Heathpack 

Is there a scenario in which it would make sense to have a -60+ TSB and a tough interval workout scheduled that day?

gsteinb

I'd beg off answering that. How I train is totally different, and I'm not in your coach's head. At this juncture the proof will be in the pudding. Go crush your thing and the guy is a genius. Fall on your face and not so much.

Heathpack 

Lol, I have every intention of crushing the thing.

So if he says everything I want to hear (which I'm guessing he will, I have been kind of burning things up in a circle of people he really wants to impress), I guess I could safely give him one more month. I don't completely trust he is keeping a close enough eye on things or will do so in the future. But now that I know this, I can be more careful on my end, which maybe is a decent lesson from all this anyway.

Sorry if I have seemed obtuse in this thread, I have been operating under a series of incorrect assumptions.

bigfred 

Heathpack, That -60 TSB is based on an FTP that was measured how many weeks ago? How much power have you gained since then? If it's not based on you current capability it could be greatly over estimating the situation.

shovelhd

Exactly. Its just a number derived from other numbers, and if they are off then it throws everything off. To me the more important things to consider right now are how you feel, your crash, your illness, and the plan for the next two weeks before the event. We have no idea how he plans to taper.

Fudgy, no, she is not racing, but she has said that she wants to complete at least one event under a specified time. She is still racing against the clock for her own goals and objectives.

Ygduf

Yeah. There are different ways to get there. No one is necessarily giving up anything by choosing a different method.

shermo

I'm going with everyone else who's saying that -60 TSB is probably not correct. Either this is because your FTP is set too low, or you've done workouts in the past few months that you haven't logged or for which your FTP was too high.

-60TSB is very low. I've come back from injury over the past three weeks and my TSB bottomed out at -53.7. I wouldn't recommend that for most people - I can get away with it since I've got a long training history (years) which CTL doesn't take into account, but which has a very real effect on your ability to train hard. I probably could have hit -60TSB if that was my goal, but yeah, it's pretty low.

Heathpack 

?? If I had done workouts in the past few months that I didn't log (which I haven't), wouldn't my TSB be falsely high, because those rides were not being accounted for in my CTL?

bigfred 

Heathpack, remember some of these guys are thinking like "racers" who are reasonably well trained and have reached a plateu of what their physiology and available time can provide.

To them, missing data from rides completed early, but, recorded for later rides would create a corresponding but false increase in CTL and subsequent drop in TSB, all other things being equal. If I understand the equations correctly. ( :-) )

bigfred 

Guys, I know this is TLDR, but, please give it a read and contribute.

I've been staying largely out of this, first, because I'm not a "racer" and secondly, because I really wanted to hear what others would advise to Heathpack.

With that said, if you will please, correct or discuss any of my following points that you don't feel are correct. Realize I have a little more knowledge about Heathpacks current situation and history than some, as I was one of the early BF.netizens to befriend her and offer advice in the Nutr. & Training forum and also recommended to her that she find a "local" coach to address some issues that I was increasing uncomfortable with as another internet-know-it-all thousands of miles away.

Heathpack,

1. You can't hold your coach accountable for "missing" things like your elavated HR if he actually hadn't looked at that data yet. He will have had no chance to actually "see" that.

2. As you've learned, those of us who have been using HR & cadence transmitters are accustomed to seeing erroneous readings. Specially at the beginning of a ride, when the rider's skin may be dry and contact poor. You might think this should lead to low readings, and it does, but, I've also seen outragously high readings. Subsequently, this isn't going to stand out to your coach as something really out of the ordinary unless you do your part as a coached athlete and tell them "I wasn't feeling right. Something was wrong with my pulse." And, go to a doctor. The fact that you carried on with that ride, with otherwise normal values, would in fact reinforce in the coaches mind that everything was fine and the early HR anomoly was just that.

3. Frequency of review and degree of detail therein: You and I have previously discussed not getting mired down with minutia. Your coach will for the most part be looking at big picture stuff before worrying about detail. There are multiple reasons for this. A. You're new and on a steep improvement curve. The majority of your gains are reasonably easy to achieve as long as you don't burn out. B. You don't need to be focusing on little marginal gains that are determined by minutia and details. C. Your goals are big, broad, big picture goals. etc.

Frequency: Weekly is probably fine. What I am curious about is the sequence of things. If he's reviewing your data from last week on Tuesday, are you recieving an updated plan that begins on Wednesday? Or not until later in the week and that doesn't begin until the next Monday. If the later, I would be concerned that there is an inbuilt week in arrears. That would not be ideal given your situation of being very new, on a steep improvement curve, dedication to doing whatever is prescribed and unaware of your own limits or what your approaching boundaries may feel like. Ideally you would like to see your current week reviewed the day before you're update for the coming week.

Details: If you experience some unique experience during any workout that concerns you, Hit the lap button. This will allow you to then point your coach to exactly what it was that you have a question about. Pointing them towards minutia is your job. Don't expect them to troll through each and every, entire workout looking for anomolies that are probably just sensor errors.

What you're coach has been hearing from you is "I had a crash and (with all the excuses in the world to stop) called my husband to deliver my backup bike so I could complete the ride". He'll equate that to, something happened, but, I was fine. Keeping in mind that contact and crashing is par for the course in racing, a coach wouldn't make any more of that than you do. You're also concerned about TSB, but, on that ride, you report having outridden your peer set and having to pull them home for the last 3 hours. Those are not the words of someone who is chronically fatigued. Accute, perhaps, but, not chronic. He won't know that the group included a bunch of people you don't normally ride with and who aren't at your level, unless you told him that as well. But, if I were him, I might suggest that verges on nonrelevant details. Just tell him about you.

All these acronyms CTL, ATL, TSB, FTP: they're just numbers for approximating something. In well trained athletes with realatively plateued performance they can lead to areas where they can hone or fine tune their approach to gain the maximum result that they are capable of with their limited resources. You're not anywhere near that yet. At the rate you are improving, you FTP isn't accurate within a week or two of having measured it. This is one of the pit falls of training with power for a newbie'ish rider. We discussed as much before you purchased the thing. Likewise, we discussed that HR was more consistant for a rider on a steep improvement curve, but, that it could lead to you chasing heart rate and training the cardio system at the expense of pushing big gears and training your muscles. Which is exactly what you were doing last year. That wasn't "wrong". It was actually probably "right" in your long run.

Keep in mind you are to a degree challenging your coach. You've identified that muscular strength and muscular endurance are limiters. But, you've also set goal events of considerably more endurance than you've ever done (a double century in your first year of training). You'll also have informed him that you like to be "prepared" and don't like "hoping" that you have what it takes on the day. So, he will have had you on an aggressive slope to increase your milage/time on the bike while also working FTP during the week. Culminating with a 150 mile (75% of event distance) ride, regardless of what that does to your anyhow inaccurate TSB. These are big picture training areas. Then you have some expectation that he'll drill down to look at all the details. That may not be realistic compared to your goals. If you were identifying that "sprinting" for wins was your limiter and you were doing very discrete, short duration, intervals, then you could expect that he would be looking at those intervals on a second by second basis.

4. Illness. Sorry, I don't remember exactly what you suffered. But, if it was an accute headache not well for a day issue and just as quickly recovered from, the coach may attribute it to either an accute hydration, electrolyte, nutrition issue or other life obstactle. However, more concerning, at least to your coach, would be if it were something like a low grade beginning to a cold that just won't go away or develop into anything. That would be the sort of thing that would certainly point toward training fatigue.

Heathpack, you're doing awesome! You've done so much so quickly. You have the desire to understand EVERYTHING, optimize the results of every training minute you have and enjoy cycling. That's absolutely great.

Before you cast your current coach or coaching in general under any busses, have a chat with the guy. The one thing I would insist on, if I were you, would be as short a time between review and plan update. That should help keep all workouts relavent to how you're doing and feeling right now.

Otherwise, between now and your double, reconginze the training is largely done. All you can do between now and then is, stuff things up. Make sure you're comfortable with your tapper and have fun.

Heathpack 

I finally talked to the coach last night, a lot of the specifics discussed in this thread were very helpful, so I'll start with thanks to those of you who took the time to reply, it really made a big difference in my ability to have a somewhat logical conversation with him. My sense had been we were getting great results performance-wise but that some elements of his plan were risky. It was working, and I thought we were getting away with it because he was watching it all very carefully. Which I thought meant watching the data in real-time but I get from this thread why that's not necessary since a coach should be able to know where you'll be training-wise at a future date and as long as you do the rides as prescribed (which I do).

The specific sequence of events in the training plan that raised my concern started on Nov 13, when he assigned me the following:
Thurs Nov 13: 2 hr ride, 45 min tempo, rest endurance
Fri Nov 14: 2 hr ride, endurance zone
Sat Nov 15: 150 mile ride (which was cut to 135 mi during the ride because of the other people struggling)
Sun Nov 16: 60-90 min ride, active recovery zone
Mon Nov 18: Climbing Repeat Intervals, with a total of 1 hour spent at 95-100% FTP
Tues Nov 19: Climbing Repeat Interval, with a total of 1 hour spent at 95-100% FTP

The 135 mile ride was a great ride for me, very strong, but I lost power data on the 135 mi ride due to malfunction of my power meter. I asked the coach for a substitute TSS for that ride, which took me 9 hours with an IF of probably around .65. He gave me 500, which is a decent number, I think. Although I don't remember doing this, looking at my notes, I obviously talked to the coach about this sequence of rides in advance, because I have hand-written notes modifying the power targets. He told me to ride Monday's at 100% FTP and Tuesday's at 95%. The thing I do remember thinking at the time is "no way is this physically possible, ok I'll give it a try, but I can't see that this is actually going to happen". It was after Sunday's recovery ride that TSB was -60 (actually -58.8). Monday I was sick (sinus, related to weather change), surprisingly better on Tuesday, some easy trainer stuff Wed and Thursday. Then he had me test the waters with a 50 mile ride on Friday, just ride it however I felt because I had been sick. Had a very strong ride, so he cleared me for the 80 mile ride on Saturday. That wound up being 70 miles because of the crash, but it was a crazy strong ride as well, both pre- and post-crash. Sunday I was supposed to do a 35-40 mile endurance zone ride. That was the ride that I felt terrible on, the one with the high HR values, and I called it at 30 miles. During this time, all the rides were sent to the coach on the day that they occurred, along with my comments as to how the ride went. So that is the context of when he missed the high HR numbers (which I now recognize is something most good coaches would probably not think much of anyway) on Sunday's ride by virtue of not having reviewed the ride, I was so shocked. I thought he was playing with fire with my training plan, but that he was well aware of it, and keeping a really close eye on how I was managing it all, but suddenly I realized that he was not.

So the conversation went basically fine, he is a nice guy who I'm sure means me no harm. He said he didn't think my TSB would go that low, maybe it happened because the ride took longer than expected. Its true we were out on the course longer than expected because of fatigue issues with other people but my 9 hr pedaling time was exactly what I would have predicted. He spent a lot of time trying to explain why the neg TSB had happened, never suggested that it was maybe erroneously low. None of which was the point, I asked him how he would prevent that type of situation in the future, he said he would probably just take away the recovery ride. I suggested that maybe not putting the tough interval rides at the spot in the training plan would work. He said "we could do that too". I suggested that if he wasn't sure where I would be training-wise after a long training ride like the 135 mi ride, something that is a new distance for me, maybe he should look at the data before allowing me to proceed with a couple of tough work-outs afterward. He said he would.

He asked how I was post-crash. I told him I was getting a Holter monitor placed Monday, that's a 24 hr EKG. But my doctor is not very concerned, he is not convinced there is any problem at all. The only thing that made him order the Holter is that my HR monitor has never given me glitchy data before and I felt crappy on the ride. Doctor is a marathoner who gets it with me not wanting to abort the ride, he would say right now with what he knows, I'm a 95% go for the ride. The coach then made some suggestions as to additional tests I should ask my doctor to order, which was awkward because the coach's suggestions were wrong and I had to explain to him why.

So that's it, my conclusion is that he doesn't really know what he is doing. I didn't give him any specific expectation as far as data review goes because I'm not sure its going to make any difference. I just left off with him that I wanted him to be more on top of things, watching out for my long-term well-being because to me its just not about this event but setting me up in good shape for the next one. He promised to do this, and I'm sure he will try to the best of his ability. Unbelievably, I am going to stick with him for another month, even knowing all this. I'm kind of addicted to the performance gains right now. It will buy me some time to figure out what's next- either looking for a different coach or going it on my own.

anyway, thanks again for all the help on this thread. Sorry if I was a little obtuse at the beginning.

Ygduf

It sounds like you're still dissatisfied with what you're getting for your $$.

What you posted is a very hard week. Are they all like that?


(and fwiw, I think 500tss is an overestimation, maybe by 20%. I had to go back 3.5 years, to when I had been riding ~2 years, to find a 500+ tss ride: https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ride/995640453618 )

Anyway, good thread. Keep working that hard and you'll fly up the ranks.

gsteinb

500 is an average week for me

Heathpack 

It was one ride.

gsteinb

yes. my point. I agree with fudgy that it's probably an inflated number

Heathpack 

How is it an overestimation? 9 hrs, IF 0.65. Do you think it couldn't have been IF of 0.65 for that duration? I actually thought 500 was probably a slight underestimation, I was thinking IF was more like 0.7. Anyway I don't know where he came up with the 500, all I know is that it was 9hrs pedaling with medium climbing (6300ish feet), nothing too steep, max grade probably 11% but that was pretty brief. Really just one sustained climb of a few miles (maybe 3) at an ave grade of probably 5%. 15 mph is a good speed for me for that distance.

shovelhd

Agreed. I also agree that you should go on your own.

Heathpack 

What are you agreeing with?

shovelhd

That it is probably an overestimation, because your FTP is off.

Heathpack 

Why should I go it on my own?

gsteinb

we only have your tale to go on, but based on what you've written at worst you're over paying a guy who doesn't know what he's doing, and at best you don't have any confidence in him for any number of reasons

Heathpack 

With the implication that I shouldn't look for another coach because I'm a crazy person who will never be satisfied with anybody?

If so, I'm not going to argue with you, but you're wrong.

gsteinb

I posited a range of possibilities there.

shovelhd

I have only had one cycling coach in my racing career, my current coach. It works because we have a mutual respect for each other. There's also a clear line when it comes to expertise. I am the expert about how I am feeling. He doesn't try and tell me how I am feeling. He may wonder why I am feeling the way I do if it doesn't line up with the numbers, and he may help try and figure out what's wrong. But he never questions that I feel the way I do. In return, he is the expert on my training load and what I should be able to handle. I understand the details pretty well. I self coached myself to wins at national events. We use different tools but we speak the same language. However he is the expert and I respect that. I will often ask for explanation, but I do not question. He will describe why, and often will encourage me when I think it's too much. What he is capable of doing that I was never capable of doing is predicting when form will come and how long it will last. Whether I am in a build and peak plan, a build, maintain and peak plan, or a build and maintain plan, he has that insight into my fitness, which lets me focus on the mental side of it. I know going into a race where I can expect my fitness to be, which may dictate strategy. We discuss these things weekly.

What I see you doing, based only on what you posted, is you trying to tell your coach what to do. Then you dressed him down during your call. That's not a healthy relationship no matter how you look at it. So I think that it might be best to go it alone for a while and figure out what you want out of a coach.

Heathpack 

Ok I hear what you're saying. But the truth is that I did not dress him down. I brought up the concern about where the TSB had been on that particular day and tried to find out from him why it had been there. Totally accepting that it is just a number, could be wrong for any number of reasons, or could be intentional. But it turned out it wasn't intentional and he didn't make the case that the number was wrong. He didn't say he wanted me to do those workouts on those days and he had good reason. He told me he thought the number shouldn't have gotten there but offered no additional ideas as to how if I shouldn't have gotten to that point, it was to be avoided in the future. So I was left unclear as to what to say next. Maybe I should have cut my losses at that point in the conversation, and just wrapped up the call. The last thing I want to do is start making suggestions as to how the training plan should be formulated, that is what his job is supposed to be.

So do you think that the sequence of rides he set up for me was entirely reasonable, not something I should have had any concern about? Or do you just not have enough information to answer that question?