Survey time!

Done

Some of the early returns are in, thanks! I'm curious for those that said Data Analysis was important to them...what, exactly?

I'm admittedly trying to kick the hornet nest here and stir up a genuinely provocative discussion, but what does the analysis it tell you from a training perspective? I'm talking about TSS here, so if you're looking at it for cadence/stroke or power/pace consistency, that's a different concept, and let's leave that aside for now, because that's a simple thing to observe and a simple thing to understand. But talking about TSS, or more generically 'training load...'If I look at my TSS for a bike session, I find I nod my head and say, "aha, that was a big effort", or if I look at cumulative TSS for a week I might say "Gee, that was a light week for TSS", but I don't think that influences my training in a prescriptive way. It does *somewhat* influence my planning, however - meaning I won't plan a 'heavy' day following a 'heavy' day, unless it's followed by a 'light' day or 'recovery' day the next.

I'm not saying TSS is completely useless of course - if I've planned two workouts on Friday and another on Saturday for a cumulative load of (arbitrary number alert!) 100+50+75 =225 and the actual results were 101+51+ 40, that maybe tells me I was more tired on Saturday than I expected to be, so let's think about planning differently, but for me that's it. All it does is tell me to back down, and honestly, I don't need a number to tell me that, I can tell half way through Saturday's workout that I've overdone it. The numbers won't tell me if I didn't get enough sleep, have an injury I've been nursing, haven't been eating well, have some personal stress to deal with...etc. It just says WHOAH, maybe you should pull on the reins here. But TSS tells me there is a difference between 200 and 201 TSS. Sorry, I can't even remotely feel that difference.

Catch where I'm going with this? We've been conditioned to look at TSS because that's the number that spits out everywhere, but...does it make a difference to you whether your TSS was 90 or 100? It makes a difference to you if it's 60 or a 100 more likely, but that's just it - I think the number is WAY more granular than is even remotely necessary. I think you can break it down to simply:
Green: go for it, you're totally recovered. Proceed with gusto!
Yellow: you've been working hard there, buddy. You're a stud and you're going to nail it today, but don't whale on yourself. Proceed normally, but be sensitive to your recovery.
Red: You know what, you're a little tired. You might be doing this on purpose and trying to break through to a new level, or you might just be doing too much. You figure it out, but the data gnomes are worried about you.

There's too much weight put on these numbers I think. It somehow makes it cool to look at all of it, this big dashboard of STUFF that makes us feel like a machine, but let's discuss. I'm really starting to think that simple signalling is more valuable that pretending we're all scientists.