TSS Question

Watoni

I was reading in Allen/Coggan's book that anything below 150 is a low load and full recovery should be expected by the next day.

This weekend I was pressed for time (as usual) and did the following rides:

Saturday: 1.5 hours, including 2X20s: TSS of ~125
Sunday: 2.5 hours, including 1X30 threshold, 1X30 SST, 55 minutes tempo: TSS of ~190

Was Monday properly a recovery day or should I expect to go out and do L3/L4 work. Thoughts?

Watoni

Is this a dumb question? I can take it ...

hammonjj

Do you feel like Monday was good enough? Although Allen/Coggan have developed good baselines as to what is a "proper recovery time", that's all they are, baselines. Everyone recovers at a different rate.

I would suggest riding on Tuesday and determining if you rested enough. If not, then you know you need more time.

Best
James

Watoni

Thank you.

I guess I am not sure whether or not my weekend was tough enough to merit recovery, really.

I have engaged a coach starting in November but am trying to make sense of training load in terms of volume/intensity and how TSS/IF etc. can help.

I will ride today. That should give the recovery answer, at least.

hammonjj

Also, don't discount the power of recovery spinning. For me at least, doing some easy spinning goes a long way towards helping me recover from a big day.

Alex Simmons

No but it's been answered before.

Those were guidelines only and it will differ for everyone. It depends to a large extent on your chronic and acute training loads.

If you are used to training at CTL of 130+ and recent training (ATL) wasn't highly fatiguing, then you probably wouldn't even notice such days as being all that tough. But if your CTL is <50, then these would be hard on you and a recovery would possibly be in order.

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frenchyge

That'd be a somewhat light weekend for me, but it's not so little that you should feel guilty. It sounds like you made the most of being pressed for time.

About Monday: while the guidance says that you should be able to train again, it doesn't really say anything about whether or not you *should*. Look at how that weekend fit into your training routine and where you are in the program to know whether you should give it another go on Monday. For me, I almost always take Monday off (even after a wimpy weekend) because I'm right back at it on Tu/W/Th. If I didn't take a day off on Monday, then I wouldn't get one at all. If there's a week that I know I'll be forced off the bike on a normal training day, then I might substitute with Monday instead. You have to look at the bigger picture.

Watoni

I guess a CTL of 24.3 is less than 50

ATL was 67.2

Today I did quick over/under intervals 3X 2 minutes @ 105% FTP/5 minutes @ 95% FTP.

We'll see how much tempo I can do tomorrow ...