[Ewa]

How would you rate a 6 minute sprint race, after which I was unable to walk for several minutes?

I did on Saturday an individual 2h race, which with ascent correction has TSS score at 196, my feeling was similar as after intensive ME workout (175-200 TSS for me). On Sunday I did a warmup quite fresh, then 6 minutes sprint race, after which I was unable to stand for a few mounts, then sat for the next couple of minutes and finally did 1h30’ cool down at recovery HR (70 TSS), However yesterday I felt devastated, a little better today, like my weekend was not 365 TSS (with all warmup and cool down activities), but at least 400-450).

I rely on TP’s CTL and TSB, introducing corrections in TSS numbers if needed, TSB corresponded up to not quite well to my feeling. Today it is 9, generally I should be able to race with such a number but instead I took a free day at work, feeling so tired.

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on February 5, 2020 at 8:55 am #37495

This is where TSS reveals one of its shortcomings. While the actual score for a maximal 6-minute effort may be only ~12 TSS (and that’s probably a big overestimation), it doesn’t really equate to the fatigue that you’re feeling.

In these cases, it’s best to use fudge factors as you’ve described so that the fatigue number (TSB) is in line with what you’re feeling.

In reality, I don’t think that TSS measures fitness at all, but it does do a decent job of estimating fatigue. I would assign a big enough number to the sprint event so that the TSB number that it creates feels about right for your level of fatigue.