[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on December 3, 2021 at 8:47 am · in reply to: hrTSS for recovery walks #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.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on December 3, 2021 at 8:39 am · in reply to: hrTSS for recovery walks #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 2, 2021 at 3:41 pm · in reply to: Upcoming Dec 8th Zoom Topics #60200

I’d love to know more about Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome and the 10% test.

Also, on the last call, I think I heard that heartrate is just a proxy for energy systems. So does that mean that heartrate as a number is only important because it tells us when we move from primarily fat to primarily glycogen as the main source of energy? And further, that as you get more fat adapted, your AeT goes up and approaches your ANeT because you can rely on fat at harder and harder efforts?

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 24, 2021 at 8:58 am · in reply to: Importing Garmin Data to UA Workout #59748

Second screenshot.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 24, 2021 at 8:56 am · in reply to: Importing Garmin Data to UA Workout #59746

So if I do a workout in the run category, TP automatically uses rTSS to calculate the TSS that is used to calculate CTL. Having finally gotten my threshold HR value nailed down, I can go in a manually change the rTSS to hrTSS and get a TSS value (and therefore a CTL value) that is representative of my fitness for purposes of the UA training which is HR centric due to the difficulty to use pace on the side of a mountain.

If i do a Chamonix workout, I set my garmin to Cardio and then manually adjust the TSS in TPP to 50 based on the coach’s recommendations.

I’ve attached two screenshots to show the rTSS and the hrTSS for the same workout so that might help you

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[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 24, 2021 at 8:22 am · in reply to: Aerobic HR at altitude #59727

Bill, check out a book called Going Higher by Charles Houston (less than $5 on eBay).

The studies Houston performed looked more at VO2, but I *think* his research means that your AeT will be the same at any elevation but your “pace” at AeT will decrease as elevation increases. So you can still hold your AeT for hours but you’ll be moving slower as elevation increases, ie, the amount of work you can perform at a given heart rate decreases as elevation increases.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 24, 2021 at 7:36 am · in reply to: Recovery and purposefully detraining #59720

Thanks Nate. My sleep patterns are definitely telling me something. As you know, life is so dynamic that it is hard to pin down what variable needs to be modified. It could very well be life stress rather than workout stress that is making me feel run down.

I’m going to take the rest of this holiday week off from running, ride my duration/TSS requirements and do the Chamonix workouts. Then I will do the built in recovery week next week and hopefully that will be enough reduction in volume to allow some adaptation to take hold.

I will also start journaling within TP and track my subjective feelings. A couple of sad faces in a row should be enough to alert me to a negative trend.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 23, 2021 at 9:29 am · in reply to: Importing Garmin Data to UA Workout #59675

Saul,
You can force pair them by dragging one on top of the other. TP will ask you if you want to force pair. I believe they need to be the same category of workout to force pair. And it may be that you have to select the correct category of workout on your Garmin rather than afterward.

Pairing the workouts does not affect your CTL or other metrics although it makes your calendar look nice and tidy.

Mine is a mess because I do the workouts out of order depending on my work schedule, kids, etc.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 18, 2021 at 8:54 am · in reply to: Heavy weights sessions? #59511

Ha. I need to be getting advice from you!

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 18, 2021 at 5:38 am · in reply to: Heavy weights sessions? #59492

Matt,
Do you have a copy of Training for the New Alpinism? It spends a lot of time talking about the concept of strength as it applies to a given sport. Worth your time I think.

Let me start by saying that I’m speaking from my experience and don’t know your background or history so this may not apply to you, but here are my thoughts on it.

I am a former longtime Starting Strength follower and in those books, Mark Rippetoe talks about the opposite issue – how to add conditioning when your focus is 5RM and 1RM in the big three lifts. He says you can’t do both max strength and heavy cardio at the same time effectively. What they do allow is sprinting and HIIT which is the opposite of the UA philosophy. Mark Twight talks about this at length in the intro to TFNA

I remember how hard I worked to get to 2xBW on the squat, breaking 4 plates on DL, etc, at 185# but I think if you are running 8 hours or more a week (which you must do and then some to drive your CTL to 80+, remember to get to 80, you’d have to get 80 TSS 42 day in a row, or approximately 2 hours a day of AeT for six weeks), you are going to lose 1RM strength almost inevitably (I doubt even the most sophisticated hormonal supplementation plan could preserve max strength in the face of all that running). Plus the neurological toll of all that heavy lifting is extremely taxing too.

But you will already be more than strong enough to handle anything a mountain would throw at you by virtue of your strength reserve (ie, 365 x 5 = BW x 20+, depending on your BW of course).

Just my thoughts of course. But the two goals are kinda incompatible. You end up progressing in neither although you’re working your ass off.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 17, 2021 at 2:19 pm · in reply to: pushing AeT up from below – how big a difference is too much? #59452

Thanks Mark. I was thinking I belonged on the island of misfit toys with my tragic case of ADS.

Looking a little harder at my data, since August 1, I’ve only spent ~59 hours in Z1 or Z2 out of ~99 hours of activity. That 99 hours includes a 50k trail race effort as well as the misery of running in Mississippi in August, but I am beginning to think I am pushing a little too hard too often.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 17, 2021 at 1:02 pm · in reply to: pushing AeT up from below – how big a difference is too much? #59432

10-4.

What got me thinking of raising my AeT HR is the 10% aerobic deficiency syndrome. I’m at 140 and 165 which is about 17% so I’m aerobically deficient.

So, if I understand it correctly, I need to raise my AeT HR to bring it to 10% or better of my AnT HR to get out of the ADS and the way to do that is with many hours of AeT.

Or am I trying to raise my AeT pace (~9min/mile) to be within 10% of my AnT pace (~7:15min/mile) also with many hours of AeT?

Or is it pretty much the same thing, just stick to AeT and don’t worry about it? Then retest in 90 days and see where I am?

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 17, 2021 at 9:55 am · in reply to: pushing AeT up from below – how big a difference is too much? #59423

Can we add a (D) to Bill’s list?

Similar question, possibly a dumb question, but I’m asking it anyway – I understand that AeT is a HR BPM number. As we get fitter and our AeT increases, does that mean our AeT HR BPM goes up or goes down? Does it mean we get faster at the same AeT HR BPM, ie, more power, higher work rate, etc for the same BPM value?

I think it’s obvious that fewer BPM means your heart is working at an easier rate and so you can go longer, but when we talk about raising our AeT, that sounds like raising the BPM, which seems counter to the whole lower BPM = easier.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 17, 2021 at 8:13 am · in reply to: Denali 2022 #59418

@nate thanks! so much good insight here.

Living in Mississippi, I don’t have access to a truly steep long hill so I will probably never be in a situation where the terrain required me to rest step.

What do you think about rest steps with a heavy pack (~70#) and double boots on a 12″ box? I think that’s probably my only way to get 60min + of rest stepping.

[Edgar Carby]

Edgar Carby on November 16, 2021 at 12:25 pm · in reply to: mixing energy systems in workouts #59397

Thanks Mark.