Do these training hours count?

Steve_B

No, I would argue with that opinion.

doctorSpoc

- how about looking at CTL slope and predicting and making a correction to training load BEFORE you get overtrained
- how about predicting fitness by some date in the future
- how about comparing where your fitness is year over year

just a few off the top of my head

as for commuting... basically, it's training... if... it's training. if you're going out and twiddling your thumbs for an hour a day and stopping every few minutes at lights.. then that's active recovery and not really training. you should count it in you CTL because it does add up, especially if you're doing it 4-5 days a week... but it's not really effective training for racing.

commuting's effectiveness really depends on how you ride it. and you're somewhat limited by what is possible to do given your route. for me i can't really do focused intervals of the correct durations given my route, so i limit my commuting to days when i'm doing endurance/tempo... you need endurance tempo rides, but if that's all you do or you do so much of it that it impairs you ability to do focused training of higher intensity it's not good... for general fitness and weight loss it's great.. for training for racing usually not so good... not every day anyway.

thekgb

you should count it in you CTL because it does add up, especially if you're doing it 4-5 days a week... but it's not really effective training for racing.

commuting's effectiveness really depends on how you ride it.


Don't those two statements contradict each other? any and all CTL counts towards fitness, which then counts toward fitness during racing. I agree with the second half of thost two statemetns...and the 1000 miles or so i've done commuting in the past 6 weeks certainly count in my sore legs as "training" as most of it was done at SST or L4 level.

-Mike

doctorSpoc

holy out of context batman...

i know it's only a few centimetres up but here's the whole quote... i'll ask you to read the part in bold...

as for commuting... basically, it's training... if... it's training. if you're going out and twiddling your thumbs for an hour a day and stopping every few minutes at lights.. then that's active recovery and not really training. you should count it in you CTL because it does add up, especially if you're doing it 4-5 days a week... but it's not really effective training for racing.

if you're doing level 1 you better have a 3-4 hr commute to make you training session effective.

so no... they are not contradictory. just training is not necessarily effective training. one needs to train with the right mix of intensities and durations to be a well rounded cyclist maximizing one abilities (endurance, anaerobic capacity, neuromuscular power, VO2max) and therefore maximizing one's chances of success in racing.

Edit- there's an opportunity cost associated with doing too much of one kind of training or another... it means it's taking time or energy away from doing the workouts that constitute the proper mix of training you should be doing.

you need to read the entire post in context... how most people ride their commute is normally dictated by their route and is usually littered with frequent stops... for instance, in your own case if all that L4 training is all done in intervals of less than 10 min, it's much less effective than a dedicated focused L4 training session with intervals ranging from 10 mins to 30 mins... the point is that more often than not one's route will not allow you to do the type of focused training at the proper intensities and durations that you should be doing.

Pendejo

[QUOTE=doctorSpoc]- - how about comparing where your fitness is year over year

** And that's what I'm questioning: the relationship between CTL and fitness. Based on my understanding of the CTL algorithm, there are an infinite number of workout combinations, over time, that could give you the same CTL. Some of these possible combinations are obviously more effective (for a given individual) in building racing fitness (and that's another problem: what kind of fitness and what kind of racing?) than others. If what I've just said is correct, the CTL is next to useless in comparing (racing) fitness levels from one period to the next, or from one person to another.

doctorSpoc

hey.. that's my argument... i.e. CTL is not fitness... CTL is training load. but when you take your training load (CTL), slope of CTL (how much your are ramping up your training load), TSB, ATL and mean max power over durations of interest... and look at that at certain points year over year, you know a lot. but i agree CTL in a vacuum is almost useless... but it is an important part of the puzzle.

between individuals forget it. for an individual... it can tell you kinda where you are endurance wise... ability to recover (suitability for stage racing) etc.. given a similar training regime.. but that's only a part of the story. in terms of your racing fitness, unless you know your other numbers, it's not going to tell you a whole lot... the mix of training you are doing needs to be right.

that's why unless you can get that mix right with your commuting.. building CTL with commuting might not be the best. better than nothing i guess, if that's what it comes down to and it does for some people who are strapped for time... but there is nothing like a dedicated, focused training rides with goals to improve your racing performance... just racking up miles raising CTL is not in and of itself going to improve your performance and might actually be detrimental as i said before in that you are using up valuable time an energy that you could be using doing other potentially more appropriate training.

Pendejo

[QUOTE=doctorSpoc]hey.. that's my argument... i.e. CTL is not fitness...

** OK, cool.

daveryanwyoming

Very true, CTL viewed in isolation doesn't tell you much. Exactly the same as workout intensity viewed in isolation. Go do a workout at 110% of FTP for five minutes and call it quits, sure good intensity, but lousy overall training load and little to no progress on a regular diet of those.

Training, overload, and adaptation require sufficient intensity, consistency and sufficient overall training load. CTL is a measure of the latter two and viewed along with overall training mix and specific workout goals and intensities and it's a very useful metric. You're selling yourself short if you ignore CTL and just focus on intensity, that approach only represents half the equation.

I suspect you already know that at some level, if not you'd just go out and do killer ten minute workouts and call it a day. There's some blend of intensity and load that results in improvement, CTL is just a way to quantify the load aspect and IMHO it's far from useless.

-Dave