Alex(Cleveland)

This year I again got off my ass, dropped major weight and started riding a bunch. The below shows that I went from zero to a CTL of 126 in early July. I plugged in a FTP of 250 as a guess at the start (I did some running and elliptical work over the winter but no cycling) and last week I tested at 300FTP.

I really didn't do any structured interval training until a couple weeks ago since I was always trying to slim down (finally down to 70kg) I have been riding over the last few years but I have NEVER kept it up over the winter. Always the same, ride like crazy starting in the spring, get up to around 300FTP, then burn out by fall and stop riding till next spring. Next year I want to do the NY Gran Fondo so I bought a Kickr and hopefully it will be enough to keep me motivated.

So what the hell am I asking here? I am wondering how important is it to keep fitness up over the winter? Am I really starting from zero or does something carry over (I think I read somewhere it only takes 90 days to get to 90% of potential!?!?!)? Of course I would love for someone to tell me how much I can keep improving if I don't hang it up over winter (I dream of 350 at 70kg yeah right). Oh yeah and how much should I let my CTL fall over the off season? Or what should I do now? Take a week off? I know it all kind of varies but any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much...
-ALex

ovoleg

I lived in Cuyahoga Valley(Akron) for about a year and a half. I spent most of January/Feb riding my MTB in the snow in the Sand Run trails. The park ranger OK'd me as long as I didn't destroy anything. I would try this out for fitness, its fun. You've also got Rays indoor park to stay in shape(sorta).

Training in the winter would suck hard. I would either hammer and do a short ride(under an hour) before I freeze to death or do a longish slow ride(endurance) over 2 hours. Honestly, I've tried all sorts of winter gear combinations and none of them really did the trick for me on a ride over an hour.

The only thing that really worked was hand warmers(those little packs) in my shoes to keep them warm.

I want nothing to do with snow or the cold.
PS: jstspinning lives next to you, he gets pretty fat and loses the weight pretty fast.

ovoleg

Strava Segment | Sand Run MTB

Some bastard stole my KOM on the trail, I think he jogged it and def didn't do it in the freezin cold.

Creatre

It's extremely important to hold onto that fitness from this year, so you can build on it next year. Otherwise it's an endless circle.

Also, since you are starting from nothing every spring, you build CTL fast which could be causing your burnout (or just the fact you have a CTL of 120 which is pretty legit).

slynkie

yea that's a pretty huge CTL, and also it looks like OP had negative TSB for a good 3-4 months straight. without any winter base to sustain it, I'm surprised he's not ready for a 3 month nap right now..

Alex - just don't sit on your ass all winter. when you do, you're not starting from zero (i mean, starting from ~3.5 w/kg ain't nothing!), but you're severely hampering your potential. i also imagine those first couple of months kinda suck, when you do start riding again - i know they do for me, right now, coming off of about 3 months of no training due to injury.

you care enough to post here and ask, so just do it. you've had a huge build and load this year already - unless you have some target events coming up, just spend the rest of the season riding for fun, and enjoy yourself - don't worry about keeping CTL up. when you feel yourself petering out, give yourself a 1-3 week rest, no bike at all. but then GET BACK ON IT.

oh and most importantly, congrats on the weight loss and loving the bike now stick with it!!

echappist

ATL for less than two weeks after initial data collection and CTL for less than 3.5 months after initial data collection are pretty meaningless due to the way data are weighed. So the first this the OP should recognize is that his CTL, assuming the FTP is set correctly (big if is there hasn't been consistent testing), is likely quite a bit higher given all the zero values that need to be accounted.

In that sense, looking at his ATL once it has stabilized tells a better story. From late April to mid July, the lowest that ATL dips is 85 (once) and 95 (once), and other than these outliers, the OP never went below 110 for a good 2+ months. And for a good two months, never below 120. This is far more telling than a peak CTL as it suggests that weekly load for two months averages to 840 for 2 months, and if one assumes average TSS/hour of 60 (a very high assumption), this means 14 hours/week for 9 straight weeks. Or if one is more reasonable about the assumption, average of up to 17 hours/week. All this, from no winter training at all. As someone else suggested, not very sustainable.

It perhaps would surprise no one that the OP had to take long times off the bike in late July (perhaps already over reaching), during which his TSB rose to +30, and thinking that he's fully recovered, went back it again full bore for 2-3 weeks averaging 840 TSS/weeks. I (and countless others) have often done similar things thinking that 1-2 weeks off will offset over reaching symptoms, whereas it really is inadequate. Again, it surprises no one that this is not sustainable, and the OP probably needed another break in the last 10 days, this time with TSB shooting up toward +50. At this point, the over-reaching and burnouts are not just psychological and mental as they are actually physiological. His endocrine system has likely gone haywire by now due to all the training stimuli, and the body can no longer respond to the nonstop demands.

What the OP needs is a coach who knows enough and has enough command to dissuade the OP for his own worst inclinations and to moderate the training. Long and steady is the name of sustainable, year-after-year training, and this is far from what the OP is doing. The last note is that if the OP is shooting for one and only one Gran Fondo next year, 14-17 hours is just an overkill. There are much more efficient (and less draining) ways of preparing for a 100 mile gran fondo.

MDcatV

how old are you?

mostly individual response questions but, I, for one, hate the way you're currently training. too big of a break, then way, way, way to steep of a CTL progression. it's a recipe for a) getting sick; b) burnout; c) never being fresh

i've trained lots of different ways, but have found best for me is to take a few weeks of unstructured time starting last week, do what I feel like but stay active, get some riding in during weekdays coupled with some hiking and even, gasp, running; take care of the yard, some house projects, and all the things I neglected to do while I was racing all summer; then in October start riding the rollers in the a.m. 3 or 4 days/week mostly ez with longer steady riding on the weekends until ramping up a little more in November. I rarely have a CTL over 75 and keep a very steady but shallow rise in CTL.

This is imperative for me to keep from getting fat(ter) as I am predisposed to putting on weight, to minimize colds and flu, and minimize burnout. when i was younger I could go a little more haphazardly but in my early 40s, I require more discipline.

Alex(Cleveland)

First off thanks for the input everyone!
To give a bit more background while answering questions...
I am 36 with a full time job but no kids yet, and yeah the last few weeks I have been really struggling... I know I am in trouble when the minute I enter 170+ heart rate I just... stop. I just cant raise it anymore even though my max is around 195. Hmm FTP was probably low because I never felt ready for a hard effort until I let CTL fall a bit (just last week) to test. Here are some more stats in case you were wondering (You can see I am fizzling out trying to recover):
Damn it sorry couldn't get the columns to line up

ovoleg

you live right near Paul Martin, no excuse not to ride in the winter bro.

Creatre

Fizzling out trying to recover? I see no weeks under 494 tss. 494 tss is not a recovery week, not even close, especially if you are feeling burnt out.

revchuck 

OP - Last winter I went through a three month base building period (October - January) where I had 740-980 TSS/week...but that excludes my rest weeks (low 300s TSS) and two weeks off the bike for medical reasons. I was still glad when that period was finished. I can see how you might not want to look at the bike come fall...but that's self-inflicted.

IMO, a week off the bike would be good right now. Sleep late this weekend, hang out with the old lady. If you feel you HAVE to ride this weekend, keep it short and easy (TSS = <40). Then work on gradually bringing your CTL down to something you can sustain through the winter, maybe in the 60s? Then when it gets warm enough to ride outside again, you won't be (as) fat and starting from scratch again.

Suggested reading: Base Building for Cyclists by Thomas Chapple.

valygrl

I agree with everyone saying too fast a ramp, don't quit riding in the winter, and you are overtrained so you need to take some time off.

However, for those trying to make something of the TSS/TSB/CTL/ATL- (chappy, your analysis is great, but....) I think it's probably all garbage data based on the fact that he WAGged the 250 initial FTP and hasn't tested at all until now. using an FTP value of 83% of actual is going to dramatically inflate the TSS/CTL/ATL numbers. Throw that analysis away and start over. Or maybe you could cherry pick a few numbers out of some hard shorter efforts from the last few months and back-populate some better FTP estimates.

What's everyone else running for a CTL during the race season? Mine is in the 70-85 range this year, which is the lowest ever, and I'm having the best season ever as well. A lot of that is non-fitness factors, to be sure, but the fitness seems to be there.

Wylde06

My season was a crapshoot due to hip tightness/leg pain..but ive been 60-70 pretty much all year. First year using power, and with an "injury" that has been holding me back (pretty much since May) from really getting it any higher so we will see what next year brings once I get this issue im having in check

globecanvas

I peak around 75-85 for races, and feel way stronger at 85 than 75. One of my goals for next year is to race at higher CTL (not just for the sake of having a higher number, I mean getting more legit training in).

MDcatV

totally agree. good post.

for CTL during race season, I've been in varying places ranging from over 100, to in the 65 to 75 range.

I think that when i've been in the 90s/100s, i have a lot of "measurable fitness" and test well, but lack race day freshness and have a tendency to teeter over the edge of being on good form, as well as have a higher propensity to get sick and miss time. I did this in 2010 and eventually in June, right after I recorded my best 20 MMP ever, still is, I fell off the map with chronic cramping, sugar cravings, bad sleep, and finally a stomach flu. I had to get extended recovery and it took me until August to feel good again.

this year I was around 70 for most of the season. Good: I was fresh and really strong, I had the best power outputs on every metric from 57 minutes down to 1' (since 2010 pre fall off #s ) in August of this year. I did not get sick at all this year, not even once, and was fresh and ready to go at every race. Bad: I think I had a 60-ish mile or 2.5-ish hour shelf life. I did great in shorter races, was good in the first part of longer races, made every selection or forced my own, but struggled as races went on (atypical for me). Could be lots of other factors, but I think one of them is that I lacked some fitness that may have been measurable as a CTL.

echappist

Due to demands at work last fall, dug myself into a hole with a starting CTL of 45 (or perhaps even lower). didn't get above 75 until last week, when my season has already been over. Got sick 3x between Jan and Feb (really wasn't training much) and then got sick 4x between late April and mid June. The only form i carried was from July until now, when i missed out on 2/3 of the racing i could have done.

for races up to 2.5 hours, felt strong, set all sort of in-race records, broke away cleanly and stayed away in races, and was able to be strong late in the race when the breakaways took place. 20 min power (the only thing i actually test for) also seemed to have improved despite the really low volume of training.

downside is that when the race went over 3 hours, i was running on empty.

revchuck 

Valygrl - good points. My CTL has settled into the high 60s to low 70s range. During base training last winter it was 100ish.

Andy STi

I'm best when it's 100-110. Mine dropped this season due to work and family obligations and I was around 80-85 for MTB Marathon Nationals and Cascade and I felt it. Just didn't have the strength I normally do. Felt like my fitness made me a non-factor.

Hida Yanra

OT: given the year you had, (and I haven't been keeping up since late spring), sounds like you had a nice turn of luck and form. Congrats. Ingredients being what they are, looks like you and your training advisory staff did some nice work. There's no way to fake form in +3h racing, so nicely done on what you could control.

mattm

I think there's some confusion in this thread about a) how to do periodized training, and b) wtf CTL/etc means.

CTL isn't a "score of awesomeness" where higher is always better.. at least in my opinion.

I don't think the actual value is as important as the trend (up/down) and the timing around resting leading up to A races/peaks.

echappist

Ian, thanks for the kind words. My only result was a 4 th place from a break in the district championships, and i wouldnt have picked myself to finish top 5 at the start of the race. Luck had quite a bit to do with things as there were a few kindred spirits who thought of the same thing as i did. Also testament to the preparation that the cranky old dude provided given the lack of quality ingredients going in.

Hida Yanra

I'll stop with the OT after this.... but are we talking about the same thing?

Ygduf

speak for yourself!

Ygduf

reason in a training #s thread:

Creatre

You don't get burnt out like the OP so it's a totally different scenario.