Not just context, also the disclaimer at the end of article:
And that ramp rates are personal. And depend on the type of training (base vs build).
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Some personal experience here so n=1, etc.
Iāve been using intervals.icu for a while and itās taken me a while to get my head around everything but on a couple of occasions my āformā has touched or dipped below the -30 level.
The first time was the Saturday before the Covid-19 lockdown started here in the UK when I did a 80km MTB ride which was mostly into a headwind and riding through mud and felt really hard. Hard enough that I didnāt go for a ride on the Sunday. Thereās another dip at -28 just after this which is when I did Washington+4 and Fish-2 on successive days, my comments for the latter begin āThat was hard work!ā
The second time was last weekend, on Saturday I did North Twin +2 in the morning and then went for a steady, mostly Z1 ride with my wife in the evening. On the Sunday I should have done Antelope+2 but felt tired so subbed it for Carter. It was only when I looked at the fitness graph that I noticed a few red pixels.
So for me Iām certainly pushing things too much when my form gets to -30 but I havenāt yet worked out what is the lowest value I could maintain, -25 sort of feels right but might be a little on the conservative side. This is with a ramp rate of 2.25 but I suspect Iām getting the easy pickings in regaining my long term fitness.
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Interesting. I have only ever seen TSB characterized as being negative, neutral, or positive by the inventors.
Im trying to understand the decoupling bit. I have looked at same workout done at two different times. Both Palisade. ON the activity power screen for the first time I did this workout (Jan 11) I got the following numbers:
Power/HR 0.86
Decoupling -21.6%
I did the same workout today. I am feeling a lot fitter now as I have been able to work hard during lockdown and I got the following numbers.
Power/HR 1/3
Decoupling +12.7%
I am trying to understand how I use these numbers to aid my training etc
Thatās not a great workout to consider. You really need to be looking at 2 hour and longer, steady aerobic rides in the Level 2 (Coggan) range.
Ok cheers. I donāt do much 2 hour stuff on the trainer and I donāt have a power meter on my bike so I wills truffle to get that data.
Discussion starting here
made me think if you could add the average watts here?
For example as an easy way to lookup the watts you can hold for your 1 hour max avg HR.
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Thats a good idea. It will be the 1h point on the power duration curve for the activity you did the HR on so its possible it wonāt be the same interval but mostly I think it will be.
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Thinking furtherā¦interesting could be something like seeing your 3 best power/HR results for some specific durations (maybe 5, 20, 60min). Including raw values besides the power/HR ratio (think of tooltip). Maybe this would be even more valuable?!
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David, sorry if I missed thisā¦very long and active thread. Have you changed the way in which your app calculates Fitness/Form/Fatigue? It seems like within the last couple weeks Iāve noticed that:
A) Fitness is harder to drive into the Green Zone (No Mid Volume Sweet Spot Base plan can get me beyond -10 to -12 Form)
B) Fatigue reduces very quickly with inactivity driving Form into the Fresh or Transition Zone rapidly.
For example:
The red highlighted area is a rest week between SSBMV1 and General Build MV 1. My Fitness drops 4 points from 46 to 41 while TSB/Form goes from -7 to +10 during a standard TR prescribed recovery week. Is this to be expected? It seems drastic, but I trust the app. Just curious.
I got one too today. Went for an easy ride with a single 3min effort thrown in. Mostly because I hadnāt done any shortish efforts in ages, and 3min seemed the least painful. It bumped my eFTP by 22W! This eFTP is only supported by the 3min, 15s, and 2s datapoints, but so what 
The funny thing is, it is now exactly what I had it set to in TR before I manually took it down 10W a few days ago, because I felt the workouts were too hard. Guess Iāll have to put it back upā¦
The first time I got one of those emails, it made my freak out a bit. Who is this guy David? Why has he got my email, itās set to private! Then I realised itās an automatic email, lol. Itās funny how stupidly motivating these things are.
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Not for a long time. The only change recently has been to not count training load from gym workouts towards fitness. Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with the TR plans to know what is supposed to happen during a rest week, TSB-wise.
I think the whole TSB thing ala the Joe Friel blog post I link to from the app targets athletes doing 80 CTL/day or so. If your volumes are less the TSB bands will effectively be āwiderā.
I used by own email to make the mails more friendly and so replies would come back to me.
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With regards to your original idea of adding avg watts to the HR duration chart, it would probably be better to do it the other way round i.e. add avg HR to the power duration chart. Your max HR for a given duration might well be because you got thirsty towards the end of a tough race. So I think driving it from the power side would work better.
You know that Intervals allows you to set an indoor and outdoor FTP? So you can set the indoor one to whatever you use for Trainer Road, and your outdoor one as bumped up by Intervals. A 10watt difference between indoor and outdoor is pretty plausible.
I did an 8min hill effort that Intervals said bumped my FTP up. But I had to drop intensity to 97% to do TR over-unders at that new FTP.
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Ok thanks. I wasnāt sure if your method changed or I changed something in the system. Turns out I just need to train more.
There might be use cases for both variants but I think you have a good point, might be the better approach. Still thinking about that 3 best Pwr/HR ratios for specific durations.
Iāve probably thanked you a few times already but thanks again for developing this system.
I wondered if youād given any thought to the ability to plan training as well as analyse?
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