I use a Stages PM to capture my power and I’m trying tofigure out the best way to compare the intensity of different rides. As an example, in the past week I did oneride of 65 miles that had an overall power of 147W.However, this ride includes 10 miles to getto the start of the ride and 15 miles home that are at only a moderate pace anddon’t cause much stress while the middle 40 miles of the actual ride were at158W.I’m comparing this ride to onedone two days later that was 50 miles at 168W but we took a 14 minute storestop in the middle of the ride.I cantell you the 40 miles of the first ride was much tougher than the 50 mile rid,ebut the numbers suggest otherwise – unless the rest makes that much of adifference?Thanks

What head unit are you using to record the power output and other ride data?

You can (probably, depending on head unit) hit the LAP button at key points to break your data up. You said you did a 65 mile ride but the first 10 miles were "the approach" and the last 15 were similar, it's the "middle" 40 miles that you were there for. So you hit lap after 10 miles when the "real" ride begins, and again at 50 when it ends. Now you have metrics for the approach, the ride, and the exit.

Have you found your FTP yet? Once you have that, the intensity factor (IF) for a ride is a great measure of intensity. Normalized power (NP) does a better job than average power of describing how much effort was involved. And total work done.

This is what I use Training Peaks for. It will calculate a training stress score, which is exactly what you're looking for. There are other programs that do similar things: Golden Cheetah, Cycling Analytics, and the premium version of Strava.

Thanks Seattle, I use the Garmin 510. To get the average power I've been using the segments in Strava (e.g. 158W for the 40 miles on the first ride and 168W for the second ride). Caloso - I'm currently in a free trial period with TP, the TSS on the first ride was 283 and 224 on the second ride.

Have you done an FTP test yet? 224 tss for a 50 mile ride is a lot unless you were drilling it the entire time.

Does the 510 calculate TSS for you? My 800 and Fenix 3 do, the 800 (I think) is older than the 510. You should be able to see it while you ride and (I think?) in the summary afterwards. You should also see it on Garmin Connect.

Caloso - Yeah, TP recommended I update my FTP after that ride which I did but I think that will only effect TSS on go-forward rides. However, regardless of the #, my main objective it what to look at to compare rides. It does seem that TSS is better than power as the higher TSS occurred on the lower power ride.
Seattle - I don't think the 510 calculates TSS on the fly but I'm not really concerned about that. On my rides I either stay with the group or I don't. I'm more concerned with being able to sit back later and analyze my weeks or months and be a little more analytical when deciding if it was a hard week or not.

You need to read the book Training and Racing with Power Meter by Allen & Coggan, and then use TP, Cycling Analytics, Golden Cheetah or really anything other than Strava to track your training load.

First step, as others have mentioned, is to get an accurate FTP, all the other metrics that quantify difficulty drive off that.

In TP i think you can re-calculate the TSS metrics after you update your FTP - but I don't remember how.

I don't use TP but suspect you can go back and adjust your FTP for particular dates and it will update TSS for all rides affected. Certainly works that way with Golden Cheetah.

I think that if you update your FTP, delete the file, and re-enter it, TP will recalculate TSS for that ride.

tracking the training load (CTL) is important for planning recovery.

The 510 does calculate TSS. I have it on my main screen along with NP and AP.