I work a ten day cycle so traditional 7day week training plans have never worked for me. I have tried to adapt to create my own 10day plans but Strava’s feedback on training intensity etc. is always across seven days.
I’ve just set up a training peaks account hoping it would be more adaptable and could show TSS over a rolling 10day period but I can’t figure that out either.
Does anyone have any experience with alternate length of training “week” and know tools which work with it?
Hi.
I have a 10 day rota at work so my training is always based on that.
First thing I’d say is don’t over think it. The key is just making sure you get a good spread of sessions in.
So that would be something like 3 runs, 3 rides, 3 swims, 2 strength sessions… ish. I don’t think it really matters how they appear. I commute on bike for 2 days and 2 nights. before my first night i’ll either do a run or a gym session. Then on my days off I’ll do a couple of runs, 2 swim sessions and and maybe a long ride, depending on what time of the year it is.
Regarding Training Peaks, I’d have a look at Intervals.icu. There is a thread on here about it. You may be able to set your training load to 10 days instead of 7.
I’ve checked and you can set training load in Intervals.icu to any time you want, so setting to 10 days would make it easier for you to track your training.
Yeah also thought of intervals.icu as a way of tracking if you want to use the the TSS/ATL framework as that allows user to adjust the time frame.
As for the actual training I read a bit last year of people suggesting moving to longer microcycles, seems to work well, especially as a way to avoid feeling like you have to cram in set type of sessions into 7 days.
If you have a 10 day work cycle then it seems a 10 day training cycle would definitely be more beneficial and easier to get routine.
The tracking bit is just secondary, and a quite inaccurate guide imo (but I’m a sceptic on a lot of this stuff). Even without it I’d assume you could have a fairly good idea of whether one 10 day period was a build on the last one once you get in the swing of it.
Yeah I’m with @chriswim there. Whilst I love tracking and monitoring progress etc on the various platforms, I don’t rely on them.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that Training Peaks for example really overestimated tss compared to running (especially when hills and technical terrain are involved), and this really can skew the data. I can go for a 2 hour pootle on my bike and it’ll give me a higher tss than a 1 hour hard run on hilly terrain.
I also tracked my pure running mileage over both a 10 day period, a 7 day rolling and a normal 7 day period. Due to the way in which I could get my running (double days most days) sometimes I’d find that I’d covered 50km+ in about 29 hours if I didn’t take a slightly wider view of what was going on.
Sorry, don’t know much about the science of it all. But as another example of 1 I have a good mate who is a high volume, very talented athlete, and he works in air traffic control on 4 day shifts (I think). So he plans in 12 day blocks. Worked for him for years.
Quite common for elites to train 10 days on 2-4 light, as they dont have a day job to worry about. Its quite a good length to build, recover without the need for extended recovery “weeks” which can cause detraining and leave you lethargic for a few days after. AS for logging, just use TP and dont sweat the arbitrary stats like TSS and CTL. Its a guide only anyway, go on feel
Thanks all for the input, I’d never heard of intervals.icu so I’ll definitely have a look at that.
I’m writing up my own plan with some new aspects such as reverse periodization for the cycling alongside traditional running base.
I like the idea of the weekly intensity chart on Strava for some reassurance my workloads are as intended but as it’s weekly it’s largely meaningless as it fluctuates depending where my harder sessions fall.
I certainly won’t be relying on TSS but it’s an interesting viewpoint on my workload, what I’d be more keen to see is a breakdown of time spent in each of my training zones across the 10days. Hopefully intervals.icu offers this too.
Yes it does, and it does it in a really nice graphical way that explains your ‘style’ of training.
I’ve eventually found the time to sit down and setup my intervals.icu account. I immediately like the graphical overview of heart rate zones, exactly what I was after!
There are no shortage of options and data, so much so I can’t seem to find where to change the length of my training load to 10days as suggested earlier in the conversation.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Hi. Glad your getting on with Intervals.
The option your looking for is on the fitness page. Options menu, top of page. Select Fitness days from drop down menu. Set it as required…
Thanks for the reply @Midlife_Trisis
When I select Fitness Days it offers me the length of period that “fatigue” and “fitness” are calculated across.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t this the period it uses to calculate fatigue and fitness rather than produce a training load number across an alternate length such as 10days?
My understanding is that fatigue is your training load. If you look at the value on the left ( training load ) it corresponds to your fatigue value. The training load per day is a rolling number and I have mine set to 10 days.
I’ve been trying to look into this further, but I admit I’m confused.
What I really want to find is a 10day TSS score to line up with my training cycles as the 7day scores are somewhat meaningless for me.
The fatigue score is described as an exponentially weighted average of training load, I assume this means more recent activities score higher than those 10days ago. I can’t see how I can use this as a replacement for TSS score which simply adds up my training load for a given period?
So basically you want all the TSS for sessions added together and / 10 days to give daily avg of last 10 day microcycle? Rather than using TP ATL figure which is over 7 days?
Under Activites there is “Load” figure for each 7day period, I believe this equates to TSS in Training Peaks. I would like this figure collated across 10day periods ideally so it captures all the sessions in my training cycles.
As for Fatigue or ATL, I’m not entirely sure how this is calculated, it says it’s an exponentionally weighted average of training load so I assume that more recent sessions weigh more heavily rather than a straight average of the period?
Is there a way with a spreadsheet to collate everything, @Poet will sort it 
ATL I thought was just last 7 days rolling TSS average but I don’t pay a lot of attention to it to be honest, as I think its a bit flawed as a system for multisport
I think spooner wrote one?
It’s not hard, it’s just a formula.
As a consultant, I’d not recommend the use of excel
Day rate is negotiable.
Think I must be misunderstanding, as you can change the number of days the fatigue and fitness (equivalent to Atl/ctl in TP speak) are calculated over in Intervals.icu.
On the fitness page, click a drop down arrow, and then ‘fitness days’, and you can set it to whatever you like.
Eta: sorry, realised I think your issue is with it being exponentially weighted rather than not being able to change it from 7 to 10.