Somewhat similar to how TR provides power ratings for age groups what I’d like to see is the amount of training hours/training load per age groups.
Reason being that I’m thinking about increasing my training volume but at my age (55) the research advises at lot of progression has as much to do with recovery rather than training hours/volume.
Would be interested to hear what load/hours/TSS others in my age group are putting in - thanks!
Recovery is certainly important, but my experience (at 56) is that significant volume can still be productive as long as it’s a reasonable ramp rate and the right mix of intensity. I peaked at around 140ctl in my last block before unbound, which translates to consistent weeks at over 1000tss and 20+ hours. I’ll limit myself to 2x structured intervals sessions per week and often include a hard-ish group ride on saturdays. Besides one week where I intentionally overloaded a good bit as an experiment, I felt surprisingly fresh for most of it. Maybe a little mentally worn down after my last hard block (about a month prior to Unbound), but that was more about being mentally impatient for the race rather than physically tired. I took 2 weeks off after unbound and about to start my leadville block this week. TSS has dropped to low 100’s, but I’ll push it back into the 130’s before leadville.
Again, I think steady progression is key. I’ve been upping my volume gradually over multiple
years.
This is an interesting suggestion! ![]()
I do think that age can tell part of the story, but we’re all so individual, and I think that’s espescially true as we grow older.
Regardless, I’ll pass this along to the team as I think it’s good feedback and something we should consider moving forward.
Thanks for the suggestion @FergalK!
Also, intervals.icu does include peer group comparisons on TSS and weekly training hours. It’s pretty easy to link to Strava and it will grab all your history. And you can also look to see how your 2,3,and 4 hour power compares to others as well (nice for folks who focus on longer events). I find the intervals.icu peer group to be a bit lower performing than the TR peer group, but they are reasonably close.
wow @grwoolf, that’s some serious training hours you are accumulating - very impressive!
Then again you are competing in savage endurance events like Leadville and Unbound so I’m assuming that’s the kind of effort you need to be putting in order to be competitive?
My target event (BC Bike Race in 2026) I suspect is much lighter on load than your events and it’s spread out over 7 days.
I did it in 2024 and loved it and felt like my training was sufficient for it, I have more time for training this year so was thinking of upping my training hours to see what benefit it may bring.
Thanks for the info regarding the Intervals peer group comparisons, I use Intervals and find it very valuable but hadn’t seen this functionality/aspect, will check it out!
@eddie - thanks also for your reply, I think it may be a useful addition if the Power Ranking chart could be supplemented with another filter showing a TSS/Hours grouping.
So for example if I’m currently training 8 hrs/week and showing in the 90th percentile (20 min power) this includes riders who may be training 4 hours a week, or 16 hrs/week, but if filtered it to riders who train eg; 8-10 hrs/week, this percentile would probably change and would give me a more realistic illustration of effort expended (hrs/week) vs result obtained (watts/kg).
There are often (usually) people finishing in front of me who are doing a lot less volume, so if you have the right parents (or maybe just train smarter), that’s probably a better path. Honestly, it’s a big diminishing returns thing, so I can still get pretty close to my potential on less hours. I do find that the big volume builds really good endurance (different maker at Unbound), but it’s not having a huge influence on my FTP and I’m not nearly as competitive in shorter races. I’m retired and just like riding and training. I still dread my intervals each week whether I’m training a lot or a little, but I always love the long rides and my body seems to respond well to the volume.



