90 Realized

So I met my goal set way back in January of getting to a CTL of 90. Now what? Since CTL is based on a rolling average (basically like saying I am doing a 90 tss/day average), it will only fall from August 11th or so down to December. Simply put it takes a lot of time to raise your CTL. Like any average it gets harder to raise the ceiling as you go if you are not consistantly scoring above the average value.

Normally it is said that if you have a CTL of 70 or below you won't need to taper for a peak event. But at 90 tss/d or close to that I would taper if I were going to peak. The risk of tapering in September is that you loose CTL in your taper and for the cross season that might mean initial decreased performance. But, that is why you do specific workouts designed to maintain a certain level and focus on your weaknesses (for which I have many).

The last sub-eight hour week I had was back in April. The only "rest" period was during my vacation in June where I was still able to do some tempo stuff. So, using TSS instead of the traditional 3 weeks on/1 week off periodization got easier as I went. Plus, if you look at my average intensity factor for that period (May-July), it is only about .75 (out of 1, with 1 being TT intensity).

It is easy to see how the pros ramp up so quickly when they are doing 4 or 5 hours a day and racing in between.

A CTL of 100 tss/day would probably have taken me another 2 months. Once intervals start CTL will go down so I would have had to start building much earlier and since I work that is not possible.