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Brilliant clockwise circular ride today in cold but very beautiful weather to bring build week 3 to a close and to lead me into my adaptation week. This was planned to be a hard ride and it was, we covered 90 miles over very hilly countryside, the route included about 7400' of ascent and there were a number of very significant climbs including:
Netherwitton to Rothley Crossroads.
Chesterhope Common from the East.
Hareshaw Head from Bellingham.
Billsmoor from Elsdon.
Biddlestone Edge from Alwinton.
Netherton Northside.
Lemmington Bank.
Gowk Hill from Lemmington Bank Top.
Embleton Terrace from Pauperhaugh.
The Fords Road.
Beacon Hill.
It has always been my intention to make build week 3 a high TSS week and this week has gone well finishing with today's ride which delivered a TSS of 376 with a NP of 242W. My TSS total for this week has come in at 833 giving me a CTL of 90.3, my steady build continues.
So, it's into adaptation now with a CTL drop which will slowly be rebuilt over the following 3 weeks and hopefully to a slightly higher CTL by the beginning of December, and so it goes on.
I'm feeling good at present as theoretically the long ride at the end of build week 3 should be coming at a time when I should be at my most fatigued in the cycle with quite a high CTL and a solid 3 weeks of training behind me. I felt fine today, even after 2 hours on the CompuTrainer yesterday, but I will still enjoy next week!
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[Uploaded 02/11/2008 18:56:30]
aren't you building a bit early? Its not even winter yet... When is your first priority A race/event?
ReplyDeleteHi Mark
ReplyDeleteFirst main event will be the Tour of Ireland. I'm not into this season driven training any more, I'm going on building my CTL really slow and steady and taking regular adaptation weeks, just trying to keep it consistent, that I believe is the key to not getting over tired.
As an illustration my CTL yesterday was 90.3, exactly 4 weeks ago at the same point in my cycle it was 85.3, and 4 weeks before that 75.2, so it's only risen by 15.1 over an 8 week period, so less that 2 points per week.
This approach will I hope yield a CTL in excess of 100 which I can sustain come the Spring as I will be allowing it to periodically drop a little for rest and adaptation.
I'm planning to avoid the dreaded boom and bust where one breaks down as a result of too high a CTL ramp rate and I won't know if this works for me unless I try it for a full cycle!
Doing this my TSB never gets too low, today it's -25 after a very hard 90 mile ride just yesterday, at the end of a 833 TSS (246 mile)week, it's not been below -12 for over a fortnight now.
So, the plan is to build slowly, resting when required, and end up with a high CTL to give me some currency to spend in due course, we'll see if it works!
I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying I'll give this a go and see, they do say the more you train the more you can train :-)
Cheers,
Q