We don’t know all the magic, but TSS is only one part of the TR RLGL equation (per the few hints they’ve given). You can read the experience and comments of others with different results, but it seems to largely align for people even when they are using purely imported events (rides and races) without TR workout links.
@all: Again, really huge, massive thanks for your time.
100% understood and all wrapped up.
At the end, gotta mark it as All Out, completed, and see what happens. If possible, upload the actual fit file. If no AT, well…be smart, do what you need to do to not fry yourself. System can, after all, only do so much.
End point: I do actually find it quite shocking that the TSS is equal for these two… maybe TSS serves it’s own function, and should be equal, but if that’s the case, I do wish there was some kind of rank / score / mark that denoted total fatigue…because WOOOOOF !!! 
There was no waaaaaaay I was doing that next scheduled WO.
@mcneese.chad managed to upload the fit file, link below. If I’m reading it right… thirty seven all-times???
I get now that yes, TSS is the same. OK then! 
But… so what is different, per measurements / scores?
Your TR account is set to Private, so we can’t see the file.
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Regarding your RPE, maybe consider how you fueled for this race. If you weren’t well carb loaded before this level of effort, you’re going to suffer more for it, both during and afterward.
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Some quick things to look at when comparing two events like yours:
- TSS (one measure of the power and duration relative to your FTP. Never all telling, but a really good data point)
- Duration (usually longer = harder, but is super relative to the data elsewhere)
- IF = Intensity Factor
- NP = Normalized Power
- KJ’s = some people can compare these in addition to the above in a “demand” sense as well.
Really, you need to look at most/all of those together to really understand each workout on it’s own, as well as compared. No single value determines the difficulty.
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Thanks again, @mcneese.chad !!
I think you’re right; I think that’s just it: There is maybe no one metric to record / measure something like this. You gotta look at it all, as ingredients in the humble pie, but also take into account how rested you were, and as @BrianSpang said; fueled, etc.
Again… system can only do so much. I think I’m expecting too much on this, for it to show me ONE number, that summarized the entirety of the difficulty of these two events, relative to each other!
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OK, so 194w NP over 40 mins vs your 195w FTP is why you also get 0.99 IF. Seems like a hard effort for that duration along with the Variability Index (NP/AP) of 1.1 indicating some real surges in power that can feel more demanding than steady to many people. TSS makes sense as does KJ to me.
Cadence is interesting at 84rpm Avg, I know I would have tired legs from that FTP level demand. No idea where that lands in your typical cadence range, but if it is lower than usually for you (especially around FTP power in your training), that could be another factor leading to smoked legs.
Add in your fueling before, during and after as key factors and you begin to see why this is all rather complicated 
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Appreciate the additional thoughts, esp cad. Love the article on VI !!! That makes a ton of sense!!!
On cad: That’s just the avg, bc on climbs, I grab a super hard gear, stand up, and stair master it. Works for me; feels to me like it gives the primary muscle groups complete rest, and works an entirely diff set. Finish climbs feeling “rested”… sorta…!
On most of it, I was 92 - 100. [That’s the goal, anyways…
]
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I’d add in that the unpredictability of racing can make them much much harder that an prescribed workout.
In the workout (baird, IIRC) you can prepare yourself, psych yourself up, ready, set, go!, then you go until a predetermined time when you can then shut down, spin easy, and recover.
Much different than a race where you might be just on your limit and then someone attacks and you need to suddenly follow. But for how long? either until you can’t or they can’t. But you don’t know when this will be while you’re in it. You just have to grit your teeth and keep pushing. Then the all out sprint at the end will leave your last impression of the ‘workout’ as being completely drained.
For anyone interested, I recently read the book “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman. In one chapter, he talks about how humans remember painful events. 2 patterns that were observed in the studies were “Peak-End Rule” and “Duration Neglect”. Peak-End Rule means that in retrospect the overall rating will be heavily weighted by the peak pain level and the pain level at the end. Then Duration neglect means the duration of the events had little to no affect on the overall rating.
So those moments of barely hanging on to an attack and the final leg emptying sprint will dominate your retrospective memory and the fact that it was <45min won’t matter much vs a longer workout.
As for the TSS thing, the ‘Training Stress’ it is measuring was specifically designed for aerobic exercise. So time is heavily weighted in the calculation so a super super hard all-out 45 min effort that leaves your glycogen empty and your legs sore for days will have small number relative to a substantially easier but much much longer endurance ride.
Remember pain does NOT equal gain. Just because a ride was hard doesn’t mean you’ll have huge adaptations from it.
EDIT: this ended up being way longer than I intended…
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Thanks again all, and @mwglow15 .
Just did want to re-mention that the one big reason this so boggled my mind is that Baird was an absolute walk in the park. I could have literally done it three times in a row, without struggle. The race was… race-y. LOL
Sure, but IF of 0.83 for 60m is definitely easier than 0.99 for 40m and aligns well with what I would have expected per your RPE too.
Baird is a 3.8 VO2 PL which may be hard for some people, but I find it relatively easy and seems you do too. On/Off efforts vs more steady-state (with kicks in there too). Different workout overall in power demand as seen by the other values.
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And there’s a lot of evidence that the whole evolutionary point of the “fast” thinking is that there is a physiological burden associated with intense cognitive effort, so you have competing glucose demands between the brain and the working muscles. Like I said above, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if part of what made Glasgow so hard was the extra cognitive burden on top of the physical demands of the course.
@Bbt67 unsure why the heat, but I’m gonna sidestep that… bc I genuinely am trying to learn, here!
Baird is 15 total mins @ 120%. Just for fun, at 185 FTP, that is 199,800 watt-seconds total output.
The race was 34:20 from gun to peak of sprint.
The area under the curve is the equation we need for total work, but I am not working that out!! But if we assume a flatline of 195 w for 34:20, it’s 401,700 watt-seconds.
It’s over double the amount of total power / energy output in almost the same time, completely disregarding the fact that the last 5 - 10 ish mins was mostly >210 - 225 w, and the sprint.
These are the same total stress? Seriously asking; in a kind, open tone!
[I mean, obviously, as defined, they **are** the same “TSS”. I’m asking what measure they are NOT the same. Because double the output in the same time is obvi not ‘equal’, in any real sense.]
I am not really sure your “watt-seconds” math is going to get you to an answer that feels better. But if you want to compare them, you can’t ignore the warmup, recovery and cool down in Baird. All of it adds to TSS.
I will also add this. Most races I have done in my life have an unimpressive power file when compared to how shattered I feel. Mostly for all the reasons that everyone else has already pointed out.
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“You need to listen and understand to learn.”
Honestly, genuinely doin’ my best here, buddy! Appreciate your time.
@KonaSS I appreciate the input.
Just so we’re clear; calculating the area under a curve is the established way to mathematically calc things like this; not some wack-a-doodle idea I cooked up!
Like if a stove element put out heat, that varied up and down over time, if you measured it for 30 mins and graphed it, to get the total output, you calculate the area under that curve. Area = total output.
[I guess in that case total kj of heat, or whatever.]
Nobody talks about “watt-seconds”, of c., we talk about “kilowatt hours”, but I’m one [ quite weak! ] cyclist, not a fricken nuclear reactor… I doubt I put out even one kwh in an entire week!!
It’s like MTB (or road crits, for that matter) - you never seem to get full TSS credit for how hard the rides feel.
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TSS is a decent measure of overall training stress, but as they say - “not all TSS is created equal”. High intensity does create more TSS for a given duration, but the TSS metric isn’t so sophisticated that it can really differentiate between an extremely intense period of high intensity vs. that same intensity spread out over a longer ride (which can be less stressful for you). It also doesn’t account for what your prior training has prepared you for. If you go into a really hard race with minimal prior training in v02max (and higher), you are going to feel that the next day. Do that same race after a couple blocks that include high intensity training, you will have much less fatigue (despite same TSS from the race).
Again, TSS can be valuable and I personally use it as my primary metric to follow/ramp my overall training progression. But I also know I need to be aware of my workout intensity mix because TSS only tells me so much. This is the reason many riders will add Z2 work when they want to increase overall training stress. Trying to ramp TSS up through high intensity workouts can only take you so far before it’s counterproductive and creates too much fatigue. You can only ramp up stress through intensity so much before it’s counterproductive. Most people can load on a bunch of stress via Z2/Z3 work and recover/adapt much easier.
TR plans do a decent job of keeping a cap on intensity, but can’t control what you do on your “free rides”. I know lots of folks are waiting to see how TR handles this kind of stuff when adaptive training can consider free rides. I anticipate an endless stream of posts with people struggling to understand that hard does not always equal productive (and can often be counterproductive).
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