How far on 8 hours a week?

ali_baba

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.

mikeyp123

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

Alex Simmons

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:



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:



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:



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

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Jono L

Awesome post alex

Alex Simmons

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.

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daveryanwyoming

A picture(or 3) is definitely worth a thousand words. Nice post Alex.