Did you say relative new to triathlon and you have CTL numbers above 170? Unless you’re a gifted athlete and are ready for a grand tour, I’d say something is off. Just to give you an idea the average CTL values for a trained athlete (6-9months) for an Ironman 140.6 race should be in the range of 90-140.

FTP values on each discipline are crucial to calculate the TP indexes correctly, and my guess is if you have numbers this high your ftp values are really underestimated, so start there and get accurate numbers first and then recalculate the workouts say 6 months prior or since your last off-season so you get current numbers more accurate. (If your trainer doesn’t know the importance of the FTP values probably you should consider a new trainer)

Some answers to your questions:

1. Depends on your goals. If your goal is improve time, you can continue regardless but your start point is not accurate.

2. Undertraining. Most likely.

3. If you’re undertraining I won’t cause you injuries, but you’re not developing your full potencial.

4. Yes, if you have an specific goal, but no if you’re doing the sport just for fun.

5. Accurate numbers will tell your current fitness and progress. If you don’t have accurate numbers FTP values and current CTL from day 0 of your training plan you’ll be seeing something else but the reality.

As the other guy said and you have been told your numbers are way off. It took me training 28hours a week to get to a score above 150 and even then I suspect it was a touch high due to my swimming thresholds and likely closer to 140.

Your threshold numbers are off. Your threshold should be around the best effort you could do for 1hour. Clearly your HIM pace is going to be far off that number. A better guideline would be closer to your open-HM time if you are fast.
For example my Open HM pace is 6:00min while my HIM pace is 7:00min(need to work on that) and my long run is around 7:30. If TP thinks my threshold is 7:00 then when I do a 20 mile long run at 7:30 it thinks I’m in zone 3/4 when in reality I am zone 2 so my TSS score is going be double what it should be.

Unless you are a seasoned triathlon who’s threshold numbers are know very accurately and you log everything precisely CTL is useless and don’t look at it. Your CTL has no affect on your training or fatigue if it isn’t accurate. There are many signs of overtraining ie: elevated resting HR, insomnia, consistently poor workouts etc. That are a lot more helpful.

If you can nail down your threshold numbers then it can be a good guideline otherwise it’s meaningless.

Bingo. I agree to adjust your thresholds. It really shouldn't be a hard argument with the coach that the formulas to calculate your numbers include the threshold value, thus is that is wrong, the numbers are wrong.

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- Jordan

My Strava

Whelp 12 hours after this original post, my coach saw this thread, got super offended and quit on me 4 days before my race, while shutting me out of training peaks well. Regardless I finished IMCZ and that's all the matters!

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IG -frebay | Strava

Well if my coach used TP as a training platform, but didn't know how to use it properly, I would get a new coach anyways. So consider it a blessing. Congrats on IMCZ!

That's pretty funny. Do you get to keep the trucker hat?

Let's all wave at the coach!

Pretty lame to quit when you didn't even mention a name....and they were the one being stupid!

I agree with this statement....
It might be worth considering that your coach merely used TP to schedule and plan your training workouts, rather than track progress using CTL/ATL and form. In which case, they are missing a whole heap of data that can help.
You can actually adjust your threshold values in TP and then recalculate everything to see what your actual CTL was....if you are seeing CTL etc it sounds like you are using the premium version anyway?
How were your times etc anyway for the IM?

That’s a crap way to drop a client. You were understandably looking for a second opinion—it shouldn’t be cause for someone to be *that* offended.

That said, this should have been resolved by your coach. Either he or she should have adjusted your thresholds, or explained why you were getting numbers that you were not expecting. Worst case, even if your coach was using the software incorrectly, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the coaching was being done wrong. i.e. a 1h tempo run is a 1h tempo run, whether it scores 70 TSS or 100.

The missing data from the thread is your actual workout details. From your Strava it looks like you were peaking at 20h. So that 230 CTL comes out to about 80 TSS/h. It’s high, but not *ridiculously* high, especially considering that 5h of that was from swim, which is bullshit for TSS values.

Sure, thresholds were likely a bit off, but not as much as *I* thought at first glance.

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_____________________________________________________
George Dedopoulos | @geodee | geodee.com | Team Atomica | Toronto Triathlon Club

Sure here are some screenshots.


After he quit, he did send me a goodbye email and it mentioned the following:

"It’s beyond me why you chose to pose the question regarding your high CTL in the Slowtwitch forum.

I was not then, nor was I now concerned that your CTL was high. I say that for a number of reasons –

a) swim TSS is notoriously inaccurate

b) your run LTHR and LT-pace are likely inaccurate because of your rapid improvements, your FTP is likely low due to your rapid improvement.

We could test every week or every couple of weeks to reflect rapid changes, or we could simply accept that the numbers are likely inaccurate and adapt the plan to the fact – that’s the course I chose to follow. Had you followed the plan, the CTL numbers would have remained reasonably instructive.


However, you did NOT adhere to the plan. For example You will notice 2 swims (11/4 and 11/7) and one ride (11/10) that was not on the schedule. Between those three workouts there was an additional 370 TSS that was NOT planned, plus additional unplanned TSS from overshooting targets in other workouts.

From the long ride on November 17 – The prescribed intensity of this ride was an IF of 0.68, however you rode it at 0.95. In addition, instead of a 2:30 ride, you chose to ride 3:07. The result was an additional, unplanned 160 TSS. This consistently happened on any ride you did outdoors – a total inability to follow the prescribed workout resulting in unplanned TSS.



I can post screenshots of endless workouts showing similar disparities. If you go back through your logs, you will see week after week where your completed TSS was dramatically over the planned TSS. Some of that was the inaccuracy introduced because your thresholds were not accurate due to your rapid progress, and some of that was you not adhering to the plan. As I knew we couldn’t fully rely on the PMC for accurate insight, I was managing your load by adjusting the schedule. You will note a number of weeks where planned TSS dropped to a very low value relative to the week before and after. Those recovery weeks were planned in such a way, that even when you overshot the planned TSS, you would still be able to recover. So, far from being “unconcerned,” I have been managing your training load to effectively prepare you for Cozumel by relying on what I believe is the most important metric – individually knowing the athlete, knowing how they respond to training stress, and listening to what the athlete is telling you about how they are feeling.

When you posted your question on Slowtwitch, you left out some VERY pertinent information to the discussion, such as, you only started seriously training just over a year ago – OF COURSE you would have inflated CTL numbers for the first months as you didn’t have the history in TP from which to draw accurate numbers. You failed to mention you went from zero to an Ironman in 5-months – OF COURSE you would have inflated CTL as you ramped up VERY quickly. You failed to mention you regularly overshoot prescribed target intensity and duration. You failed to mention you regularly add extra workouts each week. You said you are concerned you are undertrained, but with the knowledge you have been doing hundreds of unplanned TSS per week the concern over undertraining suddenly becomes nearly irrelevant. Never mind we’ve already established your CTL may be inaccurate at best. You failed to mention when you do a workout as prescribed, the completed TSS virtually matches the prescribed TS – which may argue that your CTL isn’t as inaccurate as it may first appear. Moving forward, if you should establish a coaching relationship with another coach, my suggestion to you is, if you aren’t going to follow the plan as written, don’t waste your money. Coaches don’t write the workouts with specific prescribed intensities and durations simply to see a bunch of numbers on a screen. Those numbers, when taken together over the course of a plan, equate to a specific training load to force very specific physiological adaptations that prepare you for race day – as evidenced by your success at IMSR.

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IG -frebay | Strava

Wow.

That's a bizarre degree of intensity over a harmless question posed to Slowtwitch. Sure maybe there's a valid point of two to be made.... But the vehement nature of the diatribe makes one wonder if there's more to this story.

Had you had prior conversations about these issues?

Yes, and I think I mentioned it in the original post. I asked him if my numbers were inflated before my first race in May, IMSR. He agreed and said there would be ramp tests. From a goal standpoint, he did get me to finish 2 IMs in 13 months, I'm optimistic looking at these comments that the next coach I find will be even better.

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IG -frebay | Strava

Yeah. Sorry, I meant all the stuff in his final email. He goes on and on about how you couldn't follow instruction... Doing workouts too hard, adding extra workouts. He implies that these issues were significantly detrimental... To the extent that he admonishes you to not even bother getting another coach if you cant control these behaviors.

If that is the case... Then I would hope that you'd been warned how significant theses issues were... And that he would be forced to drop you if left uncorrected.

Simply dropping you because of a ST post, and then blindsiding you with all these pent up issues would be truly bad form.

This convinces me your coach is an idiot. He cites your rapid improvement, but rather than take the 45 seconds to update your thresholds in setting your training plan to reflect your rising thresholds, he blames you for not going slower.

Here's a hint...no one rides .95 IF for 3:07... a normal coach would go... "hmm looks like it's time to bump your threshold 20 watts based on this ride and re-calculate TSS"

I agree with the guy saying that’s a crappy way to trash a client.
This trainer is explaining why the CTL is overinflated when you don’t follow the plan correctly, but this person is just explaining (with a bunch a tech talk BS) how the algorithm works. Not the cause. (Basically he/she is explaining 2+2=4 but it seems he/she doesn’t understand why).

If you had a workout scheduled with an IF of 0.68 for and 1h30 BUT you ended up doing it at 0.95 for “3 hours” AND “you did not have a near dead experience” during the workout AND you did not entered into a “zombie state for the next 2-3 days at least”, your FTP was simply underestimated-innacurate-superlow. And of course your TSS was going to be on the roof for that single workout.
On the other hand, you will see Dennis Rohan, the world time trial champion riding with an IF 0.95 to 1.05 for hour at the most to get a victory, giving his full gas. This is a RACE effort and the math behind the FTP is to have an accurate number of the max power you can sustain in 1 (one) hour.

I really hope this trainer keeps reading this thread (most likely) to learn professionalism first (you don’t dump and athlete days before a race unexpectedly) and real coaching second as scheduling workouts doesn’t make you a coach enough. And the message to this trainer is: This athlete reached out the slowtwitch community looking for help and guidance like all of us do, under the feeling something was off, not with the intention of crapping you out. I’m also sure if you reach out ST for coaching guidance you’ll get support. The good thing is we all can get better, or just worst. Your move.

I'm glad this story was updated. Everything in this coach's farewell email should have been communicated to you long before he dropped you. A coach should be educating you on their process. WHY you are doing something is the most important. I've been learning this myself. I dropped my coach after this last season. I just felt what we were doing was not opening my full potential and I never got a reason for why I was training that way.

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