Potential bug: Exercise load too low on Training Peaks imported workout

I am not 100% sure if I would notice this issue if I did have it because I don’t pay much attention to the Garmin load metric, but I have some questions that may help me look and see if I have the same thing happening to me.

What are you using as the target?  Pace?  Heart rate?  Running power?

Are you executing the workout on your Garmin using Garmin’s own Run activity or are you using a third party app? (for example, I use Stryd and often use their Stryd Workout app so I can have a power target)

What makes you believe that the load is low?  Are you comparing it to similar runs you have done without running a workout?  Or...?

Because they aren't the same.

Training peaks is TSS based and Garmin is epoc based. 

They are different metrics. 

I am doing the workout based on heart rate. When I add them to my TP calendar, they automatically populate my Garmin calendar and show up on the watch when I select Run, so I confirm on the watch that I am doing that workout. And yes, for comparison, I have several courses I routinely run, and I am just applying these workouts to those same courses, so I have plenty of historical data and these particular runs do not match what they've been in the past. For instance, a 56 minute run last week in my Zone 2 heart rate produced a training load of 189 on Garmin, but todays 60 minute run in Zone 2 produced 29. Last week's was a programmed workout that I built in Garmin Connect, but today's was Training Peaks. Both runs had programmed warmup, run, cool down sections. It seems to me that something in the TP workouts stops getting counted by the watch when the section changes.

It doesn't matter a ton since I use TP for most of my tracking, but I like the Garmin tools as well and feel like this could be a problem that should be addressed.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

jose.cboliveira said:

Because they aren't the same.

Training peaks is TSS based and Garmin is epoc based. 

They are different metrics. 

Totally agree. TSS and Garmin Load are different metrics.

TSS is more sensitive to duration, Garmin Load is more sensitive to intensity.

TSS will reward a 2 hour zone 2 run with a high stress score, Garmin will reward a 40 minute track sprint session.

This has nothing to do with TSS. It's entirely about Garmin's exercise load and whether a workout that was built in TP is causing a bug that fails to measure the entire workout in Garmin Connect for the purposes of exercise load.

I had my share of running with workouts synced to Garmin from TP directly or via Stryd, on several Garmin watches. 

Is what gets uploaded to TP the same as what you see in Garmin Connect and watch history?

If you were to create a similar structured workout directly in Garmin Connect and execute it, what the TP and GC scores would be?

Are your lactate threshold and heart rate zones the same between TP and GC? 

Are your rest/max HR values correct in GC?

Are you using TSS, hrTSS, or rTSS for your training load in TP? 

Because for me an easy 10-miler run might get a training load of 121 in GC, qualified as base, while the same run would be 104 TSS / 135 rTSS / 84 hrTSS in TP. As you see, the difference can be quite substantial within TP provided values, irrespective of Garmin, simply based on how your running/power/HR zones are set up.

Curiously, a 40-minute tempo run that's marked as tempo will get the same 120 training load score in GC but only 53 TSS / 69 rTSS / 40 hrTSS in TP.

So, yeah... unless your zone/thresholds are completely mismatched between TP and GC, I don't think your problem has anything to do with bugs, and everything to do with the way TSS and Training Load values get calculated. If you have a Polar device or use Runalyze, put a workout there and observe yet another training load value that won't be matching either Garmin or TP.