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Annual TSS?

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01 / Original postAnnual TSS?Steve_B · 31 Dec 2006 02 / This pagePosts 1–20Page 1 of 2 · chronological order 03 / Latest replyPost #24Steve_B · 15 Jan 2007

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Power meters
Published
31 December 2006
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15 January 2007
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Steve_B
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CommutingPower metersHeart rate trainingStage racingTaper and peakingVO2 max

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  1. Original post
    Steve_B
    Archived post
    #1

    Hi,

    I'm a long-time lurker and first-time poster. 🙂

    I was looking at my training data for the year this morning. Though I'm not done training for the year (still 10 hours left in 2006 for me), as in years past, I totaled up distance, time, etc. and did the same for TSS. This is the first time I've done that and probably the same for other people since TSS is a relatively new measure. Then I became curious as to how much other people are doing. It might be interesting to discuss this as TSS is a bit of a "normalizing" value between riders. That is, it doesn't reflect speed or talent per se. Though it certainly reflects available time to ride and time spent at higher intensities.

    This year I've done 30,267 TSS points not including today and this came from 8,641 miles (13,826 km), 514+ hours and 334,818 kJ of training. (Wow, that's a lot of kJ. Why am I not skinny? How did I eat that much? 😉 ) Probably one of my bigger years since we had a very mild winter, I went away to a warm place for a week in February and had good enthusiasm for most of this year. Also, I commute to my job by bike 1-4 times per week. I maintained a CTL >= 80 for about 8 months of the year, hitting a peak of 100.

    Last year (2005), I was inactive for about 10 weeks due to job responsibilities and burned-out late in the year after trying to make up for lost time and overdoing it. I went back and figured out today that year came out to 25,074 TSS from 5,757 miles (9,211 km) and 397 hours. That was an low year and though I don't have TSS data for years before 2005, I can tell you that they have been generally in the range of 400-500 hours and 6,500-7,500 miles.

    Without turning this into a brag-fest (though I guess on some level it is anyway), how much annual TSS are other people doing? To add some context, I'm a category 3 rider who generally races masters. I race about 9-10 months of the year on the road and in cyclo-cross but I'm a more successful TT'er than anything else and that is reflected in my training.

    Thanks,
    Steve

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  2. MY02_STi
    Archived post
    #2

    My 2006 stats are:

    1. 42572 TSS at 0.806 average, 535 hours and 15912 km
    2. Peak ATL 234, average 120
    3. Peak CTL 143, average 120
    4. Masters 5 category (Australia) ie 50-55 years

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  3. jws
    Archived post
    #3

    My totals, including today, are TSS=25,712; 6213 miles (9999 km); 384 hrs; 260,331 kJ. A month ago, my goal was 365 hrs, and weather was so good, that I went for 6000 mi., then went for 10k km. My VI for the year here in Pgh was 1.30, and IF was 0.815.

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  4. tigermilk
    Archived post
    #4

    Somewhere in the 30-31k range and ~500 hours. Probably around 9000 miles I guess. Peak ATL ~126, CTL ~94 (average was 73). Looking to improve CTL this year. Took a hit this year for a few weeks due to injury and taking it easy for 2-3 weeks to get well. I hate rebuilding CTL[img]cyclingforums.comeek.gif[/img]

    Like you I'm trying to figure out why I gained 10 lbs in the last 2 months and am not rail thin. I even ran 15-25 miles a week for about 4 months this year.

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  5. NomadVW
    Archived post
    #5

    I can only "guesstimate" prior to October.

    I had 406 1/2 hours prior to Oct 25th (powertap installation day)

    Did a total of 111.4 hours since then, at a total of 7240.27 TSS, 85835 kJ.

    If I use TSS/hours I end up in the range of 33700 for what my annual TSS would have been. If I use TSS/kJ (assuming the same ratio - looking at the stats, it doesn't appear the weekly kcal burn has changed any since I went from the Polar HRM calories to the Powertap kJ readings) - I'm in at around 39466.

    I look forward to having more info next year with a much easier way to correlate things.

    VW

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  6. Alex Simmons
    Archived post
    #6

    2006 for me:
    Masters Track Enduro/Crit rider
    28,309 TSS, 0.782 IF, 461.5 hrs, 13,490 km; 308,203 kJ
    Peak CTL: 98; ATL: 142
    38 days of racing / approx 80-100 individual races
    (There would be a fair bit of idle trackside noodling in there)
    2, maybe 3 rides on a trainer😄

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  7. Thorman
    Archived post
    #7

    For calendar year 2006 here are my totals:

    TSS 24958
    426 hours
    7741 miles
    ATL max 121
    CTL max 80

    I'm a cat 3 who's competitive in TT's and occasionally competitive in road races. This year I did ~20 road races, 5 TT's, and 10 CX races.

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  8. rmur17
    Archived post
    #8
    Thorman said:

    For calendar year 2006 here are my totals:

    TSS 24958
    426 hours
    7741 miles
    ATL max 121
    CTL max 80

    I'm a cat 3 who's competitive in TT's and occasionally competitive in road races. This year I did ~20 road races, 5 TT's, and 10 CX races.


    • [font=Courier New]TSS (standard): 49,950 or ~50,000[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]MJ: 680[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Hours: 716 (13.8 hrs/wk)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Avg.IF: 0.83 [/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Max.CTL: 146 (mid-July)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Max.ATL: 187 (mid-July)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Min.TSB: -58 (early April)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Max.TSS/wk: 1293 (early August)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Min.TSS/wk: 362 (late November)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]FT: up 8% (360W from 335W)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Miles/km: No idea 🙂[/font]
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  9. Steve_B
    Archived post
    #9
    rmur17 said:


    • [font=Courier New]TSS (standard): 49,950 or ~50,000[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]MJ: 680[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Hours: 716 (13.8 hrs/wk)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Avg.IF: 0.83 [/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Max.CTL: 146 (mid-July)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Max.ATL: 187 (mid-July)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Min.TSB: -58 (early April)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Max.TSS/wk: 1293 (early August)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Min.TSS/wk: 362 (late November)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]FT: up 8% (360W from 335W)[/font]
    • [font=Courier New]Miles/km: No idea 🙂[/font]

    As expected, Rick buries my numbers. Rick, your max CTL might just be higher than that of Dave Harris.

    My initial thoughts were that average IF was nothing that I was concerned with but just looking over the small sample size, I can see that I have more "junk time" than many of you, probably because I live in the city (more-or-less). Also my bike commute is about 1.5 hours and if I go the direct route and try to "train", it's probably still 60% easy time (IF ~0.60-0.75).

    Steve

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  10. POGATA
    Archived post
    #10

    How many percent of your total training load, have you spent in level 4 and higher?

    (Question is for everybody.)

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  11. NomadVW
    Archived post
    #11

    29% - based on Friel heart rate zones for the year.

    Since Oct 23, for power
    Threshold 14.2%
    VO2max 6.7%
    Anaerobic capacity 5.9%

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  12. rmur17
    Archived post
    #12
    Steve_B said:

    My initial thoughts were that average IF was nothing that I was concerned with but just looking over the small sample size, I can see that I have more "junk time" than many of you, probably because I live in the city (more-or-less). Also my bike commute is about 1.5 hours and if I go the direct route and try to "train", it's probably still 60% easy time (IF ~0.60-0.75).


    Is that 1.5 hr commute one way? That's pretty long.

    Here I ride to work most days between May and end of October but it's 21k straight in (two traffic lights only) and I can easily ride a short or longer loop out the highway to make that 30k or 45k. Depends how early I get up.

    To be honest, as I am often tired in the morning and pressed for time, I usually just ride straight in taking about 35-40 min at L2 pace. I consider it a wake-up ride rather than training.

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  13. Steve_B
    Archived post
    #13
    rmur17 said:

    Is that 1.5 hr commute one way? That's pretty long.


    No, no. That's the entire trip to work and then back.

    rmur17 said:

    Here I ride to work most days between May and end of October but it's 21k straight in (two traffic lights only) and I can easily ride a short or longer loop out the highway to make that 30k or 45k. Depends how early I get up.

    To be honest, as I am often tired in the morning and pressed for time, I usually just ride straight in taking about 35-40 min at L2 pace. I consider it a wake-up ride rather than training.


    Mine, at 90 minutes/24 mi/38km (total for the day) is a bit too long for a recovery ride but I use it as such sometimes, even though sometimes in the evening I'm still tired and close to the last thing that I want to do is get on a bike again. 🙁 It's still better than dealing with heavy city traffic as I get closer to home though. 🙂 😎

    Before I started monitoring TSS, the ride to work used to be just time on the bike as far as I was concerned. It was mostly L2 and I didn't think too much about it (though it did go in the training log). I didn't grasp what that time was doing to my overall training year, my fatigue, etc. Now that I've been paying careful attention to TSS, I [font=Verdana]really[/font] see the effect. I think that in years past that the high volume of commuting was contributing to my overtraining and burn-out towards the end of the summer.

    Since then, I've cut back and tried to use the commute time more smartly. I’ve hooked up a Power Tap harness on my commute bike, which is also rigged up with lights, fenders, extra tubes, tools, etc. Now I'm set for some real training. I figured out where I can do a 20-minute block of low L4 along the way. Alternatively, I can do an L7 ride with sprints from every stop sign (taking a route with lots of stop signs). This morning for some variety, I did the 10-minute L7 15/15 microburst workout described in the Allen/Coggan book. Ouch!:eek: I have places to stop and do sprints or blocks of threshold work. I can also take some diversions and make it quite long (up to 2.5 hours one-way). But sometimes it's just TSS-fill, L2 stuff. A guy's got to relax every so often. 🙄

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  14. RapDaddyo
    Archived post
    #14

    30,000 Total TSS
    58% L4-L7 (per Coggan schema, L4 @ NP, L5-L7 @ AP)

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  15. acoggan
    Archived post
    #15

    For fun I pulled together the data from this thread and from a similar survey that I conducted elsewhere. Here are the results:

    Mean: 30416
    SD: 8741
    Min: 19552
    Max: 49950

    Expressed in TSS/d (equivalent to CTL over the long term):

    Mean: 83
    SD: 24
    Min: 54
    Max: 137

    Note that these data are for a quite diverse group of non-professional cyclists, so may not mean all that much in the big scheme of things. Still, I find them interesting (esp. in the context of the CTL guideline of 100-150 TSS/d that I've suggested).

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  16. Woofer
    Archived post
    #16
    Steve_B said:

    Hi,

    I'm a long-time lurker and first-time poster. 🙂


    How did you accumulate the stats?

    I made a custom chart with two data points for 2006 and that seemed to work after I added them up, one data point made a blank chart.

    I have 41000 TSS, 775 hours, 9961 miles.

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  17. daveryanwyoming
    Archived post
    #17
    acoggan said:

    ....
    Expressed in TSS/d (equivalent to CTL over the long term):

    Mean: 83
    SD: 24
    Min: 54
    Max: 137

    ..... Still, I find them interesting (esp. in the context of the CTL guideline of 100-150 TSS/d that I've suggested).


    Andy,

    I don't interpret the TSS guidelines in your book as suggesting 100-150 TSS/d nonstop every day which is what the TSS/d derived from yearly totals suggests. I took the 100-150 TSS with recovery as a suggestion for "on" day work with the assumption that stage racing aside most folks take at least one if not two easy or off days a week.

    From that standpoint, a 6 day a week rider might get 100 TSS per training day for 600 week then take a rest day for an average daily TSS of 85.7.

    A four day a week block trainer might get four 150 TSS days followed by 3 rest days for the same daily average.

    If you consider most folks taper at least once during the season and get sick or injured or have an unplanned training interruption a couple of times a year your "on" day TSS guidelines and the results of this informal survey seem to be pretty much bang on.

    Did you really mean the 100-150 TSS/day to be a CTL guideline in the sense you thought folks would get that on a weekly average including rest days?

    -Dave

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  18. Bullseye_blam
    Archived post
    #18
    Steve_B said:


    No, no. That's the entire trip to work and then back.

    Mine, at 90 minutes/24 mi/38km (total for the day) is a bit too long for a recovery ride but I use it as such sometimes, even though sometimes in the evening I'm still tired and close to the last thing that I want to do is get on a bike again. 🙁 It's still better than dealing with heavy city traffic as I get closer to home though. 🙂 😎

    Before I started monitoring TSS, the ride to work used to be just time on the bike as far as I was concerned. It was mostly L2 and I didn't think too much about it (though it did go in the training log). I didn't grasp what that time was doing to my overall training year, my fatigue, etc. Now that I've been paying careful attention to TSS, I [font=Verdana]really[/font] see the effect. I think that in years past that the high volume of commuting was contributing to my overtraining and burn-out towards the end of the summer.

    Since then, I've cut back and tried to use the commute time more smartly. I’ve hooked up a Power Tap harness on my commute bike, which is also rigged up with lights, fenders, extra tubes, tools, etc. Now I'm set for some real training. I figured out where I can do a 20-minute block of low L4 along the way. Alternatively, I can do an L7 ride with sprints from every stop sign (taking a route with lots of stop signs). This morning for some variety, I did the 10-minute L7 15/15 microburst workout described in the Allen/Coggan book. Ouch!:eek: I have places to stop and do sprints or blocks of threshold work. I can also take some diversions and make it quite long (up to 2.5 hours one-way). But sometimes it's just TSS-fill, L2 stuff. A guy's got to relax every so often. 🙄


    Hey, this is pretty awesome, and I think it's great that you can harness your commute into real training rather than just 'putting in time'. Almost makes me wish I lived farther than 4.5 miles from work. 😉

    On second thought, looking at all the snow and ice outside right now... 🙄

    😄

    -Eric

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  19. Steve_B
    Archived post
    #19
    Woofer said:

    How did you accumulate the stats?

    I made a custom chart with two data points for 2006 and that seemed to work after I added them up, one data point made a blank chart.

    I have 41000 TSS, 775 hours, 9961 miles.

    Well, that will certainly work.

    In 2006, I ran a spreadsheet of daily TSS, IF, kJ, distance, duration, number of pee breaks and amount of junk food consumed during rides, etc. (just kidding about the last two items. 😄 ) basically because WKO+ wasn't available yet and I wanted a way of keeping track of TSS, etc. for rides without a power meter along with ones where I used it. So all I had to do was total up the columns at the end of the year. Even though I'm now using WKO+ and can fudge in TSS for rides without a power meter, I'm still doing a similar spreadsheet for 2007 anyway.

    For 2005, I took all my "time-in-zone" data from my log for that year and extrapolated it over to a best guess of TSS.

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  20. Steve_B
    Archived post
    #20
    Bullseye_blam said:

    Hey, this is pretty awesome, and I think it's great that you can harness your commute into real training rather than just 'putting in time'. Almost makes me wish I lived farther than 4.5 miles from work. 😉

    I've had thoughts of taking a job at my company's facility closer to my home and the sanest way to get there is via the subway. (The bike ride would be filled with continuous stop signs and stop lights. Total junk miles.) One of the reasons why I haven't done so is because I am fortunate to have the option to commute and train sort of simultaneously, if I want to. I can spend ~45 minutes getting to or from work and "get something" for it. I can't do that on the subway.

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