Good morning everyone. For less than a month I moved to a new city, I live (unlike before where it was all flat) in the Alps, and I often climb widely above 1000 meters of altitude.
I have noticed that by not being trained and acclimatized to this new city yet, my heart and my watts are very misaligned. For example, two days ago doing a workout with very hard climbs (Gavia and Mortirolo), at the end of the training, my TSS was only 240, while the TSS calculated per heart was 340 (my sensations matched 340 ).
I wonder: does it make sense to use TSS per watt with training above 1500m and not being acclimatized? Or would it be better to use the TSS calculated for per heart or TRIMP?
For example, it is perhaps appropriate in this case to use in the calculation of the NP the value of the adjusted watts for the unacclimated (subsequently acclimatized) altitude, and not the average watts. So that even the TSS will be different.
Mine are just speculations, but I really don’t know if it finds scientific value.
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What altitude were you at before moving?
What altitude are you staying at now?
What about temperature? I’m reading reports of extraordinary high summer temperatures in many parts of the northern hemisphere.
The stress of moving, and a change, might not feel bad, but it might also be adding to the cumulative effects.
do you mean the difference in altitude and temperature from where I lived before to where I am now, or the differences during training that I mention above?
I mean the difference between where you living were before compared to now.
I lived in Seville where in summer the average temperature is above 35 degrees, with peaks of over 45 and at night it does not go below 30 (Andalusia Spain as a region is the hottest in Europe).
Now I live in Trento in Trentino Alto Adige (Dolomites Italy) and here in summer it does not go above 35 degrees and at night we are at 15 degrees. But I think the most important difference is in the humidity: Seville is dry as a desert, while here the humidity is very high and even if with over 10 degrees less you suffer and sweat more.
I don’t mention winters which are obviously even more different than summers.
The Garmin from 100% acclimatization that I had before the move, has gone to zero, and only now after 3 weeks it begins to recover, now I am at 10% (I don’t know how reliable these data are, but I wanted to mention it).
I think you have answered your question by describing what happened in the last month. Your body has had to adjust to the climate, as well as the move. The additional elevation you refer to in your first post, when riding, plus the changes would show you aren’t 100% ready.
Give it a few more weeks and you should see a difference. Use your Garmin to track your acclimatization, but look at the trend over time, compared to other stressful times, to get a trend rather than an absolute value.
Yes, I agree, so the TSS calculation in this case could be incorrect.
Yes, it probably is. If the effort feels harder compared another activity with a similar effort but giving the same TSS, then it is off.
Marco: the effect of being at altitude and changing climate is well known. The following website gives information about the loss of power that altitude causes. For example at 1000m above sea level [~4000 feet], there is a loss of 5-7% in power in non-acclimatised athletes. As you acclimatise, the loss diminishes, but never disappears.
You have two options. [1] Do an FTP test at altitude; [2] drop your FTP by 5-7% while you are not acclimatised, and gradually reduce that drop to about 3%. All assuming that the altitude is 1000m; use bigger drops if higher [the table on the web page tells you how much].
Once you have adjusted your FTP for these rides, your TSS will automatically rise correspondingly.
The web site is:
The Effect of Racing at Altitude | TrainingPeaks.
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You can see the effect if you add the altitude adjusted power traces:
yes yes, already done, but I was looking for a way to calculate the training load with a formula that used unacclimated watts rather than average ones. if this has no scientific value then I will use the trimp or the tsshr
Marco: from the website I referenced, aerobic power as a percentage of that available at sea level for non-acclimatised athletes is given by
non-acclimatized athletes (1-7 days at altitude): y = 0.178×3 – 1.43×2 – 4.07x + 100 (R2 = 0.974)
where x is elevation in km and the Ă— sign means exponent not multiplier.
So at some altitude you do A watts, say. That A watts is only equivalent to y percent of what you could do at seal level, S. That is
A = yS/100, or
S = 100A/y.
That’s the formula you are looking for [as far as altitude is concerned, anyway].
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