Originally Posted by
trainsktg
Very interesting, making me wonder all the more exactly what fitness/freshness is actually indicating. I'm at best a high-end Cat 5. As of last month my FTP was approx. 245 as measured separately by both Kickr and on-bike power meter, putting my P/W somewhere around 2.9 to 3.0.
Below is a (lousy) snip of F/F over the last six months. F/F increased steadily from March through July, peaking in the area of 110 through July. I do think you are correct though, I probably overreached. I was feeling pretty burned out which was why I was glad for the easier workload through August.
Keith
Yes, the image you provided is mostly illegible, however you're misinterpreting the Fitness/Freshness score slightly.
Fitness and Freshness are two different measures, sometimes referred to as CTL (Chronic Training Load) and TSB (Training Stress Balance). CTL, or Fitness, is a measure of your base training. A CTL (or Strava Fitness) score of 115 means you are averaging a TSS (Training Stress Score) of 115 every day. That's quite high for most people and difficult to sustain unless you aren't working. I can see in your graph that your TSB (or Stava Freshness) is negative while you're ramping your CTL. Once you started tapering and lowering your CTL your TSB (Freshness) rises and goes into positive territory. This is what everyone wants to do before a race and, as you observed, your performance is higher when you are fresher.
I believe Strava let's you select whether you feed Power and/or HR data into the Fitness/Freshness calculations. If you select power only I think the Strava Fitness/Freshness is the same as Dr Andrew Coggan's CTL/TSB/TSS data.