Is CTL supposed to go down on recovery weeks, stay flat, or rise slower? Should ATL ever dip below the CTL before taper begins?
edited to clarify the question
Silent crowd today. Maybe I should have included ‘aero’ in the title?
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n231/miwoodar/field-cricket.jpg
I have no idea what any of those abbreviations mean (or even heard of them)
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To my opinion, first of all the main purpose of a recovery has nothing to do with numbers, but is a time of limited work to allow your body to recover, and benefit (get better) from the work put into it the previous weeks.
During the previous weeks, you worked hard, probably with an ATL higher than your CTL if you are building fitness, and a negative TSB. I believe a good recovery week is one where at the end of the week you are race ready, meaning you are well rested, fit, and are ready to harvest the fruits of your work. Mathematically, TSB reflects your race readiness, so in my recovery weeks I aim to have a positive TSB by the end of the recovery week (last two days of the week).
If you don’t allow your TSB to become positive, you haven’t completely rested; if you allow your TSB to become too positive or to become positive too early, you will be losing fitness.
By definition allowing a TSB to become positive means having an ATL lower than CTL, which also means your CTL will drop a little. The trick is to minimize the loss in CTL while still allowing your TSB to become positive by the end of the recovery week.
Thanks. So you actually let your TSB go positive on your recovery weeks? Crap, I haven’t been positive in ~60 days. I skipped a run tonight in favor of a little more rest and my TSB is still -26. Maybe my training plan is short on recovery?
I’m ~3 weeks from my taper. Should I stick it out until taper or take a little extra recovery now?
If you haven’t been positive - how close to being positive TSB have you been, how often and when?
I have no idea what any of those abbreviations mean (or even heard of them)
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/wko-desktop-software/analysis-software-for-training-files.aspx
Chronic Training Load
Acute Training Load
Training Stress Score
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Does this help? How to best bridge to taper in two/three weeks is the biggest concern.
Edited to include better image.
apparently some people never need rest?
I’m here to learn how to train. 
Higher the blue line the more fitness you have
Higher the pink line the more you are training
Higher the yellow line the on form (and ready to race) you are
At least that is my understanding of it. But the PMC is HIGHLY dubious for triathlon training as the running and swimming stresses are not reliability added it. From my understanding, Raceday does a better job at calculating this type of stuff.
Image resolution is too small to see it well enough but it looks like you’ve built fitness by applying a consistent training load over a longer time without really letting your TSB approach zero. If I were you, I would take a little rest so your TSB can be positive for two days, and then continue training hard during your final two weeks before the taper.
Try making up some fake training workouts, estimate TSS and add them to your calendar and see how it affects your PMC. Don’t get your TSB to become positive by not training, but spread the TSB rise over a few days while still doing some work.
Awesome - exactly the kind of input I was looking for. Looks like a creative/relaxed weekend in my future (was going to be a big one). When you mean find a way to incorporate some smaller TSS days, should I continue to do SBR? Would it be better to incorporate something different on one of those days? A hike?
So I should have reached ~0 TSB at the end of each recovery cycle…well now I know!
edit - apparently I am an exceedingly sucky typer
Awesome - exactly the kind of input I was looking for. Looks like a creative/relaxed weekend in my future (was going to be a big one). When you mean find a way to incorporate some smaller TSS days, should I continue to do SBR? Would it be better to incorporate something different on one of those days? A hike?
So I should have reached ~0 CTL at the end of each recovery cycle…well now I know!I would stick with SBR, these actually have a purpose for what you are training for, whereas hiking will give you some stress points without a real triathlon benefit in return.
Search for the thread “WKO+ for Triathletes” back in Nov 09. The experts on that thread warned of trying to combine TSS across sports. Your recovery rates are likely to be different between sports so all bets are off as to what those combined numbers might mean. Chasing the numbers is also ill-advised even if you do different Performance Management Charts for each sport.
I’ve used WKO+ for cycling and running for 15 months now. I’m now starting to learn how to map how I feel and how I perform to the numbers BUT being a slave to the numbers can easily lead you astray. Stressors outside of your workouts have a large impact. How much sleep you get, the temperature, and your motivation all play a role. The numbers may help you plan your workouts or engineer a taper but listening to your body is way more important imho.
Jed
Does this help? How to best bridge to taper in two/three weeks is the biggest concern.
Edited to include better image.
If this was a chart from cycling only (which it isn’t) I’d suggest you have underestimated your FTP.
It’s difficult to read the dates on the chart but from what I can figure is that you have gone from 50 TSS/d to 115 TSS/d in 57 days
That is an increase of ~8 TSS/d each week. While it does not seem unreasonable since it’s early in the season it may be a lot to sustain. I only track Biking and Running in WKO for myself so adding swimming might make it more resonable.
If possible I would look at previous years of training to see what you have been able to sustain for 4 to 8 weeks at a time and use that as a guide as to how much TSS/d per week that you can handle. I don’t believe in recovery weeks but a steady dose of training stress (but lower) than the 3/1 or 2/1 cycle requires.
Most of the time in the last few years I’ve held most of my TSB at -15 to -30 when I was not going to be racing a big race. When I was tired or life demanded it, I reduced training or took a few days off. When a big race day appeared I would try to be in the positive for 5 days before the race going as far as +40 one or two days beforehand.
My $.02
jaretj
Just out of curiousity - what makes you think that?
The rate of increase, or the ability to sustain such extended periods at -20 or lower TSB?
Is CTL supposed to go down on recovery weeks, stay flat, or rise slower? Should ATL ever dip below the CTL before taper begins?
edited to clarify the question
If your ATL for the recovery week is less than your CTL, CTL will go down. Whether CTL goes flat, declines, or rises more slowly depends on how much pullback you are doing during a recovery week.
Regarding ATL vs CTL (i.e. TSB) prior to a taper, the answer is a big “it depends”. Individuals have varying ability to perform with chronic fatigue. Also, different levels of freshness (TSB) are optimal for different durations of competition i.e. freshness tends to be of greater benefit for shorter, sharper events than for longer events.
Since latching on to the PMC concept, I don’t do the traditional 3 up, 1 down recovery week. I train and build CTL (work and personal life permitting) until performance gains start to plateau and I feel like I need to pull back. Then I’ll typically take an easy or off day or two before resuming training. Physically, I don’t see the benefit to accumulating so much fatigue that one has to spend a week recovering. Mentally, some folks may find 3 up/1 down more palatable, but I don’t see how that’s superior to a slow, steady build, all things being equal.
The warnings about trying to equate TSS across different sports are well founded. I split my run and ride into 2 separate athlete profiles in WKO+. I believe that Race Day is designed to display “global fatigue” and uses different constants across the 3 sports. One can do something similar in WKO+, but not in the same athlete profile.
You can do it within one athlete profile, but you have to have two PMC charts - one for each sport.