Sunday 8 August 2010

Tour de France - My Performance Management Chart


I have no idea whether this is of any interest to anyone but I'd never see the performance management chart of a cyclist who has ridden the Tour de France route and I thought it might be fun to post mine. The chart below takes me up to the present day and covers the period commencing in February of this year.

You can clearly see the long steady CTL build as I slowly built up my training and then the sharp peak at the end of May where I and a mate went and rode the 4 day 400 mile Tour du Nord which was my "mini Giro" preparation for my tour de France ride. This took my CTL to it's pre tour peak of about 114 which I'd reckoned would be high enough and this proved to be correct.

After the Tour du Nord I eased off a lot so that I didn't start out tired and I allowed my CTL to fall to my planned pre Tour CTL of just above 80 which I know is high enough for me to comfortably go out and ride 100+ mile days. Doing this was mentally difficult as I was essentially detraining (TSB of +37 when I started the ride) prior to my departure but this also worked well. The result of this was that in weeks 2 and 3 I did not suffer too badly from fatigue, having started very rested and paced the ride carefully, and I was able to maintain my planned wattages throughout the ride.

Once the ride started it was just up up and away for the ATL and CTL and down down down for my TSB which got as low as -112 in the end but I was still able to ride 100+ mile days perfectly happily.

So, that's what the Tour de France does to a performance management chart and I have shown that, for me at least, a starting CTL of just over 80 is high enough to ride the route of the Tour de France successfully, having previously had it no higher that 114. Much of my training was indoors, but that's another story! ;-)

1 comment:

  1. I always have interest in your posts! That's some stress Quentin!! Well done once again ;)

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