Idioteque

So maybe some of you remember me whining about crashing in a race and bruising my knee, well i still can't bike and it still hurts, but it has been getting better. I'm estimating another week (hopefully not two) and i can get on the trainer.

I know there's no real answer for this other than seeing what happens, but from some personal experience maybe, how much fitness am i going to lose in 2 weeks of not even moving?

i need some BF sympathy

botto 

depends. how fit were you before?

Idioteque

well i did base training, and was doing intervals for a couple of weeks followed by racing with structured rest and mid-week intervals. I just did my best to not take any time off that isn't recovery and succeeded. but now this.

NomadVW 

The bad news? A lot of fitness loss. A real lot. Just for kicks, I threw in two weeks of "zeros" in my training log to see what it would do to my performance management chart. It puts a sizable dent into the "numeric" aerobic fitness ("chronic training load") such that it would take months for me to regain that level.

But this also depends on what your training load already is.

At 17-18 hours per week, a 2 week total off the bike would take me around 2 1/2 - 3 months (basically a whole "base" season) to regain the aerobic fitness lost without punishing my body into overreaching/overtraining.

At 9-11 hours per week, a 2 week total off the bike period appears that it would take around 1 month of hard work to regain the same fitness level.

Snuffleupagus

It's not gonna be too bad if you're smart about how you're coming back on the bike. I think it's time for a chart



This illustrates my training load since around the end of last road season. I was pretty crispy and burnt out after a long road season around the first of September, when the chart starts, but coming onto good form in mid-November. I had a bad crash, and then a week or two after the crash fell while backpacking and re-tore my ACL. You see the big drop off where I'm off the bike in Nov-Dec. Then I was off the bike for a week over Christmas, and in crappy form - but on half decent form by late January. Then at the end of January I had major knee surgery that would put most people off the bike for months...now if you'll look to the first and second weeks of march you'll see lots of points indicating personal bests (since 1SEP07).

What's all that mean? Train hard, train smart, rest and you can get back in shape quickly.

botto 

it also depends - imo - on how many years you've been riding.

zimbo

I heartily disagree.

EDIT: Allow me to explain. If you define fitness as CTL then, sure, it's going to drop significantly. But if you define fitness as Watts/Kg at 5-sec, 1-min, 5-min, 20-min, and 1-hour intervals, I would be shocked if there's a significant difference two weeks from now from what the OP measured prior to the injury.

Fact is, once you've reached a certain level of fitness, those things simply cannot continue to improve so it doesn't take very long to reach back up to your genetic ceiling if all we're talking about is 2 weeks off the bike. Hell, every 4th week should probably be a rest week for most folks anyway.

--Steve

NomadVW 

^^^
Definitely agree.

Ultimately this depends on what you call "fitness." I'm a firm believer in the Performance Management Chart concept. It's use of CTL ("chronic training load" - or the long term effects of training) has translated into overall aerobic fitness. To put these things into context for folks that may not use / want to use the concepts, this is how I see it.

The results of a higher CTL: ability to handle a higher training load from day to day ( i can train longer/harder from day to day). The more you train, the more you can train. It has also translated for me into a flattening of the power curve beyond the hour mark - meaning I can sustain a higher % of threshold longer. If you're not doing work outside an hour very often, this may not mean anything to you.

So, at a CTL of 130ish, it means I can handle about 2 hrs of endurance riding without feeling negative effects of fatigue the next day. It also means I can basically do a 40km TT including warm up/cool down with negligible effects of fatigue. If I took 2 weeks completely off the bike, my CTL would drop to 95. At the best sustainable training of ~5 pts per week, it would take me 7 weeks to get back to a CTL of 130. Typically, that's not realistic - so given two or three weeks at less than that ramp rate, I'm looking at 10-11 weeks of training to get back to the previous overall aerobic fitness (CTL).

Comparatively, 2 weeks of zero training for a CTL of 90 (long term 10-11 hrs per weekish?) would drop you to a 62. @ 5 pts per week, you're still looking at 5 weeks to get to a CTL of 87.

This is not to be confused with "strength" on the bike. Training load and threshold power are in great part distinct parts of fitness. For instance, over the last month I've seen a significant drop in my training load due to two separate periods of sickness. I've managed to hang on to most of my hard training days though and have seen an increase in threshold power and MAP since January. But, I am noticing a greater fatigue out past the 3 hr mark on the bike that I wouldn't have felt 6 months ago at a much higher training load.

Strength will come back relatively quickly, aerobic fitness - not so much. Though, as Botto says - the longer you've been riding, the greater the foundation to your aerobic base.

Snuffleupagus

This is almost exactly what's illustrated in my PMC. For very long term concerns, I've been training on the bike with a purpose since early 2006, but doing endurance sports in some capacity since late 2000 (albeit with bodybuilding until mid-late 2004).

Enthalpic

I think that the PMC is designed to model peaking not detraining, or at least it assumes relatively uninterrupted training.

The training impulse model predicts that fitness is much more stable than the CTL decay rate would suggest, and even then my experience says it underestimates fitness stability.

OP think of your fitness as a highway. It takes a lot of work to build a highway, and it requires maintenance. If you neglect a highway it develops potholes and degrades, but repairs are easier than rebuilding by a long shot. You will lose high-end fitness like NMP, AWC, and your VO2 will fall a bit due to loss of plasma volume/stroke volume. Yet your “infrastructure” fitness will remain relatively intact (capillaries, mitochondria, muscle contractile proteins).

Two weeks would make my training impulse fitness score fall from 2687 to 1698 (36%), pretty bad. But again, I think that it overestimates detraining. CTL predicts a 49% drop.

Snuffleupagus

^

Your fitness/fatigue/performance model is just renaming CTL/ATL/TSB yes?

Enthalpic

incorrect. The PMC came after the training impulse model of Bannister. Very similar but slightly different.

But you're right
CTL ~ Fitness
ACL ~ Fatigue
TSB ~ Performance... ish

Snuffleupagus

Ah, yeah, I think I knew that...or at least breezed over it in the wattage forum at some point.

I think I've got a bad case of ACL fatigue

cslone

God I need to get my ass in gear and get the CTL up. I can't take the trainer indoors anymore.

zimbo

I interpreted fitness to mean how well the OP would do in a race. Since he's not racing every day, the ability to go hard for two hours a day may not matter. All he would need to be able to do is go hard for an hour or two on race day, the next day be damned.

My suspicion is that a couple of weeks of smart training would put him right back into the thick of things as far as matching his previous racing strength. But I don't have fancy charts to prove it.

I envision the day when there's not any actual racing. Instead, everyone's Performance Management Charts are interconnected and the highest CTL and FTP win. That way we can cut down on travel, race entry fees, and high-speed crashes.

--Steve

40x14

What software are you guys using to determine CTL and other stuff? I just got a powertap in the fall and finished reading the book Training and Racing with a Power Meter, ready to go to the next step.

Idioteque

haha,

i am quite caught off guard with all these charts and abbreviations, but thanks a lot everyone for the info.

Nomad as i was reading you almost made me want to cry,
but eh doesn't sund that bad, i guess this way i'm gonna aim for some USCF races this summer to be my best ones rather than collegiate ones. I'm a silly cat 5 anyway, so this is too much fuss over nothing, just too bored sitting around instead of biking .

Again thanks a lot for the informative info, and snuffle, you have my sympathy... you seem to have been through quite a bit of knee issues