No Power Meter - No TSS?

So - apologies if this has ben asked before but - I’m a new subscriber , enjoying the sessions , the data and the podcasts ( great company on a dog walk!) I’m not at the level yet where i feel I can invest in a power meter so I’m using virtual power on my trainer and have opted into a plan towards my first race of the season. Without a power meter, is there anyway, via Strava or my Elemnt Bolt, of getting or working out a virtual TSS for an outdoor ride?

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Yeah, in the TR calendar next to each ride is an “Estimate TSS” button.

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If you install ‘Elevate’ as a browser add-on you can get HRSS from an outdoor ride with heart rate, then put that in the manual box for TSS. It’s not ideal but better than guesstimating how much time you spent in zones/how hard a ride was.

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For what it’s worth, both Strava and Trainerroad can estimate TSS with your rate of perceived exertion. But I wouldn’t rely very much on non-power calculated TSS

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Boom , instant success. Cheers fellas. I know it’s not massively accurate but I want to maintain and measure my TSS so that when I do acquire a meter, I have some records to measure against. Thanks for the instant responses!

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My web app (https://intervals.icu) will do that for you. It will also import your TR plan, show future fitness etc…

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Is there also a possibility to Export the trainings Heart rate based?

I use the free training peaks account. The ride is uploaded to the TP App and it gives my Heart Rate TSS (HRTSS). I use this as a good baseline.

I was just going to suggest this. I started using your app a few months back, and love it. For outdoor MTB rides (I don’t have a power meter) I use your app for estimated TSS (I wear a HR monitor). I cross checked and your estimate seems to be really close to TR with power. Kudos!

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Manually, you type it in as per my post above. Automatically, not that I know of.

But can you do this to Plan your Training? Like See in which Heart Rate Zone I should be with 10min 200watts?

I am not sure what you mean but give it a try.

Well, we are talking about two different things: I think you are talking about how to get the TSS AFTER a ride.
But I want to get the Heart Rate Zones for a future ride.

I try to make a example, this is my next power based workout in my plan:

Warm Up:
  • Ride for 10 minutes gradually raising your power from 100 to 180.
  • 5 minutes easy before the main set.

Main Set:

  • 10 minutes at 176, followed by a 5 minute rest.
  • 10 minutes at 180, followed by a 5 minute rest.
  • 10 minutes at 186, followed by a 5 minute rest.
  • 10 minutes at 186, followed by a 5 minute rest.
  • 10 minutes at 180

Cool Down:

  • Spin easy for 5 minutes, longer if you can.

But since I have no PowerMeter, I want to use my heart rate monitor. How can I do this and sent it to my garmin?

Outside workouts can use either power (which is what you’ve got selected) or RPE:

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There are no TR workouts driven by heart rate (because heart rate is a bit flaky). If you know your heart rate zones from indoor rides, you can roughly translate between power/RPE and heart rate yourself on the fly, but you can’t push that to your Garmin and have it show you target heart rates.

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You can setup HR zones in Intervals.icu that match your power zones. You need to know your max or threshold HR (LTHR). The default percentage ranges of LTHR are from Joe Friel. For me the HR zones match the power zones very well. Other people less so.

There is also a lot of day to day variation in HR but for longer intervals like yours I think using HR is ok.

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For me, “recovery” and “endurance” get flipped (which makes sense I think, Friel and Coggan have different models), but everything else lines up pretty well:

image

If I did heart-rate-based workouts, I’d probably re-calibrate the lower intensity zones.

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that helps a lot! Thank you!