Yesterday I was meant to do Pettit as a recovery ride. It was a lovely evening so I decided to go outside. I tried to do it as easy as possible. I thought I would just put it in the small ring and just spin it out. I don’t have a power meter so I just had to use RPE.
It was a lot of fun, just cycling with no real goal except easy. The TSS for Pettit is 39. Intervals.icu said the load was 77. Is that the same as TSS? If so that would seem it was not much of a recovery ride.
How do others do a recovery ride out and make sure they don’t over do it?
I did Pettit outdoors today (for the first time). Followed the workout as closely as possible.
Indoor Pettit is 1:00:00 w/ an IF of .63 for a TSS of 39.
My outdoor Pettit (with power meter) ended up being 1:28:36 w/ an IF of .66 for a TSS off 65.
It wasn’t as strenuous as a SST workout, but it was definitely not a “recovery” ride.
I think I remember hearing that outdoor workouts are “inflated” a bit because outdoor rides tend not to be as efficient, but it seems like 50% increase is a bit much, no?
It is mistakenly assumed to be Recovery, because it is often placed between harder workouts of the week, but it is NOT meant for Recovery purposes.
I can’t speak to changes in specific workouts, but we have seen TR mention increasing some due to the expected “breaks” that come from outside riding (stop lights/signs, hills, coasting, etc.)
Some of the TR outside workouts assume a lot of coasting, a lot more coasting than I do here in flatland. Personally if Pettit was on the calendar I would do about an hour outside and target riding at ~63% FTP.
Chad already mentioned that Pettit is not a recovery ride. If you really want to do a recovery ride outside, go ridiculously slow. My FTP is around 250W and my recovery rides are 30 minutes at 80 to 90W. Yes you will feel ridiculous going so slow!
Ah, thanks for the response–I was quoting the OP when talking about “recovery”. Thanks for the correction.
My larger point, though, was just to question whether a 65 TSS outdoor ride is a suitable replacement for a 35 TSS indoor ride. Seems odd to me, but if that’s what it is, that’s what it is.
If you go outside and are able to ride at target power with only small amount of coasting, then outside Pettit should be just slightly more than 60 minutes.
Without looking at your 65 TSS ride, assuming it was at target power then you received a stronger aerobic stimulus. So not a direct replacement, and likely not a real problem if it didn’t impact the workouts after it.
