How do you calculate em? How do you use em?

I generally use the intensity level charts in the book. A lot of the stuff I do I'd consider medium/high, or some mix, so I use these as a general guideline and try to pick the best number out of the range. It may not be the most dead-on accurate but I feel like I am lowballing myself rather than taking too many points.

It seems like I get too many points on E-tools. For example, I am training for a half marathon, so I ran for an hour and 45 mins yesterday. Just going by their <12 minute mile running pace (which is soooo vague btw. Big difference between a 10 minute mile and a 7 minute mile) They give me 16 points. That seems like an awful lot when I'm not pushing super hard the whole time. Maybe just working really hard the last 30-45 mins.

Does anyone else have strategies they like to use?

Also, I have been doing the "use them or lose them every day" method rolled out for PP2012. That is, if I feel I need the AP's that day, usually to fuel the big workouts, I eat them. But I don't bank them. This has been working out well for me and seems to be giving me less wiggle room to really go into a weekend tailspin.

I use my heart rate monitor and then divide the # of calories by 100 to get my APs. I don't trust the tracker entries. If I don't have my HRM, I'll use the intensity test but try to avoid that as it's off for me a lot of the time.

I eat all my APs on the days they are earned. Normally, since I do my gym stuff at night, it'll be on a peanut butter and banana sandwich with a glass of milk or something like that.

i like the calories divided by 100. i will have to try that. i eat back 1/2 my APs. it just seemed the book wasn't right. what i consider m. they might consider H. like zumba. they think H. well, to me you are taking breaks between songs. thanks for the tip. now to find and reset my HRM. ask for a new one for birthday this summer

I just go by e-tools but agree with you on how vague it can be.

How I deal with the acquired APs is to leave them be. I use WPAs first before dipping into APs. Seldom have I gone through all 49 WPAs that I needed to dive into the APs. But they are there for when I need them!

I always go for the lowest number, I'm doing C25K and though I'm sweating from the beginning I just say it was moderate. Better to under estimate than over.