Road Bike Racing - NP/TSS/IF - doesnt tell the whole story

I'm a power noob. I just found this interesting. Last night I did a workout of 1 hr. on the indoor trainer that included 2 sets of 8x30">150% FTP/30" recovery; 10 mins. between sets. I was not pedaling much during the 30" recovery after effort 3 of each set, and the remainder of the workout after I started the intervals was in low L1. This was nearly a pukefest for me and is the hardest workout I've done since last spring, but NP 235/TSS 75/IF 0.866, wouldnt tell you that.

Well, NP was probably in the Tempo level for you and IF of 0.85-0.95= tempo rides, aerobic and anaerobic interval workouts (work and rest periods combined), so it was probably correct given the fact that your rest periods were at almost zero watts.

Not pedaling seems to really drop your AP much faster than the work periods raise it.

And 8x30'' at 150 FTP(~480 in my case) seems like it might hurt in the end, but not a real gut buster.

NP just tells you the power you would have had to maintain in order to expend the same ENERGY for your workout. What was your total kJ for the session?

Likewise, IF is just NP/FTP. So, see above for why this might seem off.

TSS also can't be taken alone to judge the difficulty of a workout. TSS is a better indicator of how long it will take your body to recover from the workout.

All-in-all, you have to look at the full spectrum of analytical numbers to get a good picture of the workout.

Don't forget about the Variability Index, which is NP/AP. This tells me pretty well how hard I went for intervals. Recent VI for me:
hill repeats: 1.46
1-minute intervals: 1.95
sprints: 2.07
SST: 1.03

I use TSS to gauge the strain my body is taking to recover relative to my overall training load, not the adaptation being accomplished or how much it hurts while working. I did 2x20's on the trainer last night @ a total 80TSS for the day. With a CTL in the 130's, today I should (and do) feel fresher than I did going into the workout yesterday. But, the 20's sure as hell hurt a lot (more so because I was on the g-damn trainer)

I use TSS to gauge the strain my body is taking to recover relative to my overall training load, not the adaptation being accomplished or how much it hurts while working. I did 2x20's on the trainer last night @ a total 80TSS for the day. With a CTL in the 130's, today I should (and do) feel fresher than I did going into the workout yesterday. But, the 20's sure as hell hurt a lot (more so because I was on the g-damn trainer)

You didn't go out in this fabulous weather?

I'll brave cold.. and I'll brave rain. Ice... no thanks. Feeling too good to jeopardize my season for a fall at 5am.

MDcatV -- All that an IF < 1 for an hour ride means is that you probably could have done a few more of those efforts in the hour. Which is probably true -- you were on the trainer for an hour and only did 16 minutes of work. It doesn't say anything about how hard those work sessions felt. For that, you should take just the AP or NP of the work period and compare it to your MMP for that duration. Usually, you use AP for short efforts, like < 5 minutes and NP for longer, but the particular effort you did is right on the line and because of its highly variable nature NP might be a better predictor. Understand, though, that there are error bars built into all these metrics. If it hurt, good, you probably got something from it. -- A