Priority targets affects load, fatige, fitness or form?

1

Hi!

I have a question about how the “preferred order” for Pace, HR and Power works, and if this order affects the values for load/intensity for workouts, and form/fatigue/fitness on Fitness section. I refer to these settings:

Intervals priorities
Intervals priorities1092×246 26.3 KB

Intervals priorities2

For my run activities, I usually plan my workouts based on pace zones, and few days ago I see that on the preferences, the order for the priorities was “HR, Pace, Power”. I feel that this order is pretty good to calculate the load or effort for a workout, even if I plan it based on pace zones. So, my question is if I change this order, but the zones (HR and pace) remains the same, will my future workouts calculate the load as now?

For example, if I do a workout using the order “HR, Pace, Power” with a load of 85, if I had done the same workout with order “Pace, HR, Power”, the load it would have been 85 too, and in consequence, the fitness/form change in the same way?

I hope I expressed myself correctly.

Thanks a lot for your help!

2

For planned workouts the training load is calculated based on the target of the workout (Pace, HR or Power). The “Workouts” drop down selects the preferred target. So if you are executing the workout using power then the load is calculated using power. For a workout specified using pace and HR then pace would be the default target and used for load given your current settings.

Load for future workouts will likely only change if you edit the workout or move it around etc…

The “Training Load Priority” setting is for completed activities.

1 Like
3

Hi, David, thanks for your response!

So, If I change the “Training Load Priority”, the activity load (after completed) will be calculated depending on the selected order? For example, if I select “HR, Pace, Power”, and I don’t have HR data for this activity, the Pace zones will be used for the load, is this correct?

4

Yes that is correct.

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5

"Hello everyone,

I didn’t want to start a new topic as this is related to the previous discussion, and I would appreciate your input.

Before posting here, I switched to ‘Training Load Priority’ set to ‘Power, HR, Pace,’ and updated everything accordingly. However, my running sessions are still categorized by ‘HR, Pace, Power’ since I usually train based on RPE and Power.

I really like using Intervals.icu, but I still maintain an Excel sheet where I record data from all my sessions, applying RPE (on a scale from 1 to 10) to assess the difficulty of each workout.

Most months in my spreadsheet show a polarized or pyramidal distribution, based on RPE, with the majority of sessions in Zone 1.

On Intervals.icu, my status is usually reported as being in ‘Base’ phase. Indeed, the majority of my workouts are in Zone 1 (RPE 3-4), but I also do higher intensity sessions 1-2 times per week (RPE 7.5-8.5).

To clarify before any questions arise: for my rowing workouts, my Power values are often higher than my HR settings. I rarely reach high HR numbers during Z4-Z5 interval sessions unless it’s during a test or assessment, for example. On the SkiErg, however, my HR tends to be quite high even at lower intensities.

Despite these variations, I’ve changed the priority to Power, HR, Pace (as there still seem to be some errors when calculating Pace for rowing and SkiErg, I prefer to prioritize HR over Pace).

Do you have any suggestions?

  • Should I keep things as they are?
  • Could I be missing something?
  • Do you have any other suggestions to better align with my RPE and calculate the totals accordingly?"