aaronmcd

-41 is pretty deep. I couldn't hit that during race season, just wanna race so much!

Anyway, today I didn't have much time in the morning, went out for an hour tempo, but tempo plus lots of lights equals z2. Went out again this evening for the park sprints ride. Didn't go for any sprints this time, just tried to go hard, move up, get a good effort, and recover for the next one. More of a steady interval workout. Led out the leadout for the final sprint with a minute of 170%

I was starting to get grumpy after 4 days off, starting to thinking I don't like bikes, but all I needed was to get on the bike!

TheKillerPenguin

Yesterday was ~3.5hrs of really light z2 with a couple of breakaway type 12-14min efforts, one towards the beginning of the ride and one towards the end.

Ttoc6

That's the crazy part.. I've missed one weekend of racing in the last 9 weeks. I've basically done an omnium every weekend for the last 3 months. Going to be weird to transition back to one race a weekend .

TMonk

Hit up 2x20's at ~97% yesterday which went fine. I would typically aim for higher percentages but my training schedule has been wonky between a couple long weekend vacations so I thought I'd go conservatively. It felt good, and was the right choice.

~75 min MTB commute into work this morning.

Fiesta worlds tomorrow

Long weekend with riding S and Su. May race San Luis Rey road race on Saturday, but since all my teammates seem to be unavailable I might not.

Ttoc6

Did the group ride. ATL at 155, CTL is at 114. TSB is -39. Definitely could feel the fatigue during the ride lol.

It's also fun that I can do a "hard ride" (170 TSS in 2 hours) and see my TSB go back towards zero.

aaronmcd

Due to the time off the bike yesterday's 180 TSS felt like it didn't even happen today. Went to the race-climb ride across the bridge. Held the lead group for a long time, which was kinda like 2x5 vo2 with a flat section in the middle which I successfully saw infinitely less wind than the other guys who insisted on eating buttloads of wind. Set a whole ton of strava PRs in the process but still finished the climb a couple minutes back on the winner.

Stashed backpack at the bike shop and picked it up to go join the social ride around the city for the rest of the night, a mix of vo2, tempo, and easy. Fun evening, 200 TSS

globecanvas

Wednesday night worlds.

Anybody else have this experience? I train and stuff and I am a decently OK bike racer. On any given wednesday night riding with the locals I am about the 2nd slowest guy. Most of these guys have done maybe a bike race or two but just from a strength perspective they blow my doors off. None of them trains, they just ride for fun. It's nuts.

topflightpro

GC. I see that all the time, especially our Saturday morning hammerfest. For many of those guys, that ride is their race.

rankin116

Yeah, I think folks like that come into those rides somewhat rested, while those of us that train with a plan might use group rides to supplement our said training plans.

TheKillerPenguin

They go hard. EA in particular only knows how to go full-gas. They're different efforts than bike race efforts too, unless you're in a breakaway with guys that don't know how to ride together and punch each other in the face over and over again instead.

globecanvas

He was the third fastest guy last night! And I totally get that they are different from race efforts. It's just remarkable to be the most accomplished racer in the group and barely hanging on on the hills.

TheKillerPenguin

Huh. These boys get that syrup in em, they get all antsy in their pantsy.

mattm

I don't see that, no.

I do see guys that don't race that seem to be pretty strong on the climbs, but I'm weak on climbs so everyone looks strong to me when going up hill.

hubcyclist

ctl up to 40, tsb -31. it was last at 40 in feb. I may maxing out on the volume aspect at 2.5hrs, so I think I'll shift to sweet spot stuff in the next block,as I think I've gotten most of the benefit of z2 stuff that I think I'll get for now

caloso

Hit all my wattage targets. Felt kind of awesome, actually. TSB at -6: a couple of days of easy, non-structured riding was just what my legs needed.

Ttoc6

Not much time today. Had to get home to go to the airport early tomorrow. Managed an hour on the trainer with 30 minutes of sweet spot work. Used Powermatch with the P2M and Kickr2. It is an infintely better experience from the kickr snap and vector2s. Feels way more natural and smooth.

Done for the week. ~11 hours in 4 days on the back of the stage race last weekend. CTL is at 155, ATL at 115 and TSB at -41. Pretty F'ing tired. These next 4 days off will be good for me. Going into another stage race next weekend should be fun to be "recovered" for it.

scheibo

i think you got CTL and ATL mixed up there

Wylde06

Legs were pretty toasted today, got dropped on our Thursday night ride from the fast group. Took a shortcut through the park and rejoined the 2 guys off the front and stayed out of the rotation. Was good to get the speed work in...because riding with those 2 guys is nothing but speedwork (speed was kind of low because of the wind..only ~23.5mph average, but with the wind it was a lot faster than the rest of the groups)

Ttoc6

Definitely

Tunic

How much of the year do you maintain 100+ CTL? Also, how low do you dip down in the offseason?

I'm new to racing and have started to get more serious about training lately, and I've just broken 60 CTL for the first time recently. I can see myself reaching 80 or perhaps a bit higher, but I feel like 100+ could be difficult to sustain.

topflightpro

He's a college student. So he has tons of free time to ride. So for him, it shouldn't be too hard to maintain that level.

TMonk

~75 or so is pretty standard for me in season. In base a little higher (maybe), as we get into deep summer/early fall a little lower as I spend time doing other outdoor activities, like swimming, bodysurfing, hiking, backpacking etc.

In college I rode more, was at least as strong (no PM back then), and was 10 lbs lighter. Le sigh...

Ttoc6

Like the others said, I'm a college student and have the time (for now, come June, that will probably be changing...). I've been hovering around 100 for CTL since about mid to late february. This is first year of structured training. Although last summer I hit and maintained ~100 for a month when I was working 40 hours per week.
Over the winter it was about 2 hours per day during 4 of the weekdays on the trainer. (The high volume Sweet spot base plan from Trainer road). These rides were almost all in the 85-95% range. Then roughly 6 hours on the weekends split over two group rides. One very hard, race simulation, the other mellow, but still long enough.
I hit a point in there where I felt like my body was breaking down. It was right before racing started. I felt so tired, but since I wasn't doing hard super-threshold efforts, I just pushed through it. It was extremely frustrating because I'm one of those people that doesn't really get sore from cycling, just tired. It's hard when your body is giving you no warning signs and I was having trouble distinguishing between lack of sleep(due to school work and a bad sleep schedule) and over training.

During the early spring when I was racing collegiate, I was doing 3 races a weekend and just trying to hold onto fitness during the week. I'm talking very few rides over 1.5 hours. Most of this trianing was done on the rollers.

Now a days, I have a very easy schedule. It's pretty feasible for me to get in however much riding I want. I've still been racing a lot, and try to keep my rides intense. I'm averaging ~10 hours per week right now, but could probably be putting in more. Probably will put in more now that the weather is god-awful

wktmeow

Some family stuff came up this week which derailed my training. Only got two rides in during the week, one of them being a 30 min recovery spin.

I was supposed to race the San Luis Rey RR, which was State Champs, and I was sorta shooting to do well at it, but after not riding most of the week and some really bad news that came my way, my head wasn't in the right place and I didn't really want to race at all. Ended up going out for a long ride and did Palomar twice, then rode home from there. 92.6 miles, 11.3k ft, 355 TSS. Biggest/toughest ride in recent memory, but it helped clear my head a bit. Shame, I was feeling pretty good today, can't help but wonder how I would have done in the race.

revchuck 

That kind of head-clearing ride can do more positively for your mindset than a good race, plus racing while distracted can cause its own problems. Hope your negative stuff straightens out!