just personally, I’d keep recording these walks in TP since I like to know how many hours a month I devote to fitness, but I’d adjust the TSS to a nominal value to avoid a skewed CTL.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on December 3, 2021 at 8:47 am #60224

You should also check what your threshold pace and HR are set to since this is how TP calculates TSS.

If your threshold pace is too high, then a walk won’t register much rTSS because your walking pace will be a lesser percentage of your too high threshold pace.

Conversely, if your threshold HR is too low, then a walk might register more hrTSS than is being earned because your zone 1 HR will be a greater percentage of your too low threshold HR.

Hopefully, one of the coaches will weigh in here in case I’m wrong.

[Michal Wegrzynski]

Michal Wegrzynski on December 3, 2021 at 1:23 pm #60226

Good point about the threshold update, I didn’t set it. Did you do the walking test on the incline or did you run Edgar? I did the incline, wondering if that will make the threshold pace less useful…

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on December 3, 2021 at 3:12 pm #60229

I think you could probably just add 25 bpm to the AeT number (as suggested by the coaches either in the book or here, can’t remember) to determine your threshold HR. If you’re not generating around 50hrTSS/hr at AeT, might take another look at it.

I ran the AeT test (a few times, actually – it gets very hot/humid where I live so my HR is very weather dependent) and, once I had a good number, then added 25 to get my threshold HR for TP purposes based on recommendations from the coaches. My numbers were 140 and 165.

Of course, we are going to test anaerobic threshold shortly so it will be interesting to see where we end up. In the last few months, I’ve had some runs where held 175 for over an hour. That was back when it was still mega-hot so I’m assuming that number is not really representative of my fitness but just that it’s hot as hell in Mississippi.