Greetings TrainingRoad Community,
Opening up for debate…
What do you think the progression levels of M35-39 athletes qualifying for Kona should be?
Just started reusing TR after a 2y break and am liking the new features a lot!
Don’t pay attention to the numbers in the screenshot this is purely to show what I’m referring to in the TR app.
Everyone is going to be different, but these are what mine are at after freshly qualifying @ Ironman Canada as a 40yo. These have dropped a bit due to lack of TR rides over the last few weeks, but shows the trend. My Endurance was almost 10 and my Tempo and SweetSpot were a little higher too, closer to 8. Would be easier to show their peaks if there was a PL history at different points in time… In my last 12 week build I didn’t do much of anything above threshold, other than 20 Sprints in some Endurance workouts.
This is great thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity what was your CTL when you KQ’d?
And congrats on qualifying
I was at IMCA as well. Gorgeous bike course.
What criteria did you use before bumping up your ftp for TR?
In my case, aiFTP was quite off
I don’t use that metric. This was what my Intervals.icu chart looked like from Jan 1 until race day:
It bumped up a bit when I used the AI FTP near the start of June with 12 weeks to go, then I just left it and focused on increasing PL levels. I did another check I think around 4 or 5 weeks left out of curiosity since I wasn’t doing anything above threshold and it was suggesting a 4W bump, but I just left it.
Looking at your graph I think your peak CTL was 150 and peak ATL was 113 and then you tapered. I read from coaches and other athletes that CTL of 150 was the key metric so you seem to be right on.
Curious to know how you structured your training plan in TR? Any training plan builder?
Have you got that the wrong way around?
Fitness = CTL (Chronic default 42 days) = 113
Fatigue = ATL (Acute default 7 days) = ~150
Not if my understanding is correct… it was 113 CTL not 150. The other metric you often see quoted is 18 - 22 hours per week.
Re: Progression levels they mean absolutely nothing without the context of what FTP is at the time and even then have very little meaning in reference to Kona qualification. What AG etc…
Just out of interest were these levels with a FTP of ~317w or some other value (FTP based on aiFTP, ramp test, 40 minutes, Kolie Moore Protocol?)
By the way, well done on qualifying, awesome job.
Which TR plan did you do ?
I did lv ld tri and it prescribed lots of threshold and vo2max. I dont think i should repeat that
I have qualified for kona at IMC in the 40-44 age group. We must he on the stage with @wyku
My progression levels were at 10 for tempo and sweet spot and around 5 for threshold.
I suggest analyze the course for your event and tailor the strategy around it with your strength and weaknesses.
My CTL was 179 and ATL was 157 on race morning.
Onur
Cool! Congrats! 
This! I live in the pancake flat Prairie so I focused on a lot of low cadence “climbing” strength work on the trainer and sim rides of the course, which also helped me nail down my nutrition timing, since it was impossible for me to train the hills outdoors. Trudging through the wind for km’s on end only gets you so far when it comes to needing every gear possible and wishing you had more to get up a steep climb. 
I didn’t use a TR plan, at least for the final 12 weeks for sure. There isn’t enough flexibility in the Plan Builder plans to work with the schedule I want/need to train with. I did reference some of the plans at times for ideas on workout progressions and would just add them manually. Having the TR plans automatically display workouts based on your PL levels (rather than being stock plans like they used to be) was handy in that regard.
so you used TrainNow?
Sorry, I couldn’t reply earlier because I had made 3 replies and had to wait for someone else to post again… 
My TR FTP was set at 320W, which was set by the AI FTP. Prior to that I’d use the eFTP in Intervals.icu as another guide, but that one requires actual hard intervals to work properly which I got lots of during Zwift Racing League racing. I didn’t pay as much attention to testing FTP this go around and tried out focusing on building PL levels instead. Not sure what’s the best way to go about it, but I think it worked okay in this instance. No way to really know for sure though!
Sometimes, but it wasn’t the main driver. As I mentioned, I would look at the various plans (usually settling on the half or full tri plans) and find progressions that lined up with what I had in mind (i.e. a 3-4 week threshold or sweetspot workout progression) then added the workouts to my calendar manually to build my plan.
