terrymorse 

Are you tracking your Training Stress Score (TSS)? That might help your volume stay within "budget", and keep you from overtraining.

When I'm feeling strong, I keep adding to the volume. But that can come back and bite me, as it did last year. I did a steep 12-week ramp up for an October event, but I ended up getting sick and missed the event.

Here's my ramp-up from last year, from Training Peaks. In retrospect, I should never have let my "form" number (orange line) get so low.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, it's really good to have some sort of performance management software to use. When I ramp up, I try not to let my Form go below -20. I'm a geezer though. I think youngers are not so delicate. I also use TrainingPeaks.

Jughed

I'm just learning about this now. My Garmin lists a training load - very confusing to me. I just did a week of easy/recovery type rides and Garmin said may training load was overreaching and nonproductive. Last night I did the hardest VO2 max session to date and, my training load number went way high, and the ole Garmin said "good job"!! you are right in the zone.

More stuff to figure out...

force10

I get really wierd stuff from Garmin on this front and consequently dont trust it. Its hard to see how it is even arrived at.

force10

Last week it told me I was "peaking" after finishing a 30 minute warm up. WTF???

Carbonfiberboy 

I would definitely ignore an instrument like a Garmin, FitBit, etc. Too many reports of similar stupidity on the part of such gadgets. Diagnosing overreaching, peaking, etc. . . it's getting into an area where pro coaches can disagree. Apps like TrainingPeaks present you with data and the results of well-proven calculations relating to the decay rate of training impulses. But no decisions! Just the data. You have to try to figure out what that means according to your personal experience, and everyone's different, and so the same exact data will mean different things to different people.

Yeah, it's complicated and it takes personal experience to figure out what your response should be to the data presented. You're a lot smarter than a Garmin. Thus we definitely see many riders who say "screw that, I'm going by feel." Which is not a bad response either, but if one is working on a long term project, like prepping for an event, or slowly improving fitness, the apps rule. It took me a couple of years to accumulate enough data and experience with same that I could predict future results of current training just by looking at the numbers. It was worth the effort. I plan my training a couple of weeks in advance by putting various workouts on my calendar and then I see how that goes. Usually I have an exact rate of increase in fitness in mind and I try to put that into practice.

TraningPeaks is so named because the idea is to have some goal in mind and to then engineer a peak fitness for it by doing what I'm talking about. Which means one has to have some idea of what fitness numbers mean and etc., which is the experience part of it. Or one can simply work on getting more fit, but there is an upper limit on what one's fitness numbers can be and on how long one can sustain those numbers, more experience.

terrymorse 

Yeah, that Garmin training status report can be goofy.

But the 7-day training load is fairly consistent and a decent measure of your weekly training stress. It can also show goofy "optimal range" when it has only a few days of data to measure:

Jughed

This is my guess - I rode all summer without heart rate data. I typically only put my HR monitor on during training efforts. Probably screws the maths up.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, you have to have HR data for for everything, even walks in your neighborhood, gym, everything. I use a Garmin on the bike and a sports watch for everything else. Data isn't helpful unless you have all of it, as you see, it can mislead you.

PeteHski

Yeah, you need HR (and ideally power) recorded consistently for the algorithms to make any sense. I've used platforms like Training Peaks in the past and they are pretty useful for tracking training metrics, but now I'm using PILLAR, which is a dynamic virtual coaching App. This is the first winter I've used PILLAR for my training plan and the results are looking good. It's doing a great job of managing my training stress and recovery, with an overall plan tailored toward my key summer events.

Hermes

Great post. This type of post where a member is using a product or service, and finds it useful, offers the most value to me. With respect to training, the service is providing results and the results are against a goal.

Although, maybe Pillar is just Chatgpt in disguise.

Jughed

3 x 2.5 week training blocks complete - now I'm just out riding around and feel some massive differences.

Did a 4 min+/- strava segment the other day - previous PB back in August was 276w average over the run, this run was 332w. So, the VO2 max zone has been raised a good bit. Goal was to be able to ride around all day at 200-215w range, vs 175-190w range. Looks like most of that happened, I regularly look down and see 200+ while I'm just cruising along. Instead of being all out on short/steep grades, now I can ride easily up the hill or give it more gas if I want... and recover better.

I'm going to just ride around now/zone 2 type riding for the next few weeks, then do 2 more cycles of intensity & get ready for the spring rides.

Good to see that some of the gains stuck.

terrymorse 

Congratulations on the gains, it's inspiring to see positive results like yours.

I'm just plugging along with zone 2-ish rides, plus a few short blasts up rollers here and there, and I'm tracking my EF (Efficiency Factor -- average power divided by heart rate). My current EF is about where it was last September, which is encouraging.

PeteHski

That is a big improvement, well done. I think it's a good plan to back off for a couple of weeks before pushing on again. My plan follows along those lines too, but does include a few short VO2 efforts once a week during those base weeks. Just enough to maintain the power gains, but not enough to cause significant fatigue.