How far on 8 hours a week?



Steve_B said:
Doing a little math: 320 hours / 20 hours per week = 16 weeks. L2 is roughly an IF of 0.65 so 20 hours x (0.65^2) x 100 = 845 TSS/week. Over 16 weeks, you have probably plateau'ed your CTL to around 120, which is appropriate for for an elite rider at the beginning of the year.

How many hours of L4 were you doing per week in previous years? Any L2 then? I would bet that your total training volume in previous years did not get you up to a CTL of 120. That could have something to do with you running out of gas last year.
typical week was probably typical of the working guys on the forum

2/3 x 20min L4 x 2/3 per week
2 hrs SST 1/2 x per week
5 x 5min at L5 once a week
6 x 1min L6 once a fortnight
a few sprints on the "big ring" 2 hr outdoor ride on the weekend if the weather was OK.....
total volume - 10-12 hrs per week, most of it done at an "uncomfortable", "this will get me used to racing" kind of pain.
 
BullGod said:
typical week was probably typical of the working guys on the forum

2/3 x 20min L4 x 2/3 per week
2 hrs SST 1/2 x per week
5 x 5min at L5 once a week
6 x 1min L6 once a fortnight
a few sprints on the "big ring" 2 hr outdoor ride on the weekend if the weather was OK.....
total volume - 10-12 hrs per week, most of it done at an "uncomfortable", "this will get me used to racing" kind of pain.

Because I do the majority of my training indoors on an ergometer, my average IF is higher than an almost anyone else's. Still, even on 12 h/wk I'd be hard-pressed to get my CTL over 100 TSS/d. IOW, when expressed in terms of TSS your chronic training load is probably at least 20% higher this year, and quite possibly more.
 
BullGod said:
I am an elite cat rider, and i am constantly in a cycle of gradual training overload, followed by rest. I try and get total weekly durations over a 4 week block of, for example, 18, 20, 26 then 8 - so you take yourself to being totally shagged, and then recover - then repeat. With timing of races it isn't always easy to stick to a schedule, but if you try and work the rest / easy days into the schedule before important / tough races it works well.

Previosu years I have had to work full time, and have trained lower duration / higher intensity - this year was my first experiment with a massive LSD base over the winter. Apart from a handful of training races, and a classic in Belgium I have only done one L4 training session and one SST since end of season 2007. No L5 yet and not a single sprint in training.

Sure - the first races were strange, but I am feeling / noticing that a massive base of around 320 hours of L2 has given me the engine to rapidly improve the intensity that I can generate when it is required, the duration that I can sustain that intensity for, and reduce the time required to recover from that effort afterwards, plus increasing the ability to repeat it many times.

I believe that the massive amount of riding i have completed pre season has improved the ability of my body to deliver blood and oxygen to my leg muscles - I have seen considerable vascularization (almost brusing around veins), my resting HR dropped 6 beats, my body fat % is reduced, and my muscle mass is bigger. The downsides have been 3 x feverish colds in 3 months, mouth ulcers and hugely increased spending on food!

I did not notice such improvements when training only SST and L4 in the preseason.

The proof of the pudding will be if I continue to improve as the season develops with my new training, as in previous years, sure, in March I have been ready to go hard, and not surprised by intensity, but last year I noticed little or no improvement from March to september - only an increase in fatigue and frustration. now I feel that each weekend I am going faster, and going further.

Right now I am saying that this justifies for me a 20hr week average for upper level racing.
Bulldog this is all really subjective. And after spending all winter 'base' training and suffering in training races its a bit of a no brainer that after a few races you'd begin to feel much better.

You're attributing this to you winter base but you should also attribute it to the SST and L4 workouts from last year. Also not working full time cannot be over looked. Of course results will perhaps be the true testiment to your new training protocol. But to be honest psychologically you'd have to say you feel better this time otherwise all that ill health and riding slow in the cold would appear to be a complete waste of time :)
 
BullGod said:
typical week was probably typical of the working guys on the forum

2/3 x 20min L4 x 2/3 per week
2 hrs SST 1/2 x per week
5 x 5min at L5 once a week
6 x 1min L6 once a fortnight
a few sprints on the "big ring" 2 hr outdoor ride on the weekend if the weather was OK.....
total volume - 10-12 hrs per week, most of it done at an "uncomfortable", "this will get me used to racing" kind of pain.
OK, doing some rough calculations, including a reasonable warm-up and cool-down.

2/3 x 20min L4 x 2/3 per week ---> Let's call this ~200 TSS on avg
2 hrs SST 1/2 x per week ---> = ~220 TSS
5 x 5min at L5 once a week ---> =~120 TSS
6 x 1min L6 once a fortnight ---> =~100 TSS
a few sprints on the "big ring" [in a] 2 hr outdoor ride ---> =~100 TSS

Grand total = 740 TSS/week =~105 CTL after 16 weeks. Potentially not a huge difference from 120. Hard to say since the numbers are so rough but my gut feeling just from the description (forgetting about the math) is that you may not have gone above 100 though.

Let's see what you think about "all L2, all the time" in September. I'm genuinely curious.
 
my knees are hurting at the thought of it! :(

-Mike



Alex Simmons said:
3 months solid of 8hrs/week at an IF>1. I don't think that qualifies as a theoretical limit, let alone a practical one.:eek:

If you could manage an average IF of 0.9 over the week, then 8hrs x 100 x (0.9)^2 = 648 TSS or a CTL after 2-3 months without a break of about 90.
 
So... in terms of mitochondria, vascularisation and making the ole ticker more efficient, what is it that more hours achieves?

Is it that things are damaged more so build up stronger, or that going to extreme fatigue levels makes you fitter?

When I'm doing 2x20s, would doing 4x20s make me fitter? The thought of that is rather overwhelming, but if that's what it takes...

But how about keeping doing what I'm doing? Surely the improvements will come eventually.

Mind you, I'd be pretty useless as a dad if I was absolutely exhausted and probably ill more often.

I guess there's a physiological limit, a maximum amount of damage/repair that 8-10 hours affords, that will see me forever doomed to stare at Cadel's back wheel as he disappears up the Ventoux...
 
grahamspringett said:
So... in terms of mitochondria, vascularisation and making the ole ticker more efficient, what is it that more hours achieves?
The body adapts to the training stimulus provided. More stimulus = more adaptation.

"Alls you can do is alls you can do."
 
doctorSpoc said:
this is a total tangent but... as i was looking at the world hour records i happened to notice the IHPVC hour records (recumbents with full fairing, tear drop coverings)

1hr record - Sam Whittingham (Vancouver, BC)- 87.7km/hr... holy ****!!!
flying 200m 130km/hr
flying 1000 128km/hr

...this is unreal!
Did you also notice that Sam is the same guy who one the best hand made bike recently. Sold the bike for 13,000 to Lance Armstrong.

I use to work and ride with Sam when he was doing the HPV thing. The crazy thing is Sam has a good engine but not a great one (he TTs at 43-45kph on regular TT bike). It is amazing on just how slippery those HPVs are.
 
frenchyge said:
The body adapts to the training stimulus provided. More stimulus = more adaptation.

"Alls you can do is alls you can do."
But the question at hand is when do you reach diminshing returns? I would imagine that at some point improvement begins to level off no matter how many hours you put in or how many 2 x 20s you do, and performance may even suffer as you add training load.

Maybe the only way to know is to push yourself to the breaking point and use available tools, the Performance Manager for example, to then manage your training up to your own personal point of diminishing returns.
 
LT Intolerant said:
But the question at hand is when do you reach diminshing returns?
That's the question at hand? I believe the folks competing at the highest level want to capitalize on *every* return, diminishing or otherwise. That's why the answer to the OP's question of why elite athletes train more is "because they can." Why would they do less?

LT Intolerant said:
I would imagine that at some point improvement begins to level off no matter how many hours you put in or how many 2 x 20s you do....
Sure, but it levels off at a higher value than it would for someone who is training less, assuming equal genetics.

grahamspringett said:
But how about keeping doing what I'm doing? Surely the improvements will come eventually.
Eventually your body will adapt to the training load your 8 hrs is providing and progress will slow. Those that are doing 50% more training load than you will continue to progress beyond what you are capable of -- all other factors being equal.

Still doesn't mean you can't be a great and successful racer.
 
frenchyge said:
That's the question at hand? I believe the folks competing at the highest level want to capitalize on *every* return, diminishing or otherwise. That's why the answer to the OP's question of why elite athletes train more is "because they can." Why would they do less?
I'm not saying I have the answer because I'm not an "elite" cyclist and don't have access to their training programs. But when I read this statement, more stimulus = more adaptation, the question that came to mind was, "at what cost?"

I would think elite cyclists and their coaches would opt for overload to the point of diminishing returns, and then take as much rest as they can to consolidate fitness and avoid psychological burnout. At some point more stimulus is not going to create adaptation, only fatigue, which will compromise performance.
 
LT Intolerant said:
But when I read this statement, more stimulus = more adaptation, the question that came to mind was, "at what cost?"
Sorry, that was the short answer to the question quoted above the statement, not a suggested general training philosophy. Obviously there is a breaking point, but up until that point there would be a positive correlation between the amount of training and the resulting improvements. 8 hours per week would still be well down on that curve, IMO.

LT Intolerant said:
I would think elite cyclists and their coaches would opt for overload to the point of diminishing returns, and then take as much rest as they can to consolidate fitness and avoid psychological burnout. At some point more stimulus is not going to create adaptation, only fatigue, which will compromise performance.
The more hours they have to work with, the more they can fine tune this process and the further they can inch out on that branch without cracking it.
 
Until recently, I've always placed a big emphasis on intensity. But historically, all my big improvements have been the result of increased volume. Even at the cost of a little intensity.
 
patrick_ said:
The book by Greg Lemond is almost 20 years old now, he has changed his opinion on training a bit in the mean time.

The 600 TSS suggested are certainly doable, let's check a theoretic upper limit:
-L4 only
-rest periods off the bike
-no warmup/cooldown
-2* 30 min intervals per day, 3 per weekend day
-intervals done at 103% FTP during the week, at 100% on weekends
results in 830TSS/wk, a CTL of 118.

The 11 hours/wk of Boardman certainly seem enough to reach peak CTL.
Newbie here.. What is peak CTL? Or how would one go about figuring that out.
 
mikeyp123 said:
Newbie here.. What is peak CTL? Or how would one go about figuring that out.
Chronic Training Load (CTL) is a way of measuring overall training load that takes into account both time and intensity and relies on measurements of power put out while riding. Here's a good intro to power based training concepts:
http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/

Check out item 12 for more info on CTL.

-Dave
 
daveryanwyoming said:
Chronic Training Load (CTL) is a way of measuring overall training load that takes into account both time and intensity and relies on measurements of power put out while riding. Here's a good intro to power based training concepts:
http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/

Check out item 12 for more info on CTL.

-Dave
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.. and how would I figure this out. My current CTL is 79.. just starting out with racing, but been riding for years and years (used to be a comeptative tri age-grouper).
 
mikeyp123 said:
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.. and how would I figure this out. My current CTL is 79.. just starting out with racing, but been riding for years and years (used to be a comeptative tri age-grouper).
It depends.

I would say, in general, as high as you can manage while not degrading event specific fitness.

How many season's worth of power meter data do you have? The answer may already be in the data....
 
Alex Simmons said:
It depends.

I would say, in general, as high as you can manage while not degrading event specific fitness.

How many season's worth of power meter data do you have? The answer may already be in the data....
I hardly have any data, I just started with power training. I seem to be responding well to a slight ramp up of weekly CTL, although I might be overdoing it a touch. I'm at about a 3-5 point ramp-up per week, for 3 weeks. I might have to slow that down soon. Currently at about 8 hours a week, at high intesity.

I'll probably kick it back a notch for a week then start building up again.
 

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