I was looking at the Intertools thread with the Joe Friel training plan importer.
When I mapped out a training plan, it had the estimated TSS of about 650. The weekly load tallies in Intervals.icu came out to about 225-250.
Thinking they were equivalent, jumping from 225 to 650 seemed too much. But the plan itself didn’t look that far off from the volume I was already doing.
So I went to TP and checked what it computed my TSS scores to be for the last couple of months…These were in the 550-650 range.
At that point I chalked it up to some kind of difference between the two metrics rather than reflecting a difference in actual volume and imported the plan.
But…surprise…the intervals.icu weekly load for the imported plan was 650!
Ok. Quick (I hope) summary:
Exact same activities sync’d from Garmin Connect to Intervals.icu and TP
TSS on TP says 550
Load on intervals says 225
Import training plan that says 650 TSS and looks about the same as my current load (little more) and it says 550 Load in intervals icu
So, question is…if they’re supposed to be almost the same magnitude of a score…why is intervals.icu computing about 1/2 the amount as TP for the same activities?
Just to close the loop, after updating my FTP in TP and recalculating TSS for a week or two…the numbers for biking are way closer. Within a few points.
If you want them to be close for all historical data, you need to set the historical FTP the same on both.
If you now trust what Intervals says, and you plan to stop using TP, it doesn’t matter.
That’s to be expected. There are too many different ways to calculate HR load.
I also don’t have power on my MTB yet, but the HR load from MTB is reasonably similar if you use ‘Time in HR zones’ and have enough data with both HR and Power from your road bike. There will still be differences because MTB is inherently more spiky, something that is not well reflected by HR.
