Originally Posted by
MoAlpha
Training Stress Score. It represents the theoretical exercise stress of a ride and is a function of intensity (expressed relative to FTP) and duration. Sixty min. at FTP is arbitrarily assigned a TSS of 100, if I remember correctly. Looks like Terry means total TSS per week.
It's a little more arcane than that but that's essentially it. So if 100 represents an hour at FTP, a weekly TSS score of 500 is supposed to represent 5 hours of riding at FTP. Terry occasionally does weeks of 1000 TSS, which approximates 10 hours at FTP: it may take him more than 10 hours to do that (or, rarely I hope, sometimes less than 10 hours) but that's a rough way to summarize both duration and intensity of a week's worth of rides.
The TSS model isn't perfect but for broad strokes it's not terrible, and I'd say it's often better than just tracking distance per week or time per week alone.