How far on 8 hours a week?

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Thanks Dave.. I should have phrased my question differently. What I meant to ask is what would my peak CTL be, what CTL should I target.. ....That depends on a lot of things including your experience, your racing goals, your training philosophy, available hours to train and available hours to recover.

Last year was my first complete year with power data. My CTL peaked with a one day high of 104 but was in the 80s to 90s most of the race season. I raced well with that base but would have liked a bit more for tapers and perhaps to feel stronger on day two and three of stage races. I've just hit 100 this season all of it from indoor training and hope to be somewhere around 110 by the first stage races or multiday events roll around.

There are no hard and fast rules and it depends a lot on the kind of events you're targeting but I wouldn't want to do much racing with my CTL below 80 and doubt I'll ever get above 120 based on available time to train and recover. One way to think of it is that a CTL of 100 means you've averaged a full one hour time trial raced at FTP per day for the last 3 months or more. With a base like that a run of the mill crit is pretty close to your average daily load, a road race a bit more and a time trial probably the same or less. It's nice to go into a weekend of racing knowing the events are on par with your average load for the previous 3 months. With a CTL of 50 or 60 almost any event is going to be above your average load and multiday events can really force you to dig deep.

-Dave

That depends on a lot of things including your experience, your racing goals, your training philosophy, available hours to train and available hours to recover.
...
-DaveThanks Dave. That helps clarify things for me.. especially how it relates to FTP.

So it looks like it will be a season of discovery for me. But currently, like I mentioned, I'm just below 80 CTL. It went from 66.2 to 77.8 in 3 weeks, I think I might have overdone things a bit with increasing my training load so quickly. I had a bad crash in Dec, broke my collar-bone.. when things were feeling better I really ramped up the training load. I can't imagine getting to the 90 range at my current rate. This general feeling of fatigue is starting to set in. I think it time for an easy week.

...I'm just below 80 CTL. It went from 66.2 to 77.8 in 3 weeks, I think I might have overdone things a bit with increasing my training load so quickly...Ramping ~11 CTL points in 3 weeks isn't terribly excessive. A lot of folks have run into problems like unexpected illness when they attempt to ramp faster than 8 CTL points per week, but your rate of <4 points per week shouldn't be a big problem.

Were you trying a lot of high end work as part of the mix as in chasing 20 minute or 5 minute records frequently during your training? Did you have a lot of L5 and or L6 workouts during that period? Were you diligent about refueling with carbs and some protein in the critical half hour after each workout?( http://www.mysports101.com/a.php?a=17 ) Were you dealing with other unexpected life stresses?
...This general feeling of fatigue is starting to set in. I think it time for an easy week.Definitely listen to your body and take rest if you need it, but consider a soft week as opposed to a rest week. IOW, think about dropping your daily TSS by 15-20% and dropping intensity so that you're doing a lot of SST work in the form of longer sustained intervals at 80-90% of your current FTP. Maybe even do a few hour to hour and a half Tempo efforts around 75% of FTP.

I find dropping back to a week or two of concentrated SST work can be really refreshing if I've dug a bit too deep and can help me break through power plateaus and staleness. Anyway a soft week can still move you forward but not quite as aggressively as what you've been doing.

Good luck,
-Dave

There are no hard and fast rules and it depends a lot on the kind of events you're targeting but I wouldn't want to do much racing with my CTL below 80 and doubt I'll ever get above 120 based on available time to train and recover. One way to think of it is that a CTL of 100 means you've averaged a full one hour time trial raced at FTP per day for the last 3 months or more. With a base like that a run of the mill crit is pretty close to your average daily load, a road race a bit more and a time trial probably the same or less.

-Dave
I have to disagree with you. A race, even a crit, should far exceed your average daily load. If this isn't true then you are either racing in a category way to slow for you or you are trainning way to hard and to tired to race properly.

If you are able to one full hour of FTP per day for the last 3 months then your estimate for FTP is to low or you system of measurement system is incorrect.

...A race, even a crit, should far exceed your average daily load. If this isn't true then you are either racing in a category way to slow for you or you are trainning way to hard and to tired to race properly...I think you're confusing training load with intensity. Sure a crit is almost certainly going to exceeed your average training intensity but not necessarily your average training load. That is more or less the basis of LSD training used by many europros. They'll build a large training load through relatively low intensity miles and then race with much higher intensity but not necessarily much higher load. Nope, I'm not advocating LSD work for most folks, but the idea is the same. TSS (and from it CTL) reflects training load which is proportional to intensity squared times duration. IOW it takes into account both intensity and duration. I agree a typical race will be ridden at much higher intensity, but not necessarily yield a higher TSS or load than a typical average training day.

...If you are able to one full hour of FTP per day for the last 3 months then your estimate for FTP is to low or you system of measurement system is incorrect.You might want to review the definition of TSS and CTL.

By definition a CTL of 100 is a load equal to riding a full hour at FTP every day for the last 3 months. That's the way the math works out based on FTP and many folks have CTL in excess of 100. Every one of them has handled a daily average load equal to a full one hour time trial ridden at FTP. Sure they more than likely work harder some days and rest on other days and it's doubtful that they train at an intensity equal to a one hour TT at race pace. Most folks will train at lower intensity but they'll also train longer than an hour per day and it's the long term TSS average(CTL) that what we're talking about. The example I've given is directly from the definition of TSS and from that CTL.

Having a CTL at or above 100 doesn't mean you've underestimated your FTP, it means you've trained a lot.

-Dave

By definition a CTL of 100 is a load equal to riding a full hour at FTP every day for the last 3 months.

I thought CTL was generally based on the default value of 42 days. Is there more to the maths if you don't change the CTL constant of 42.

Were you trying a lot of high end work as part of the mix as in chasing 20 minute or 5 minute records frequently during your training? Did you have a lot of L5 and or L6 workouts during that period? Were you diligent about refueling with carbs and some protein in the critical half hour after each workout?( http://www.mysports101.com/a.php?a=17 ) Were you dealing with other unexpected life stresses?
Yes.. I've been chasing 20 and 5 min records at least once a week, I should really cut back on that stuff. I usually have one dedicated L5/L6 workout per week, also go L5+ (at least a couple times) on a weekly long group ride (240-300 TSS ride, about half my weekly TSS). I think it could be an intensity thing with me... too much of it too much of the time. Looking at IF for my last 15 workouts, I've only had 4 that were under .90.


I find dropping back to a week or two of concentrated SST work can be really refreshing if I've dug a bit too deep and can help me break through power plateaus and staleness. Anyway a soft week can still move you forward but not quite as aggressively as what you've been doing.

Good luck,
-DaveI'll replace some workouts this week with SST rides, and take down the IF a little... Thanks again.
mike

I thought CTL was generally based on the default value of 42 days. Is there more to the maths if you don't change the CTL constant of 42.CTL is based on an exponentially weighted average with a time constant half life of 42 days, hence more recent workouts count more than those 6 weeks back and more again for those 10 weeks back etc. Dave was just simplifying it (correctly) by saying that in effect, you'd need to be consistently riding at that level of daily TSS for around 3 months to bring CTL up towards that number. Maybe even longer.

Say for example you started with a CTL of zero and then rode 100 TSS / day every day thereafter. This is what would happen to CTL:

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd226/ASimmons/CTL.png

As you can see, after 90 days at this level, you are still only at a CTL of 89 TSS/day and after 120 days @ 94 TSS/day.

However let's assume you started with some CTL, say 50 TSS/day, then this is what it would look like:

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd226/ASimmons/CTL2.png

As you can see, after 90 days at this level, your CTL is 94 TSS/day and after 120 days @ 97 TSS/day.

Of course nobody's training looks like that in terms of daily TSS, so the line CTL line tends to bump around a bit.

Let's apply a more "realistic" weekly training patter of 700 TSS/week spread out with longer rides on the weekend, Monday rest day, shorter rides Tue-Thu and a recovery ride on Friday. This is what it would start to look like from a CTL of zero:

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd226/ASimmons/CTL3.png

Throw in schedule changes, missed days, recovery, different loads, races, etc etc and the real world CTL fluctuates even more.

Awesome post alex

CTL is based on an exponentially weighted average with a time constant half life of 42 days, ...I should have said with a DEFAULT time constant of 42 days. You can of course make that time constant whatevever you like although it is not particularly sensitive to changes +/- 10 days.

ATL is the same, all that happens is the time constant is much shorter (default is 7 days) and so it is much more reactive to the most recent training. As a result, ATL is more senstive to changes in the TC.

CTL is based on an exponentially weighted average with a time constant half life of 42 days, hence more recent workouts count more than those 6 weeks back and more again for those 10 weeks back etc. ....A picture(or 3) is definitely worth a thousand words. Nice post Alex.

for instance in the winter on half my summer training load i can after pull off numbers pretty similar to what i can do in the summer but put me in a stage race or long road race on that training load and i'd get blown away.. FTP isn't everything... and other than a few prologues, how did Boarman do in the actual racing out on the road? pretty bad on the road in a real race... that should tell you something. being able to pull off a single effort in perfect conditon with lots of rest etc does not a road racer make.

I guess a few stage wins in the Dauphine, Midi Libre, the Tour of Valencia, more than a few days in the leaders jersey at the Tour of Catalogne and a stage win or two to boot and lets not forget in 93, as an amateur, he took on all the pro teams in Britain and pretty much single handedly won the Tour of Lancashire.... and I guess we should just forget too a pittyful tally of 3 hour records. Shameful isn't it....:rolleyes: