This is such a great post. Very wise advice. Thank you.
My goal is 0 Ctl right now
How are you guys stacking load?
3 progressive weeks + 1 rest week? Or only 2:1?
What’s the weekly ramp rate?
What’s the relative load of the rest week?
I go for 3:1 and rest ratio of around 0.6
Built up to 98 before my A event… which pushed me to 102 but recovering now. Would have been nice to build up a bit more, but I had rest week / vacation / taper that led to a plateau. Still, highest I’ve ever been and that CTL really makes a difference in longer events. Ski season approaches so a big decline on the way, but hoping to hit new highs next season.
CTL peaked this last week at 84. It seems that my body adapted to always be in the mid 70’s. That feels normal. Above 80 I start feeling the load.
83 here.
I can handle up to 90, 85 being optimal. And I learnt I need rest.
I’m in the off season and I got down into the low 70’s (after peaking in the 130’s), but have worked back up to ~90 with just fun riding. Did a 6+ hour “just for fun” race this past weekend and was surprised how much fitness was still there. Felt strong all day and had a decent result. One more fun race first week of november, but not doing any real training for that and have started rowing (on water and erg) for some off season variety. Humbling numbers on the rowing machine, basically cut my watts by ~40%.
I’m at a CTL of 174. Which is not real. I have a very high LT1 (~0.83 IF), so TSS for me is basically free.
I always feel like my CTL numbers are pretty low compared to everyone else. I peaked this summer before Leadville at 89 on intervals.icu and 91 on TP’s. Currently I am in low 60’s and riding about 6-8 hours per week and 3-4 hours lifting/walking. Training Peaks always seems to have a higher CTL for me than intervals for some reason.
This is only possible if your FTP is not set the same in both systems, or you have duplicate workouts (this happened to me) in TrainingPeaks.
Actually, I see lots of little differences between the two that add up over time. Especially if you include non-cycling activities.
Certainly shouldn’t be adding non-cycling TSS to a cycling TSS metric.
But lots of people do
Lots of people do lots of things. Doesn’t make it right.
You said it’s not possible. I said it is and explained how. Thats all. Not here to argue about right or wrong.
I suppose you’re right. I didn’t anticipate people would put non-cycling activities and then talk about their CTL. However, if it’s in both systems, I would assume it would be the same?
There’s a methodology difference.
TP accounts for all activities so that a Gym session will go into the calculation
Intervals does not. Note that the “TSS” is between parenthesis, meaning it was the TSS, but 0 went to your fitness chart.
Also, the numbers in TSS for the same activity in TP are normally higher when it comes to off-the-bike training.
Yeah, there was a lot of discussion a while back on the topic. I feel like “He who shall not be named” was involved since he came up with the metrics in the first place! There were a lot of people including their runs and what not, because even though it’s not intended for that use, it’s how they track their overall fatigue (right or wrong). I do include it as a data point so I have everything in both systems, but then have filters set up to show my “true CTL” for when I’m looking at my cycling fitness (or reporting my number in a thread like this). There are definitely differences in how TP and Intervals calculate the data for non-cycling activities, but then if you filter on just bike, they true up.
We could also say “back in the good old days when xxxx was here…” 