gtrob

I use my same garmin but with the speed sensor/magnet on the track.

carleton

Buy separate Bontrager speed and cadence sensors.

Bontrager: node

Do not buy the combined unit. Separate is better because your wheel moves with each gear change.

Minion1

The new garmin sensors are based around accelerometers, the speed one wraps around the hub and the cadence is an independent unit that mounts to the crank arm only, similar to stages. We've got them in the shop I work at and they're pretty smart. Link with non-helpful photo

zizou

Anyone have any experience of the planet x 82mm track tubs? I have 42mm American Classics at the moment which are about 600g lighten than the PX so not insignificant, was just wondering if the potential aero gain would be worth it?

On a related note they seem to be doing a new frame for pursuits etc. The paint job wont be to everyones taste but i like them!

Dalai

They do have a mainly black version too...

misterwaterfall

I thought that might be a problem sooner or later having it all in one

I'll check this out as well. Seems like an eas solution to pair to my garmin

Thanks!

gl98115

Do these work well for track racing and training (high power and speed variability)? I and others have trouble with the Stages. DCRainmaker's review shows more jitter in the data from these accelerometer based devices.

A look at Garmin?s new ANT+ Speed & Cadence magnet-less sensors | DC Rainmaker

mattm

How would you estimate TSS for a track night? Roughly.

15 lap scratch, 20 lap tempo, 30 lap points race, cat 3/4's, fwiw.

Impreza_aL

this has been my issue since i don't have a power meter on the track. i just say 150 tss.

Minion1

Honestly, I dunno. My expectation is that they work really well for road bikes, where the cadences are lower and accelerations are more predictable, but I have this nagging feeling (and part of the reason I don't have a power meter) is that SRM is going to be the one that works best, and while the other power meters are improving, they're only really nibbling around the edges of the functionality and reliability of an SRM without really coming close in terms of core functionality.

mattm

I figured 15 + 20(?) + 30 = 65 laps total, about 13.5 mi or 35 mins of racing.

Of course how those laps were ridden plays a big role in the resulting TSS.. since you took the omnium yours may well be higher than mine. =]

I went with 60 TSS for now.

Impreza_aL

hah i forgot it depends on how you rode the race.

MarkWW

What bottom bracket is everybody using with their sugino 75s lately? standard sugino 75 BB? sugino 75 superlap? campy record track?

Baby Puke

Sugino 75 or Superlap. Pretty sure the Campy is the wrong length spindle.

Jaytron

Superlap

Hida Yanra

just use the Sugino, costs less and no odd issues.

Hermes

My TSS from last nights training session at Velo Sports Center in Carson, CA 250 meter track was 134. That included an 80 lap warm up with the last 20 laps being a motor burnout. 36 laps of team intervals where we took turns leading out fast one laps. One eight lap motor paced effort behind another racer at 17.5 second laps. Two full power one lap 500 meter standing starts.

I have had power at the track for a couple of years and IMO, the Coggan TSS model is BS. The track is much harder than the road BUT a lot has to do with the type of track. At Velo Sports Center the turns are 100 watts higher than the straights at the relief line. At the balustrade, I need 100 watts more power to hold a similar speed when riding at the relief line. At VSC, my legs a constantly pulsed with power. Next is the cadence. IMO, higher cadence is much more fatiguing and the Coggan software model does not capture that.

At Hellyer, riding at the rail requires more power for the same speed than riding in the pole lane. So the lower you ride on the velodrome, the less energy is required for the same racing or training situation. As the Velodrome gets longer and flatter, it begins to model a criterium.

And if you want to verify the total failure of TSS to record fatigue, do a sprint tournament or just do standing starts. Those will record low TSS for the session but one will feel like you were run over by a truck the next day.

Typically, I add 50% to the recorded TSS from the track. But then I am old and you young guys may not notice any difference.

Hermes

BTW, IMO, the TSS scoring model is applicable to P/1/2 elite road riders. For lower categories and older racers, more rest may be required or to say it another way our TSB is a lot more negative than recorded. Speaking for myself, I am taking a lot more rest this season and my training is proceeding much better. The downside is, I am riding less which is what I like to do.

Brian Ratliff

TSS is bullsht. The units make no sense at all. You can make your TSS anything you want by padding or chopping zeros. You can cut your ride into two back-to-back pieces and the TSS calculated from each piece, added together, does not add up to the TSS of the whole ride. Coggan took a 4th order polynomial fit model, combined it with an unrelated empirical model based originally on heartrate and came up with some proprietary coaching soup that needs a (for hire; that's the business model) crystal ball to interpret. But people like it because... numbers.

mattm

To me it's not the minutiae of how TSS is calculated that matters, it's the modeling based off of it (CTL/etc in WKO) that I am really after.

So I don't need an exact number, just a ballpark figure.

Brian Ratliff

I think that's just the same as correlating kJ at various intensities to perceived fatigue. Or using a clock (hours on the bike or time at intensity). Anything that can tell you you are doing "more" or "less" and can be correlated to intensity and fatigue. TSS and the related black magic is simply another way of creating a perceived effort scale using a fancy piece of equipment.

You need only a few things to train:

• some sort of program that will allow you to achieve incremental gains.
• intervals at various intensities and lengths
• external motivation to get you off your ass when you aren't feeling like training

TSS is simply a fancy way of achieving that third bullet. It's simply a non-linear scale that does what all non-linear scales do which is to force the brain to form a non-linear correlation to something that is obviously non-linear. Fatigue related to effort and training time is obviously non-linear.

In fact, I wonder if the perceived effort scale should be non-linear. Easy efforts are in the 1,2,4 range; hard efforts in the 8,16,32 range. sprint efforts in the 64,128,256 range. Add up your PE scores, multiply by time, and that's your correlation to fatigue. Two 256PE sprints for 15 seconds apiece is about equal to a two hour effort at 2PE (zone 2) or a 20 minute effort at 16PE (threshold). How's that for sophistication .

jmikami

I agree with most everything you say here. I just started my power on the track and the numbers pail as compared to RPE vs RPE to TSS on the road. I always bump mine up as well. My general power numbers compare as long as I compare like cadence and gear while seated and not braking (aka pursuit), but having a fixed gear along with all the surges and speed corrections make track races much harder.

As for TSS in general, it doesn't really apply to me either from a CTL/ATL perspective, so I have created different metrics that work well for me. The point of my TSS scores are to help me figure out if my hard weeks are hard and compare to my RPE and if my easy weeks are really easy. Those who bash TSS likely have not taken the time to try and adapt TSS to their own training and are trying to use it out of the box.

As for those that live and die by ATL/CTL ... at least they are doing something. Even if it is not a great fit, it is better than nothing and even better than some coaches who don't pay enough attention.

Brian, you likely spend too much time at the track and are a sprinter and TSS really fails for you. I am not sure how you could even play with the model to make TSS work for a true sprinter, I am sure it is possible, but the minds behind TSS really don't care about sprinters. But it really is a good basic metric if taken with that light, especially for enduros and roadies.

jmikami

I think you are missing how easy it is to use TSS and create a basic coaching model for yourself. Buy a power meter to take most of the guess work out of your RPE, look up some decent workouts in a book/internet plug into software to replace 80% of the coaches out there and you are done. It is actually a pretty sweet deal. To do it right takes a lot more time, but for what it gives the basic rider is miles ahead of what I had to use in the 90s. Plug and play is here to stay.

As for your idea of sprint including a 256 number and equaling a 2 hour zone 2 ride .... well it must be nice to be a pure sprinter.

But I do agree that sprints are different, so much so that I think you need 3 to 5 TSS systems, one for sprinting, one for high glycolysis, one for low, one for carb burning workouts and one for fat, or at least 3 for the basic energy systems. You then end up with 3 to 5 TSS scores and manage each of them depending on what type of rider you are. The current TSS does a very good job with the aerobic end of things, what we need is one that handles the pointing end of things much much better.

jmikami

#4 Feedback loop

I think you know that this is too simple and missing the most important item #4 . The analysis required of a real coach/RPE/TSS is critical to a good program to modify steps 1 through 3. I think that any of the three I just mentioned can work well if you understand what you are doing. Coaches are only as good as the coach is and has time for you specifically, the RPE is only as good as the athlete who scores it, TSS is the same no mater what, but has zero intelligence to make even basic detours.

So apply a coach or seasoned rider to TSS, and then you have a decent feedback loop that can allow you to make large gains. The feedback loop is the number 1 thing that helps the program keep going and helps you keep off your ass and fresh vs mentally fried and either over or under trained.

Although I think we would all agree that TSS is just a tool, like speed, power, HR, etc, by itself it is worthless and tells you little to nothing.

Brian Ratliff

Yea, I trained with a powermeter for a while a several years ago. It was great to illuminate what I was actually good at. I could peg 1600W regularly and I could stay above 1kW for (at least) 25 seconds. But my threshold put me at a decent but low-ish W/kg (and all I was doing at the time was training threshold).

I was originally puzzled by the TSS scale because of the well known phenomena whereas if you stop for 15 minutes vs. not stopping for 15 minutes, your TSS is different, and if you add an hour of zeros to the end of the ride, the TSS goes up all by itself. I dug around the formula a bit found the problem; basically TSS is proportional to the square root of training time or some such thing. I made up a new scale that fixed that problem (Google "Daniel's Points") but I ended up selling the powermeter before I really did much with the formula. This was before I was sprinting on the track.

As for the sprinter comment... ... well, lets just say I did two sprint intervals last Tuesday. I was physically ill after the first and I was actually afraid of the second. I did it, but I could barely walk afterwards and the pukey feeling lasted until after I got home. It was definitely (at least) the equivalent of a two hour Sunday ride in terms of training stress, just those two intervals alone.