ratebeer

I'm a beginner still and I'm 39 so I probably can hurt myself more easily than someone who is better trained. I also won't recover as quickly as someone who's younger.

Is being sore all the time normal then? Is it part of the building process? Do you recommend extreme efforts that you know will leave you sore for days?

I can definitely get loco once a week and wreck myself pretty badly but I don't know if this serves me any better than simply putting in strong races and workouts that leave me short of being beat up. Actually there are races within 20 miles of here most days of the week but I'm interested in long term gains.

NomadVW 

Power meter plug! This is the great thing about training with power, and the concepts of ATL/CTL/TSB.

To answer the OP: Because we can. My pain disappears in face of overcoming. Overcoming myself, overcoming my bike, and overcoming the others that show up to overcome me.

And... to hear my kids say "Good job Dad!"

OTB

I'll take that bet! LA won an "easy day" field sprint in the Tour de Georgia remember. I can almost guarantee you that Lance *on the front* could have wound up a sprint long enough and fast enough that no cat2/3 sprinters could come around him.

A lot of people have the naive impression that Pro Tour riders are only good at the thing they are best at, i.e., climbers can only climb and sprinters can only sprint and tt'ers can only time trial. That is very, very wrong.

That is certainly true!

zimbo

I'm not totally comfortable referring to my experience on the bike as pain but only because it pales in comparison to "real" pain. It's definitely significant discomfort, though.

--Steve

Snuffleupagus

I can't find any Armstrong numbers for MMP, but at his peak Landis could put out 1250w. I know of several local 2/3 guys capable of 1500.

YMCA

I think OTB was trying to say, Lance would hit it with 400 meters to go and all the fastest cat2/3 guys would be so throttled, nobody would be able to come around.

Pizza Man

I often wake up at 3 or 4 AM on the day of a race dreading the pain that lies ahead.
During the warm-up my stomach is always in knots.
Then, in the race there are ALWAYS those times that I feel like dropping out.
I think "this is too painful, I just want to quit", but I keep going and finish the race.

Then by Monday it's all forgotten and all I can think about is doing my next race.

ratebeer

Thanks!

Hunter Allen's book pretty much says, "Well, we're still figuring out what those things mean, but stay tuned and you'll get the hang of it soon enough." How are you using these figures and what are you looking for in your own graphs?

There's also a huge recovery difference (and a little bit of speed improvement) between my off-my-rocker efforts and my harder workout pace/efforts. In a race situation, I can get a little nuts and then wreck myself for the better part of a week whereas my hardest, longest interval workout done full tilt is work but I'm good to go after a day off.

It's that fine line that I'm looking for. Or maybe I just need some strength training to limit the amount of damage I take at effort?

ratebeer

I have a mountain biker friend who takes more water with him because he knows he'll be slightly dehydrated after retching. His stomach just empties in anticipation of technical courses. Some of the jumps, descents, ladders and bridges terrify him. He's wrecked numerous times and it's probably just his body's way of saying, "DO NOT DO THIS."

It reminds me of a shirt I've seen at beer festivals, "THE LIVER IS EVIL AND MUST BE PUNISHED."

fix

Forgotten?? Hell, an hour after the race is done, I'm talking about how amazing it was and what the sprint was like and how we hammered the hills and I made the lead group and...!

NomadVW 

I don't necessarily plan every day with the figures, but I do know when a workout is going to hurt more/less based on the trend in my acute training load (ATL / fatigue). My daily training stress score of each workout is vital to what I do.

For instance, in the spring my chronic training load ( CTL/fitness ) maxed out around 129 TSS/day. I could sustain a daily average of 135 TSS/day for 3-4 days without significant impact on my workouts, but once I hit 5 or 6 days at that average, I needed a break or I wasn't getting through the workouts.

Right now I'm still building CTL for the second half of my year and am climbing into a CTL of 130 TSS/day+ and I am holding in a second week at over 135 TSS/day and performance is not suffering at all. However, I know that as I get ready to race this weekend for the first time in a month, I'm going to need to taper a little bit and bring my ATL down. That upward TREND in training stress balance (TSB) will tell me how much of my "freshness" is in the bank when I show up at the start line. The longer/harder the race, the more I would want to have in the "balance" if I wanted to do well. Fortunately, I don't care much about results this weekend - it's kinda course recon for later in the year - so I'll have pretty minimal taper before hammering out next week's hard week.

It took me about 6 months of training and watching all of the values on the performance management chart to get a good grip of what is going on and how all of the numbers effect each other. To be perfectly honest, ATL is the least valuable number to me as I find a NON weighted 7 day TSS average to be much more "readable" of how I feel (though the weighted average is obviously accurate as my sustainable 7 day average has gone up as my CTL has gone up).

Being aware of my "breaking points" has allowed my forego "recovery weeks" and work with well planned recovery time throughout every week to maintain a workable training schedule.

At the end of the day, the numbers are a reflection more of how you feel but it's ultimately the makeup of your workouts that will be what you can do.

Reynolds 

Exactly! Those are my feelings. Did my first race three years ago at 53, 6 more since then, never won but always among the first quarter.

Reynolds 

Probably a mediocre Pro Tour sprinter/climber/TTer is still better at it than a local champion.

nitropowered

So I could easily beat Landis in a sprint.... well if I even get there

key

whats to say that landis could hold that wattage for say... 10/15 seconds ? while the 2/3 guys could hold 1500 for 5 seconds ?

its all in how long you can put out that power for that matters and also watts per kilo

permanentjaun

It's been said that professional athletes love the pain. They see it as a sign that they're working hard enough. I think that's true. For me it's also when that pain suddenly turns into triumph. On my tour it was when instead of having to drop into my lowest gears on a hill I suddenly found myself accelerating uphill. Or when I was being chased by a storm and I was able to mash in top gear for minutes at new top speeds. Or just general sections of riding where I suddenly realized I was a machine breathing methodically and moving with a consistent cadence. The miles burned away. It's easy to forget the pain when things start working right.

ratebeer

Arigato gozaimasu, Nomad-san. That was helpful! BTW, 3-4 days of heavy load instead of 5 or 6? Do you do "active recovery" days? Has this number changed with your level of experience?