TrainingPeaks
Year #1 with EN is coming to an end ( I joined in Oct 2013) and I have seen improvements in my swim, bike and run that I never thought were possible. I have also learned more about triathlons in the past year with EN than in my previous 4 years racing triathlons without EN. One of the great things I learned was the keep a log of all your workouts. Prior to EN, I would upload my data to Garmin Connect, but never analyzed anything or never kept track of week-to-week or month-to-month volume. Earlier this year I signed up for Strava and later on signed up for the premium account ( $6/month) because I wanted to be able to see my 25W distribution and my power curve. I currently use Golden Cheetah to track cycling workouts and do better analysis.
Earlier this week I signed up for free TrainingPeaks account because their ads keep popping up on Facebook and many EN users often post graphs and track performance with TP. I signed up for the 7 day free Premium account to check out all their cool features. The question I have is if it is worth to pay $120 / year for a TP account. It all looks really cool and they have tons of charts, but will I be able to do better analysis, and thereby will I be able to improve my performance based on this analysis by signing up for TP.
It looks like it could be really helpful to keep track of swimming, biking and running performace and volume with one program. I like the performance chart in Golden Cheetah, but it is only for cycling. I think being able to use this for running could really help my running in the long run.
In TP, I see they use TSS for swimming and running as well. Anyone know what this is based on?
Thanks for feedback and adivce.
Comments
I also use both TP and Strava (premium on both). I wish TP had the social components that Strava has. I log all workouts into both. I like the complete aspect of TP (s/b/r all in one place) with the TSS chart. I like the social components of Strava (KOM, seeing friends/teammates workouts, etc.). In prep for IMTX, I found the motivation from seeing other team members workouts on Strava to be critical....many days I did NOT want to the prescribed workout....but then I'd see other EN members doing that workout and I'd suck it up and do it too! I wish TP had that feature.
As far as the TSS calculations in TP, there are links within it that explain how TP calculates TSS for s/b/r (based off of your FTP, T-pace, and 5k or 10K of HM times, etc.). If you manually input a workout (Garmin dies, forgot Garmin, etc.) you have to input your estimated TSS.
I don't think both (or either really) are "necessary", but I like data and being able to track stuff and wasting valuable time on this sort of thing! Not sure which one I'd choose if I could only choose one?
@ Jeff .. Do you know about tapiriik.com? For a truly nominal $2/ year, it will automagically transfer your workout files from one online site to another. E g, i load all wkos to Garmin Connect, and they automatically appear in Strava within the hour. Ditto for TP and other sites. Load tp one, say TP, and no need to bother loading again to Garmin Connect or Strava or anywhere else they offer...lots of options. There is a competing service I havent tried and forget the name of.
I would not hold my breath for WKO 4.0 but it still is at least theoretically in the works.