Power Mentor Group with Shane & Marc - Closed. (Page 36)

Question on CTL.

I started using TP in September or so and did not adjust a starting point for CTL.  So, I assume it starts at 0 at that point.  Is their a general starting number for CTL that I should use? Does it really matter at this point at 4-5 months in?

I believe CTL only uses the past 6 weeks of data, so once you're 6 weeks in, your current CTL number should be accurate, but the graphical representation of your CTL rising on the PMC will be misleading.  So if using CTL as a point in time metric, 6 weeks out should be fine.  If you're monitoring CTL on your PMC as far as how your training load is increasing or decreasing over time, you likely need closer to 12 weeks of data for the graph to be more meaningful.

Given that you've got 4-5 months of data, your CTL number should be fine.  If you were just starting now, I suppose you could estimate TSS of your workouts prior to when you started  uploading power data into TP and manually upload that TSS information to back populate your CTL, ATL, TSB, etc.

Thanks.  I figured I had enough data at this point but thought I would check.

Which is why I'm in this group.  Thanks...always something to learn.

You mean it's not that simple?  Here I thought I had basically learned everything that it took a bunch of guys with PhDs to formulate.  

Week 4, Threshold 1 ride done.  I had all kinds of technology issues this morning....couldn't get my computer to pick up my phone's hotspot and then I couldn't get my 910 or TrainerRoad to pair with my PM....pulled the battery and put it back in and it started working, but something was wrong as my easy warm-up pace was showing 250+ watts instead of 125ish.  Was starting to think that the early morning wake-up call was going to be for nothing....

But eventually I got things working and was able to do the ride.  I'm really liking the 5 minute intervals....they're long enough to settle in and feel like you're doing some decent work, but short enough that I don't get all mentally wigged out by them.  I know we're eventually going to be doing longer intervals (the idea of 2x20 at FTP has me ready to curl up in the fetal position!), so I'll try to enjoy these while we have them!

Week 2 Sweetspot completed last night.  Legs were fresh after the weekend stomach illness and worked the cadence range during the intervals, nice workout, TSS = 102. Longest trainer ride in forever!

Can we talk about LTHR and HR Zones for a minute?  I don't remember if we discussed it before, but I was curious how you set your zones.  I know Friel's method is to take your average HR over 20 minutes of an all-out 30 minute effort....so I'm going to approximate that as the average HR over my 20 minute test for simplicity.  My average HR over that was 168 (max 176), so I think that correlates to LTHR, and thus to the top of Z4 -- is that right?

Now the reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to get an idea of where my HR should be on these 5' threshold efforts.  For the first 5' effort of Threshold 1, my HR was a bit low, but for intervals 2-5, my HR built up to 161/162, which seems fairly close to my estimated LTHR of 168.  Now if I were to attempt to continue to do this threshold effort for 20 minutes (or 60 minutes), is my HR going to level out at some point (say LTHR) or is the fact that these efforts are close to my LTHR after only 5' an indication that my CP is set incorrectly?

FWIW, these efforts were tough, but completely manageable.  Given more time, I suspect I could have done at least a couple more intervals with no real issue. 

Okay, so your 4' intervals had you within a few bpm of LTHR, so my 5' intervals having me within a few bpm of LTHR seem that it shouldn't be a huge concern.  I know that my HR will level off and creep up much more slowly at some point, but I was feeling slightly concerned that maybe RPE and power output weren't correlating well to expected HR zones.

Honestly, one of the big reasons I use HR when I do these intervals is that if I don't, my RPE tends to get skewed.  I start to feel like, "OMG, this is WAY too hard....you need to back off!!"  But then if I can see my HR is in the mid-150's, I know that I've got TONS of room for it to go up.  So it helps me not be a baby about things "feeling hard".  RPE seems much more in check when I ride outside....so HR gets more influence inside than it does outside where things feel more in line with what I'm expecting given power output.