10 days without PT

I'd record duration and guesstimate IF from PE.

I rode for a month in my transition season without PT. No computer, speedometer, or watch either.

Liberating!

I'm thinking the same thing :-) The only thing would be that I'd have a 10 day gap in Cyclingpeaks. I'm sure it's not a huge thing but maybe I should just record dist etc

giannip said:

I'm thinking the same thing :-) The only thing would be that I'd have a 10 day gap in Cyclingpeaks. I'm sure it's not a huge thing but maybe I should just record dist etc

Just use frenchyge's advice. Estimate intensity factor and time and enter a manual workout in wko+. It's not going to be dead-on accurate, but it'll give you an estimate of TSS to feed the Performance Manager for ATL, CTL and TSB. It's what I do when I travel and ride gym ergs or otherwise exercise without a PM.

-Dave

Apologies for the silly question but how would I estimate IF according to PE?

giannip said:

Apologies for the silly question but how would I estimate IF according to PE?

Compare your effort to how you feel during long training intervals like 2x20s or during time trials. If you're breathing very near your limit but can still avoid ragged out of control breaths and can sustain this for 20 minutes or so you're probably working somewhere around 85-100% of FTP and your IF will be ~ .85-1.0.

If you're riding Tempo and riding quickly but can sustain it for an hour or more with steady and deep but comfortable breathing you're probably working closer to .75-.85. Long endurance rides are closer to .65-.8 and easy cruising is .6 or below.

Just ask yourself how your hard efforts compare to your best one hour efforts and guesstimate from there. Nope, it won't be very accurate but it shouldn't be too far off if you're honest with yourself.

For a typical 2 hour Tempo ride I often end up with an IF of ~ 0.7 if you include a short warmup and cooldown.

You can also look back through your recorded power files for similar rides at similar intensities and use the values from those rides.

Either way, double click the calendar for the date, maybe add some description text for future reference and then click the little black pulldown arrow in the upper right of the screen and choose "new manual workout". Use the pulldown menu to classify this as "cross training" or "other" so that the block of estimated power data doesn't mess up your power distribution histogram(you have to modify that chart to ignore everything except "bike" workouts) and then enter either your IF estimate or Power estimate and the time in minutes. Close the dialog and save the journal entry and your TSS will be added to the PMC and contribute to ATL, CTL and TSB. If it's cross training I err to the conservative and tend to underestimate IF, if it's an actual bike ride without a PM I try to ask if the predicted average power based on the estimated IF is realistic, if not I bump it up or down as necessary(usually down to be conservative for estimated workouts).

Good luck,
Dave

giannip said:

Apologies for the silly question but how would I estimate IF according to PE?

Train yourself to use IF as the scale with which you measure PE. So anytime you get done with a ride, guess the IF before you download, then see how close you were. After a week or two of this, most people are pretty good at classifying rides.

You could also look at similar workouts that you have files for. For example, many of my 1.5 - 2 hour threshold workouts come in between .80 - .85. Solo endurance rides over 3 hours are in the .70 - .75 range, 1.5 hour VO2 workouts are around .86 - .89, 1 hour races are 1.0...just looking through your own data (the ride description, then the IF) ought to give you a good sense of the IF of any particular type of ride well enough to estimate.

Thanks very much.

I'm also working with the fact that I was off the bike for 2 months and have only had 7 workouts sicne getting back on so I'm sure my ftp is also gone south.

Hopefully I can do a test soon to check

giannip said:

...I'm also working with the fact that I was off the bike for 2 months and have only had 7 workouts sicne getting back on so I'm sure my ftp is also gone south...

In that case, keeping your PMC up to date isn't quite as important. You won't see a huge TSB spike and CTL drop if you don't have a fairly deep training base with a relatively high CTL. It's still worth estimating the intensity of your workouts, but I'd be even more likely to intentionally underestimate my efforts since it will set the start of your training load and CTL build. I also wouldn't worry too much about it right now, more important to just get back on your bike with consistent workouts and to get back into a training pattern.

Good luck,
Dave

giannip said:

I'm also working with the fact that I was off the bike for 2 months and have only had 7 workouts sicne getting back on so I'm sure my ftp is also gone south.

Hopefully I can do a test soon to check

Good answers already, but one more thing related to this particular comment: if you learn to guesstimate IF from a ride, then it will help you quickly bracket your current FTP after months off the bike if you're not up to a complete test. For example, upon resuming riding you do a Tempo ride where your IF is usually .8-.85, and you notice that your NP for the ride is 200w. Presto! Your best guess FTP is now 200/.82 = 244w. After a handful of rides you'll probably be able to bracket your FTP within ~5% using this method, which will help in the early months before hard testing is really palatable.

Thanks everyone.

With regards to the .8-.85 I was looking back at the year's traiing / racing and the only IFs in that range are races.

Am I missing something in your advice ?

giannip said:

With regards to the .8-.85 I was looking back at the year's traiing / racing and the only IFs in that range are races.

Am I missing something in your advice ?

Just that the number was only an example. I used .8-.85 because JBV and Dave both mentioned something near that value for a tempo workout. What I meant was that after a typical ride you could compare the IF from that ride to the IF of other rides of similar style/PE to see if your FTP estimate is out of whack.

frenchyge said:

Just that the number was only an example. I used .8-.85 because JBV and Dave both mentioned something near that value for a tempo workout. What I meant was that after a typical ride you could compare the IF from that ride to the IF of other rides of similar style/PE to see if your FTP estimate is out of whack.

Hi

thanks, no I thought you meant to get an IF of a similar ride (e.g of an Endurance workout), just wanted to make 100% sure.

Thanks