CTL Goals

I had a couple of down weeks this spring when I was off the bike due to illness. My chronic training load (CTL) had dropped down into the low 50's. Last year before 'cross season it had climbed into the high 60's and this summer my goal is to get it into the 80's.

CTL is the measure of how the accumulated workouts in the past 3-6 weeks are affecting your fitness. The idea is to get CTL as high as possible (without your body rebelling) leading up to your goal event, taper and then you should be fresh and peaked.

Normally, elite and pro cyclists CTL is way above 70 and in fact, unless it gets beyond this there is pretty much no reason to taper at all since you have not been accumulating enough stress over time for a taper to help you.

In last year's snapshot of my Performance Manager leading up to and during 'cross season you can see how CTL dropped during the season as I was racing and recovering, using the fitness I had gained over the summer.

[You can see how the summer training raised CTL (blue line) and depressed training stress balance (TSB) during the summer. TSB can be considered a measure of "freshness" derived from the interrelation of CTL and ATL. You can also see how illness affected me at the end of 'cross season by the big plunge in CTL (blue line) and acute training load (ATL/red line).]

Having a goal to raise it into the 80's this summer should leave me with good fitness going into the fall.

The fine line is not doing too much and making yourself sick or injured. This is where the Cycling Peaks software and a daily log really helps.