Winter drop of power regardless of maintenance training

Training
1

Hello guys,

I’m experiencing sudden (and a bit frustrating) drop of power. Looking here for hope lol.

I rode outdoors during summer, in September I did a ton of volume in the mountains. Then took ~10 days break and got on the turbo trainer (beginning - mid October). Did couple of “maintenance” VO2max quite demanding sessions and my power was really nice, liked it! Progress was clear.

At the beginning of November I started going to gym (2x a week) and reduced my trainings to 1 intensive session a week, maybe some Z2 rides in between.

And around 1 week ago I noticed a significant drop of form, power I can sustain is lower, I couldn’t finish the training which one month ago wasn’t even super demanding.

CTL is calculated from 42 days. It seems like when summer volume got “out of radar” of 42 days (more or less), form began dropping despite maintenance sessions with intensity.

Should I worry? Or is that normal? It’s my second winter with power meter so it’s first time I experience power DROP, it was always gains :wink: maybe this is the reason I’m a bit frustrated.

2

I lost a lot of power last winter by doing long low intensity work… it does not work for me. Winter is now my time for building power and taking on vo2 intervals. Donutman gave me some great feedback that my ftp and vo2 max was v close. Im going to up the intensity over winter on TR and then focus on more long endurance rides when weather improves. Everyone is different. But this approach feels right for me