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Training Load suddenly dropped to 1/3 of normal

Starting March 12th, the calculated Training Load after a bike ride has dropped to about 1/3 of what it historically has been for many years. As I'm riding the same MTB route with about same intensity most Sundays, it's quite apparent right away. But I'm also see the same drops for indoor smart trainer rides, resulting in steep dropoffs also in Training Status report. Training Stress Score seems unaffected, however the calculated recovery time has also dropped dramatically, e.g. from about 20h for a medium recovery ride to instead 3h...

Other than the loss of self-esteem in seeing myself not meeting training status targets at all and the report showing a sharply declining effort (which is not true) and wrong guidance on recovery time etc., it may not have some real impact - but super annoying none the less.

I see I have version 9.73 installed and I think I remember I got that some weeks back, so may be related to that but not certain at all.

Anyone else experiencing this and know of a solution?

Allan

0 6307640 over 1 year ago

Hello,

The same thing happens to me. For a couple of weeks, I have not been able to improve the aerobic base and it is difficult for me to reach the threshold or VO2 maximum. Today 2 steep climbs of 600m in MTB through the Pyrenees at 10-16% and tightening a lot and it tells me that I have improved base with a 3.5 of aerobics in Training Effect, when I would have easily achieved a 4.5 or more. As for effort points in this activity, it gives me 150, when I would have easily done 250. Obviously, I have not changed the intervals of the pulsation zones and I have checked them and they are fine.

One hypothesis is that my heart rate monitor is wrong: battery worn out or that the band is deteriorated. Another option is that the morning cold (0-1 degrees C at the exit) affects the reading of the heart rate monitor. But I don't think so because in the previous weeks of February with the intense cold, this didn't happen. The band is two years old and I use it for 6 hours a week. Another option is that I'm very strong! right now. It's true that I've been training very hard lately, but the change has been important over the same routes as you explain. That it's the same thing that happens to another guy in an MTB Spanish forum.

No idea of whats going on...

Carles

0 allanhvass over 1 year ago in reply to 6307640

I found the issue: I had my Garmin to Automatic for the max heart rate. Apparently I had a misreading of about 225bpm some weeks ago that changed the max heart rate to that, instead of the correct approx. 185. Therefore, suddenly the Garmin thought I wasn't very much under pressure, even when doing exercise at about 170bpm... Check your configured max heart rate and possibly change it to manual instead of automatic if there's a very wrong number there.

Also if your measured heart rate is much too low, it would affect the score in the same way, but that should be more obvious from your regular readings, you would probably know quite quickly if your measured heart rate is much too low.

0 6307640 over 1 year ago in reply to allanhvass

Thank you very much allanhvass. Yes, this is a clue. My max Heart Rate is automatic on my Garmin, and my HR max go up from 175 to 178 last December because I was not very fit at that time. This could be explain part of the issue, however such a minor difference couldn't explain everything. Maybe the problem is the measured HR. I will check my HR measurement gear in the next days and I will post what I have found out.