I can only give you my data on n=1 IM's completed (sub 11 hours, 10:43 from memory).
I peaked at around 150 prior to taper. There are some long 6 hour rides and long runs in there which really bumped up my CTL. My swimming load was probably relatively higher given it only actually makes up around 10% of the time spent racing.

Don’t TrainingPeaks have their own forum? Might be better looking there

---

I wasn't really interested in what TP or cyclists had to say, more so what the average spread of IM athletes here do and or what the coaches here prescribe

I don't think any triathlon coach worth his salt would target a load expressed in terms of CTL.

It just doesn't work, especially in triathlon.

---

"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Yeeees! I agree - the number/metric is not that good/doesn’t work.

I peaked at 145 before my taper to Challenge Almere - but I had to look it up, I don’t follow the CTL.

My question to show why it’s not great:

Would you rather do 6x1 hour @90% FTP every week or 6 hours straight @90% FTP. The TSS are the same.

---

---
Long Distance PB: 8:25
Instagram: larsschmidttri

So training peaks is useless?

I still find that TrainingPeaks is really really good.. but the CTL, TSS system is IMHO way too overrated and many athletes are pushing CTL high thinking they are better prepared. But ‘prepared’ - really is about how you made the CTL, not how high it is.

---

---
Long Distance PB: 8:25
Instagram: larsschmidttri

If you do your training plan right, then a good Performance Management Chart/TSS/CTL should be the outcome. But a poorly designed plan that doesn't prepare you for the event can still hit the right TSS numbers.

There is value in TSS/CTL in a check that you are not ramping things up too quickly, but to make TSS the driver of your training plan is putting the cart before the horse.

I gave up on CTL. My last three IM have a 4 hour spread around the same CTL. I'm about 50 points higher than that number going into this IM in two weeks. I'm interested in the result, but not because of the number, but because of my consistency across the board. I didn't think fitness is the biggest issue people have, I think it's racing in the correct zone and nutrition.

---

http://www.sfuelsgolonger.com

A common misconception is that a higher CTL should lead to better performance ― i.e., lower times in our target race. However, CTL is only a proxy for our current fitness level and not how strong we are. Let me explain...


TSS is a "normalized" metric, meaning that two athletes with the same prescribed workout should generate the same TSS even if they have widely different FTP.


In this example, athlete A has an FTP of 200W, and athlete B has 250W. If both are prescribed to complete a 1-hour workout at FTP power, they will have a TSS of 100. This means that as we improve our FTP over the years, a given activity should generate the same Training Stress Score.


Now, since CTL is the exponentially weighted average of the last 42 days of TSS, if we complete the same training plan year after year, we should expect the same CTL before our target race ― even if we are now a stronger athlete!


The bottom line is that we should use CTL to give us a sense of our training load. An athlete with higher CTL is simply putting in more effort compared to an athlete with a lower CTL ― e.g., by completing more/longer sessions and/or completing them at a higher intensity.


Does the same CTL lead to similar race time? No. Two athletes with the same training load might lead to wider different race times.


Does a higher training load lead to lower race time? Not necessarily. We should consider how we got to that CTL (e.g., did we train well in each discipline?), our level of freshness (e.g., are we fit and fatigued?), etc.

Training peaks isn't useless (to comment on a later post of yours), it's not the best for a deep dive into the data (imo there are several better platforms for that) yet it's better than nothing.

A high CTL doesn't insure success nor does a low CTL mean failure.

It's just a metric. CTL is a combo of what you are doing and how you're doing it.

You could go ride 12 h/wk, run 4.5h per week all zone2 and get a CTL of XXX.

You could also ride & run less, do more work/intervals and get the same CTL. I'd argue that person B may have better fitness for a race since they've done some above race effort work.

You could also go and do a ton of non specific interval work, get the same CTL and have a horrible race.

It would be pretty easy to design 2 weeks or months that give you the same CTL but give you drastically different physiological responses and would allow for drastically different race results.

It's the results that matter not the CTL

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta