Your skepticism of FOR really resonates with me. I'm a 52 yo ski mountaineer/peakbagger who started structured run training early this year using teh typical 3 on 1 rest week schedule. Completed my first 50K but also ran pretty deeply into OTS and don't feel like I built a lot of fitness given the effort. Pretty sure 99% of that kind of overreaching.
Yeah man, I really think that the older you get the less "functional" FOR really is. For some young and genetically gifted people it can work a bit, you can "bounce" off of rock bottom, but it's pretty damn rare.
Hi, Joe. Q: After establishing some history with it, is the Training Peaks 'Form' value useful to help decide training load on a given day? I.e. Four days after a big effort, TP Form = (-11). Factoring that with how I feel, an easy 1 hr effort seems like the max for today, or maybe that's still too much for recovery. Curious how much weight the Form value should carry for training decisions.
First off, in order for the TP form to be super useful, you need really good data! If you're using hrTSS, then you need to be pretty sure that you used a chest strap every day, and that it's working pretty well, and that all your TSS values are actually hrTSS and not other forms.
Secondly, there are a TON of things that can affect your form that TrainingPeaks doesn't know about. Did you sleep well last night? Did you eat enough carbs during your workouts yesterday? Did you fight with your spouse this morning? All these things have REAL impacts on fatigue levels today, but there's no way to add them into TP's math.
As a result, I really only use Form for long-term (more than a week out) planning purposes. I use it to make sure the training is close, and then watch closely for the outside factors and how they do/don't affect training.
In your situation, my first question would be: What was the goal for today? Is it to add fatigue through a key workout, or to reduce fatigue but maintain volume? And were you tired yesterday? If today is a key workout, then bag it, sounds like you're too tired. If today is a volume day, and you felt good yesterday, then go out and go suuuuper easy. Remember that the important thing is the next key workout. If you were tired yesterday, then an hour today would probably too much, just take it off!
Your skepticism of FOR really resonates with me. I'm a 52 yo ski mountaineer/peakbagger who started structured run training early this year using teh typical 3 on 1 rest week schedule. Completed my first 50K but also ran pretty deeply into OTS and don't feel like I built a lot of fitness given the effort. Pretty sure 99% of that kind of overreaching.
Yeah man, I really think that the older you get the less "functional" FOR really is. For some young and genetically gifted people it can work a bit, you can "bounce" off of rock bottom, but it's pretty damn rare.
Hi, Joe. Q: After establishing some history with it, is the Training Peaks 'Form' value useful to help decide training load on a given day? I.e. Four days after a big effort, TP Form = (-11). Factoring that with how I feel, an easy 1 hr effort seems like the max for today, or maybe that's still too much for recovery. Curious how much weight the Form value should carry for training decisions.
Hey Jan! Good question, and thanks for reading!
First off, in order for the TP form to be super useful, you need really good data! If you're using hrTSS, then you need to be pretty sure that you used a chest strap every day, and that it's working pretty well, and that all your TSS values are actually hrTSS and not other forms.
Secondly, there are a TON of things that can affect your form that TrainingPeaks doesn't know about. Did you sleep well last night? Did you eat enough carbs during your workouts yesterday? Did you fight with your spouse this morning? All these things have REAL impacts on fatigue levels today, but there's no way to add them into TP's math.
As a result, I really only use Form for long-term (more than a week out) planning purposes. I use it to make sure the training is close, and then watch closely for the outside factors and how they do/don't affect training.
In your situation, my first question would be: What was the goal for today? Is it to add fatigue through a key workout, or to reduce fatigue but maintain volume? And were you tired yesterday? If today is a key workout, then bag it, sounds like you're too tired. If today is a volume day, and you felt good yesterday, then go out and go suuuuper easy. Remember that the important thing is the next key workout. If you were tired yesterday, then an hour today would probably too much, just take it off!
Thanks, Joe! Time to recover from the fall objective and move to snow. Yay!
Thanks Joe: this is a superb explainer.
Thanks for reading Bert!