Does anyone enter swim info to WKO+? If so, how?
By defining training paces in TrainingPeaks I can actually get a (beta) calculation of IF and TSS for swim workouts. It doesn't look like WKO has the same functionality but I guess I could create a manual workout and enter in the values.
Does anyone bother with this, and if so, how do you implement it?
(btw, my underlying data for swims is from an FR60, although I use a macro to edit the TCX file and add distances to each lap so the data is pretty good).
Thanks, Matt
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Finis has a new watch out that uploads directly into TP. For now, my method is close enough.
I give myself 1 TSS point for every minute swimming and subtract a WAG number for the amount of time I estimate that was spent lollygagging on the side of the pool.
@Will, I know you have often mentioned in the past that you don't think swimming is a "free" in terms of fatigue and I agree with you. There's a big difference in how I would feel, both mentally and physically, if I go home at the end of a day and just plunk down on the couch and kick my feet up versus doing a hard set at the pool. I think swimming should be incorporated into your PMC if you are trying to really gauge overall fatigue / training stress.
How are you guys going about manual entry for these swims? I've tried to do this in the past and I don't recall WKO ever letting me assign TSS to a generic workout, but rather I had to copy some workout that had TSS calculated for it, like a run or a bike, and then paste it in for the day that I swam / did a unrecorded workout. I'm not too thrilled about this method.
Lastly about the SwimSense too, I've been really interested about that watch. Say what you want about the purity of swimming, you can't buy your way to success, blah blah blah, Pace has been a HUGE in my ability to improve my run, and I couldn't imagine training without power anymore. I think leveraging something similar in swimming would be phenomenal, but I find the first few entries into the market (as always) a little undercooked / under supported. I'm definitely going to be keeping my eyes on that product area though.
I also award myself 1 TSS point for each minute of ACTUAL swimming. I add 10-15% for doing a super hard interval workout and subtract 10-15% if swimming EZ or drilling. Not perfect but close enough for me and if you do it the same way consistently, it is useful.
Getting these numbers into WKO is proving very difficult. I've tried it 2 ways:
1. Importing the FR60 file as a "swim" via device agent, then right click on it in the calendar and enter an "override" for TSS. The problem is that (a) WKO doesn't let me put in an IF, and (b) the workout time changes when you enter in a TSS override (freakin' strange), and (c) even without the changed time, the workout time shown by WKO is the elapsed time not the workout time.
2. Entering a "manual workout". This is very clunky (for example, you must round to the nearest minute). More problematic is that when you enter TSS and IF in the "manual workout, WKO changes the workout time, average speed, and adds a value for "power" (again, freakin' strange).
In both of the above, the workouts were defined as "swim".
I'll keep experimenting...
In using WKO+ I just manually enter a workout as a swim and then save it. I then click on the Calendar tab, right click on my manual entry, select override, enter the TSS number and am done.
I don't worry about the IF.
I don't fuss around in TP much because it's always seemed of very limited use to me without a premium account. Since I seem to recall that you can't do a training device upload on a free account, I wouldn't think you could get the sTSS on a free account either.
This is the conspiracy theory side of me, but I've long since got the impression that TP has been slowly trying to phase WKO out of the picture for some time now. They've been rolling more and more features from WKO into TP.com, and now are continuing to add features to TP that it does not look like they will push into WKO, at least any time soon. It makes perfect sense to me why they'd want to nudge you out of WKO, at that point they've already sold you WKO and made their money, if they can get you to shell out for an unreasonable (to me) online subscription, it's a win-win for them.
Anyway, thanks for the tips about manual swim entry.
For example, a number of the OS swim hacks had 6-10x150 (15') as 100 hard, 50 easy as the main set. That workout was quite similar to the VO2 max workouts on the bike and run. So, I found a VO2 max run workout that had about 8-12 minutes of work intervals and a duration of 35-45 minutes. The TSS and IF numbers from that workout made sense, so I used them as swim numbers.
1. Upload workout into Polar software and enter the lap distances
2. Copy all that into a spreadsheet, and have the s/sheet calc TSS and IF.
3. Manually create a workout in WKO (tip - select File, then 'Manual Workout Entry' rather than right click on the calendar as you get different screens/fields you can enter).
4. Fill in time (in whole minutes), distance, TSS and IF. Note once all entered go back and change time again to correct entry and TSS also (need to overwrite system calc'd numbers)
5. Upload workout to TP
Yes bit of a long process - now I have a Finis swimsense. Agree it still needs quite a bit of work - especially for during the swim session (super hard to read and limited fields to show), and you can also not yet edit any workout data in their website etc etc. But overall I have a much simpler process and more data in terms of stroke counts, paces during swims etc etc. My process now is upload the workout to their website and there you go - it's in TP with TSS and IF calculated. I still manually create a workout in WKO so I can see my PMC chart in WKO but overall has saved a heap of time. TSS and IF in TP seem close so far but did have to set swim threshold speed in TP correctly. To be honest I haven't checked the calc's in too much detail, when I get a chance will do so.