How High Do You Try To Ramp CTL

You need to be keeping your own records as you won’t see it in TrainerRoad.

If your starting point was 100 then a CTL of 200 is obviously easily done. It would be interesting to know what the CTL was at the very start of PMC recording.

No comment other than to say that some of the CTL numbers in this thread make me feel inadequate on multiple levels. :sob:

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There is not a chance that a CTL that high is “optimal” for most ordinary working folk. I’m not advocating this but if you started with a CTL of around 15 (which I did after a few months off) see how much you have to train to get yourself to 120+. Most folk wouldn’t have the time and they’d be destroyed.

According to the article “the “optimal” training load seems to lie at a CTL somewhere between 100 and 150 TSS/d. That is, individuals whose CTL is less than 100 TSS/d usually feel that they are undertraining, i.e., they recognize that they could tolerate a heavier training load, if only they had more time available to train and/or if other stresses in life (e.g., job, family) were minimized. (Note that this does not necessarily mean that their performance would improve as a result, which is why the word “optimal” in the sentence above is in quotes).”

Me, I started riding regularly again recently after a few years off, and have gone from just a few hours per month to 21 hours in April, 43 hours in May, and 42 hours so far in June. I don’t know what my CTL is, but it’s got to be at least 70 by now. I imagine that I will be well over 100 by the end of the summer. I definitely don’t feel like I am training again, though - I’m just another MAMIL out smelling the roses.

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Why doesn’t trainer road calculate it

They have all the data

I don’t know just how old qualifies for being “not dead yet” however here is my 2 cents. Late 50s, on 5th season, and in 2017 independently found hitting CTL of 80+ was a bit of a stretch with work/family/yard competing for my attention. Last year I heard Coach Frank Overton’s master’s ctl podcast and interestingly his view was (IIRC) that 80 is a good target for most in my age bracket. Given time commitments, and wanting to stay married, my target for next season is 70-80. Of course there are outliers and since you raced, perhaps you are one of them.

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I agree, with my limited experience and knowledge, that Frank’s numbers seem quite optimistic for “average” people with a life and lacking top level genes. He probably knows best, but there’s not much chance I could hit the numbers he’s mentioned for my age and training history.

Those with a better understanding than I, can make it more clear on the differences, but the 6 Wk Daily Avg on the TR Career page is reasonably close to CTL for general tracking (that they suggest is sufficient info for some people).

It’s pretty close. My CTL in my PMC is 84 at the moment and in TR I have 87 as my 6 week average

edit, I think it’s what it will be at end of week. Next week says 90

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At this point, I don’t feel like I have enough data points to really try to push it or know where to push it to; and relatedly, it doesn’t really make sense to me to try to push it towards any absolute number.

The reason is that i have found–at least for me personally–that the impact of any given CTL is absolutely dependent on how that CTL was generated and what else I am up to at the time. It’s too dependent on the intensity mix. And unfortunately so is the TSB, so it’s not even like I can port a given ratio around from one training mix to the next. Basically, CTL in the winter while doing two hard interval days, two hard lifting days one long day and some cross-training is so different from that generated by doing long days outside with no lifting, etc., that it doesn’t make sense to plan based on it.

What i do instead is look from week to week. For example, if you keep the intensity mix similar, push each week harder than the last week in the manner that you intend, and you see CTL go up, you know you’re achieving the goal of increasing stress.

I find I respond pretty well to high intensity, so that’s what i’m doing at the moment. Always kinda have been that way (back in my track and field days, I was a miler). The thing that taxes me the most is actually stuff like tempo and sweetspot, where afterwards I am just dead. Conversely, I can add some quality efforts to workouts up to 4 or 5 days a week and it’s sustainable. This lends itself to a CTL that’s relatively lower, and increasing more slowly: I’m at 80 right now, probably won’t get much higher than 90 before race season (if it happens), then it’ll hover around there. I’m sure I’d be faster if I did more volume (any added volume would have to be pretty easy), but i just don’t have the time at the moment.

I’ve read that Couzens article and I think planning by CTL / TSS works for him because he probably gives his athletes a pretty consistent intensity balance. It probably changes as they get closer to races, but year over year it’s probably similar. Gives you a good baseline to work off of for next time.

I think Alban Lakata is testing the human limit of CTL this year.

10k miles and 860k vert this year…35hrs and almost 70k vert this week, and it’s only Thursday. I saw he did 2500 tss in (I believe) one week earlier this year. Or maybe it was 10 days. Either way, absolutely insane.

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There is also the unaccounted for training load from other activities (walking, running, cardio, etc.). This can be mapped with Runalyze. So my TSS (bike only) on intervals.icu is also TR at about 50 according to. On Runalyze I also have gardening and walking included and there TSS is at about 90. I’ve also been trying to get ahead for a while, but that’s pretty much the maximum of 2 years. FTP 200, about 2.3 W/kg.