Could you all share your CTL versus weekly riding time?
I am at 75 and doing around 15.5h last week which I feel is a terrible relation. But don’t really know how to improve it.
Here’s a chart from Training Peaks that‘s used to guesstimate CTL. I heard Kolie Moore use something like this in a podcast the other day too.
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If 15.5h is a typical week, that is pretty low and you might try upping the intensity a bit.
Not to oversimplify, but it’s pretty simple - more TSS every week, month, year. Time and intensity. Building/maintaining aerobic fitness is a long game. Small daily adjustments done with consistency turn into significant long term adaptations, and eventually you start to move the mountain.
This is the smoothest build chart I’ve seen while cruising around the forums. Obvious overload with a rest period before another block.
Do you mind sharing what your structure was during this shown period?
Wow, that’s great, thank you a ton!
If I substract the 25% of my riding time which is forced decending where I can’t pedal, I fall more or less in the table.
On the low side that of course means the potential to improve my relation is also limited, given I don’t wan’t to sit on the trainer instead of riding outside. But I would rather change sports.
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You might have misunderstood my question. I am perfectly aware of how to improve fitness. My concern is if I could do it with less invested time.
Didn’t mean to come off as flippant (If I did), but there aren’t any magical answers here. Pushing CTL up while balancing stress is going to make you fitter. The only way to do that is by increasing TSS (or whatever metric you prefer as your proxy for fitness). The only 2 levers you can pull to increase TSS is time and intensity.
As stated previously, your CTL is pretty low if you are consistently training at ~15 hours. I’d recommend you try upping the intensity (with the same number of hours) and see how you handle it. That would increase your TSS without adding hours, but at some point, the only way to increase TSS without overtraining (with too much intensity) is to increase the hours.
Again, it’s a super simple formula and it’s proven to be an effective way to build/manage fitness, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to implement.
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Maybe if you ride on a trainer but not outside where you lose all kind of time while you can’t push the pedal. Of course one can play with intensity within a pretty narrow limit, but thats not my point.
I have tried things like engaging the brakes during descends to keep pedaling and push power. Trying to optimize the route between minimal pedal desengages versus traffic safety.
I’d like to hear others little tricks, dirty or otherwise.
That was in May. I’m now at 83. I wasn’t specifically targeting a specific level for CTL. At my current intensity mix, I don’t feel like I would perform well at a higher CTL. I have been targeting 1 or 2 structured sessions, plus one medium and one long-ish group ride, and often a long endurance ride.
Just to hit this from a different angle: what’s the terrain like where you live? Can you add more hills or anything to push you to do some intensity without having to think too much about it?
Speaking for myself, I tend to space out and drop intensity on longer rides unless I’m making a deliberate effort to keep riding hard. Learning to maintain tempo or sweet spot efforts on long rides is a skill in and of itself.
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I do pretty much all my training outside these days and have challenging terrain/traffic as well. I’ll ride to specific locations to get my intervals in (hill repeats, etc.), so I can throttle up/down intensity as much as I want. Sure, you are going to have a bunch of coasting or soft pedaling when outside, but you should still be able to get 700-800 tss per week with 15 hours of training unless all your riding is in total congestion. What kind of wattage are you riding at when not doing intervals? I make it a point to always be spinning at .7IF or higher when not doing my intervals (unless terrain doesn’t allow). That’s not creating a lot of fatigue, but the TSS adds up.
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Not looking at intervals a lot but if I interpret that correctly last week I did…
…624 TSS in 15h, so that’s a tick lower than the 7-800 you mention. Week before was similar.
IF for spinning is probably closer to 0.67 for me but that also varies depending how I feel.
I am still ramping up and have done so steeply during the last 3 months, so still accomodating to the load. Once I settle in at maybe CTL 80…90 I could get to 0.7 on average eventually.
Biggest time eater by far is descending. That 4500m from last week partly on trails might cost, dunno, 3h?
The local guys with presumably really high loads I see ascending local road climbs (3…500m), descend and repeat X times.
Is it what you CTL-100-people are doing?
You can see coasting time in intervals.icu, click on the week recap and then details. Pretty flat around here I get about 10 minutes of coasting for a 15 hour week.
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Going back to the 2 Levers topic, it looks like you’re putting in the Time, but without much Intensity above SS. I recognize that’s an equation that’s easy to throw off balance, but if you’re chasing CTL, you either have to increase the time or the intensity.
On the other hand, if you’re happy with your riding and your main goal is just to enjoy that time on the bike, be careful you don’t end up pushing too hard chasing a number and having to take time off.
That neat, thx! Indeed not far from what I estimated, 3,5h coasting (descending) for 15h riding.
There is barely any flat around here apart from high traffic roads, so that’s no option. But I see how much more efficient you can be living in the flats.
So maybe my best option is to go on the DD tire enduro bike rather than the gravel. Faster descending and slower climbing, I wonder how much difference that would make for me over the course of a week. Only one way to find out I guess…
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More above thteshold intensity incoming for July+August!
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Below chart is from mid season break 2023, off season and then rebuild to mid season break 2024 (starts today).
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Highest CTL was 134 in the loading phase 4 weeks before my “A” race.
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Highest TSS week of the year was during that 3 week load and it was 1129.
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Was able to perform beyond all my expectations! I had many all time PRs, holding a near peak for 3 consecutive race weekends which were 100k gravel, 100 mile MTB and 100 mile gravel.
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Biggest takeaway, volume is king and which exact workouts are marginal. Just get the work done, throw in some intensity and if you don’t have the legs for intervals, just do z2 but still get in the TSS. (YMMV)
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Ramp=9 looks savage. Thats eat-ride-sleep/nap?
Had a family vacation so couldn’t train on Sunday. That meant cramming the TSS in early in the week. Only did that once.