Originally Posted by
burnthesheep
Assuming a sedentary job. Sure, I get up for coffee, to see colleagues, go to meetings, or to walk something out on the site for 30min once in a while..........but I've got a sedentary job. We also watch some Netflix or whatever at night once the kids are in bed. Sure I mow grass, help cook and clean, and wrangle the kids and entertain them. I would assume the guy in our local A ride hammer group that has the hardest time is the guy who has a construction crew. On his feet all day often in non airconditioned unfinished houses. No idea how he manages.
Also, to claim ignorance........it wasn't my idea, I just tend to agree with the idea to a point:
"And for time-crunched cyclists, both the need for prolonged recuperation and the risk of overtraining are already reduced because your busy work and family schedules result in relatively low training volume and abundant time for recovery."
https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/t...-for-cyclists/
The way I understood CTL to work, if somehow you managed over a longer period of time to get up to bigger volume ......it wouldn't kill you because you would have adapted to it over time. Lots of the triathlete folks over on Slowtwitch injure themselves (usually on the run training) by ramping up CTL too quickly. Basically they sit negative for TSB for months on the run (or combined all sports) then wonder why they hurt themselves, or they're exhausted and the gains stopped. They went from 3 hours a week to 10+ overnight.
For some reason, the "one timer" half marathon or marathoner doing it for fun or a fund raiser somehow can grasp the concept of ramping up training load better than competitive athletes sometimes. Even if not knowing what they're doing. They lookup a plan that ramps their load up over XX weeks before the event and peppers in a few shorter speedwork sessions.
I was even in here asking how to burn extra hours this week, lol, so some hypocrisy in action on my part. Just the excitement of having the time to ride.
But you don't have the experience of chronic, high-level training. So your ability to handle five hours a week doesn't really say much about how you would recover were you doing 15 hours a week of "proper" training.
That quip on training peaks doesn't fully encapsulate the recovery needs a chronically high and demanding training load actually entails. Not needing prolonged recuperation simply means that people doing that type of training can essentially maintain a decent fitness level year round without the need for a significant offseason. That type of training also typically means a plateau and lacks the highs and lows of periodization.
Short bouts of overextensive training that you're referring to from the bucket-list crowd really has no bearing on the situation. Your body can handle acute bouts of stress pretty well up to a point. They're not training for performance so much as completion, so there's a lot left on the table. And then they're done and that's it.
The longer I train, the less stock I put in CTL. Theoretically, sounds cool. Practically? In the real world? Doesn't work for me. A frantic day at work or a trip to the zoo can "ruin" a workout. Training by feel has benefited me greatly in this regard, with little loss in fitness that couldn't be made up with a bit more volume were I inclined.