Auto Pause – yay or nay?

[r8jimbob88Member]

I’ve never used this feature before and just let my Garmin run, even if I’ve stopped for an hour in a cafe.

I’ve started training with a power meter about 4 month ago and today went on a long social ride with plenty of stops. My TSS was much higher than I’d expected and I’ve worked out the TSS is calculated using the overall time. If TSS was calculated against my moving time then the overall score would have been much closer to what i’d have thought.

I’ve just started using a Wahoo Elemnt bolt if that makes a different. It’s also pretty rare that I’d stop much during a ride but today’s 4hr 40min had 45 mins not moving. Might be why I’ve noticed such a big discrepancy today.

Is auto pause the answer?

[Roter SternMember]

It’s quite a good feature if you do a lot of social rides where you are stopping a lot and often forget to turn on the device again but IME if you are riding up proper steep stuff on the mtb the slow pace often tricks the device to turn off.

[CraigWMember]

A lot of software/websites will ignore the autopause recorded by the device anyway. It uses its own thresholds to calculate stopped time/moving time. eg Strava does this.
So it doesn’t make much difference if you have autopause turned on or not.

[r8jimbob88Member]

Cheers guys. I use Training Peaks. Doesn’t seem to adjust the time like Strava does

[mikewsmithSubscriber]

My TSS was much higher than I’d expected and I’ve worked out the TSS is calculated using the overall time. If TSS was calculated against my moving time then the overall score would have been much closer to what i’d have thought.

So if you don’t count all the breaks a d recovery time it says it’s a harder ride? Seems about right, I did some huge rides last year if you ignore the fact I did them over the course of a week 😉

[CaptainFlashheartMember]

if you are riding up proper steep stuff on the mtb the slow pace often tricks the device to turn off.

Mine (Edge 1000) has settings for the auto pause by profile. So, on the MTB setting mine is set to auto pause below 1mph. Slower than nowhere! Gnarmac setting is at 3mph, I think.

[r8jimbob88Member]

No it’s the opposite Mike. I had auto pause off and my TSS was 253. If you take away my stationary time the TSS would be 214 which I think would be more accurate. I’ve gained 39 TSS by not moving…?

[markgraylishSubscriber]

Mine (Edge 1000) has settings for the auto pause by profile. So, on the MTB setting mine is set to auto pause below 1mph. Slower than nowhere! Gnarmac setting is at 3mph, I think

I don’t use my Garmin (520) on my MTB very often but I did today. Unfortunately, I used a profile with auto-pause enabled and it only recoded 27 mins out the 57 mins of painful, bloody steep climbing I did…
(Luckily I also had Strava running on my phone)

[DrPMember]

I just manually press start/stop if I’m in a cafe etc…

It’s annoying to hear the constant beeps from Garmins at every traffic light/snack stop etc…

Makes everyone look like heroes; “I did the South downs way in 6 hours.. (well.. 14 hours from start to finish actually, with a sleepover in between)” type stuff!

DrP

[jonnyboiMember]

You know you can turn those bleeps off?

[HazeMember]

Auto pause on, beeps off works for me

[StiggySubscriber]

^ This

[jamesoSubscriber]

My TSS was much higher than I’d expected and I’ve worked out the TSS is calculated using the overall time. If TSS was calculated against my moving time then the overall score would have been much closer to what i’d have thought.

Weird. I don’t use anything that can show me TSS etc but a training ride with breaks / stops is not as hard as the same dist and intensity training ride with no stops. TSS should be moving time x intensity, lowered by a factor of the amount of stopped time?
I’m not that into the idea of formulas like this for training, only as useful as the accuracy and application of the data – to do that well you need a coach or your own experience so maybe this is more useful for coaches managing more paying racers, or racers with low training management ability who need plans. Being a cynic there tho.

Autopause, nope. You learn why audaxers and bikepacker racers can be so fast overall when you see how much average speed you lose with a few faff stops or a food stop that’s longer than it needs to be. If it’s a club run inc the cafe or singletrack-stop and chat-singletrack-chat type of ride then who cares, for solo or training rides I’d look at overall averages not just the moving average.

[scotroutesSubscriber]

Autopause, nope. You learn why audaxers and bikepacker racers can be so fast overall when you see how much average speed you lose with a few faff stops or a food stop that’s longer than it needs to be

That’s my experience. I’m not training or racing but trying to maintain a high overall average speed is an art in itself. It affects choices of where to eat, when to stop, ways to reduce total stopped time.

[r8jimbob88Member]

Sounds pretty daft if it uses stopped time to calculate TSS. This will affect a whole host of things in Trainingpeak – CTL, TSB, ATL and so on… the vast majority of my riding is training so I rarely have more than a few minutes pee stop so I guess in the grand scheme of things my data isn’t skewed.

I’ll test it on today’s ride, I’ll pause the ride for 30 Mins at the end before stopping it. See what affect that has. I think the formula is something to do with time and NP. Will pausing affect NP?

TSS is more important to me than any other metric. Especially when a training plan is built around it!

[jamesoSubscriber]

Anyway.. yes, autopause is the answer to the OP.

This got my interest over coffee this am. Aware of the negatives of ‘overtraining’ (ha little risk here) and the need for ride recovery personally (over 40) I looked up how TSS is worked out,

TSS = (sec x NP® x IF®)/(FTP x 3600) x 100

…where

“sec” is duration of the workout in seconds,
“NP” is Normalized Power® (don’t worry about this for now),
“IF” is Intensity Factor® (a percentage of your FTP; in other words how intense the effort was),
“FTP” is Functional Threshold Power (your best average power for a one-hour race or test),
and “3600” is the number of seconds in an hour.

So TSS is based on power as % of FTP over time. Stopping during a ride would lower average power (NP). Based on what NP is and TSS being a per-hour score, you can’t go over 100 p/hr – if your stops have added time and increased TSS total something is being calculated wrongly.

[jamesoSubscriber]

trying to maintain a high overall average speed is an art in itself

Couldn’t agree more.

TSS is more important to me than any other metric

Quick Q with apologies for a hijack – why’s that, simply to avoid lack of recovery?

[HazeMember]

Double check your FTP is set correctly in any of the apps you use, if they’re different (maybe you forgot to update one at some point) you’ll get different TSS scores.

Realise that may not be the issue here, maybe a long shot

[wilburtMember]

FWIW I dont know anyone(and I know quite a lot of bike people) who doesnt use auto pause and yes beeps iff is always better.

[r8jimbob88Member]

Yes FTP is correct on the device and in TP too.

TSS is a metric that measures training loads and helps ensure you don’t over / under train. I also know how much recovery I’m likely to need after a workout. For anyone doing structured training TSS really is important.

I know how much TSS I want to accumulate per week, and how much less I then need on an easier / adaptation week.

[jamesoSubscriber]

Right, last post.

Based on what NP is

I’m prob wrong on this, NP is a calculated number, an estimate of what your constant power could have been over the whole ride time. So a longer ride (auto-pause off) could be read in a way that gives a higher NP than if you’d ridden with same power for less time. Depends on how NP is calculated there.

Dunno tbh. Clearly I’m not a coach or a garmin>strava programmer : )

[srshawMember]

I use it on my road bikes that have speed sensors. On my mtb or whilst running, I just use GPS, and the auto pause can stop recording whilst going slowly.

Most websites such as Garmin connect can give you a moving time/AV speed so not too worried either way.

[r8jimbob88Member]

Went for a ride this morning with Autopause turned on and think I’ve figured it out.

My Wahoo Element calculates TSS / NP using the entire ride duration, which includes paused time.

Training Peaks calculates TSS / NP using your active time and disregards any paused time.

So the Wahoo consistently over estimates TSS and NP if your ride includes stops. Once uploaded to TrainingPeaks the data is recalculated using TrainingPeaks formulas. Bit of a pain but at least I understand now, I think!

Not sure how this stacks up against Garmin? I’ve never noticed these discrepancies when using a Gamin so guess that works in the same way as TrainingPeaks.