Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Geeking Out w/ Metrics

I was reading Friel's Total Heart Rate Training last night.  In it he discusses a way of quantifying workload call TRIMP.
Basically you multiply the minutes you spend in each zone by that zone, add the numbers together and Viola! You've got your TRIMP.
Any chance to play with numbers is a good time in my book so I started looking back through workouts where I wore a HRM.
First thing I found is I didn't wear a HRM very much last year.
But here are a few of my results.  I also includes Strava's "Suffer Score" as a comparison.

On a snowy ride over the weekend my TRIMP was 308, Suffer Score (SS) was 93
One of my first hard efforts of the year TRIMP=471, SS=135
LSD ride TRIMP=593, SS=140
another LSD ride TRIMP=530, SS=122
and at a mtb race, Hodges Village Dam, TRIMP=521, SS=201

The thing that just doesn't jive for me is the value the LSD rides hold.  How do they have the highest value, when afterwards once I've had something to eat I'm pretty much good to go? 

I've always felt Strava shafts mtb rides by using a speed metric in their equation, but at least they rate a race effort higher than a ride out to Red Riding Hood's Basket for treats.  Still 2 1/2 hours in the snow, or 2 3/4 hours of hills on the fixed gear take a lot more out of me than LSD.

Right about now is when I'm expecting Mookie to chime in telling me to get a powermeter.  Maybe I should be thankful I don't have the fiscal liquidity to make such an investment.

1 comment:

Hill Junkie said...

Yeah, most riders OD on metrics when they first get a power meter. There are more ways to stat power meter data than baseball. Really.

LSD rides shouldn't make you feel trashed. They train a different part of your system, as you know. Part of the beauty of LSD rides is you can do a whole lot of it in a few week period without overtraining, yet you are building your cardio fitness. That's the problem with single number "value scores" for rides. Whether it be TSS, Suffer Score, total kJ, or TRIMP, it will always be biased one way or another.