Cycling Fitness / Training Advice

Riding without power for a couple of weeks and assumed TrainingPeaks would estimate TSS from Garmin/Strava but it isn't.

Should it?

It will if you use a HRM - shows as hrTSS but if you are just recording distance/speed etc then it wont.

Thanks. I'll do my own estimate so my CTL doesn't plummet.

I know this'll probably be met with a shrug and "who knows?", but does the attached screen grab of PMC jump out as over ambitious? It's a long time with TSB hovering around-20 to -30, which I'd normally avoid. However a recent niggle and a target event at the end of April means I'm trying to make up some lost time.

Thoughts welcome

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Every time you submit a ride to strava, god kills a watt.

I'm riding in Australia. The fucking road surface is sucking up all my watts.

Are you joking? The roads over there are an easy billion times better than the shit in the UK.

Great Broken and Northern IwishIhadsuspensionland

Keeping between -20 and -30 until second week of Feb should be perfectly doable if you've got an easier week pencilled in.

It's pretty rough here in WA. Big chips of stone designed for agricultural traffic. Getting passed by a road train is an experience.

Speed up, surf draft, win.

Everyone’s body is different.
But ctl isn’t what you plan by. Plan your training sessions and make sure you nail them. Ctl will be what is it as a result of doing the best training you can.

It's a bit chicken and egg though - if you have no TSS/CTL target then how do you plan out the quantity and quality of sessions? Agree though that making sure you nail them is much more important than vainly trying to hit/maintain a certain CTL.

How did we manage 5 years ago before powermeters became ubiquitous... ;)

But don’t plan that far in advance. Use it to plan the next week or 2 then re asses.
Plus it looks like you’ll stagnate as you’ll be negative tsb but not really ramping. Best to get some air, then hit it again.

re asses

I need this midway through most ultras. #prayforgooch

This is based on an 8 week training block that ramps up over 3 weeks, eases for 1, then another progressively harder 3 weeks and a final easier week.

I hear you about not chasing CTL and I'm not.

I’d ride till you feel tired. Back off a bit. Then hit it again and ramp it back up. So atl isn’t so flatline.

Noob question - is my max heart rate just the highest number I've ever registered when riding (190)?

My basic approach at the moment is doing 1-1.5hr rides where I can sit at Z4 (166-184, according to Strava, based on the max of 190) as much as possible - traffic and route permitting - finding 170 to be a bit of a sweet spot.

I love over-analysing hr (can't afford pm, don't really take training seriously enough anyway). I'm not 100% sure but I think it'll fluctuate with fitness - you'll probably have an absolute max, but I've definitely found that when I'm fitter, I can get a higher max hr.

I don't know how this works with strava - should you adjust max hr based on fitness? Surely this will give you more accurate zones. If I stop cycling for a year, z1 will be a lot lower. British cycling seems to advocate doing a threshold hr test - I'd guess semi-regularly doing this would be a good idea.

I think strava zones are a bit arbitrary too, I did some reading and changed mine to something from flammerouge.je:
http://www.flammerouge.je/faqs/faqs_stravazones.htm

Be warned: you will be 'suffering' less than on previous rides - z1 is huge. However, z4 and z5 start lower.

I’d ride till you feel tired

I have two children and a stupid job. I always feels tired!

Till your legs feel tired. You’ll know the difference.

is my max heart rate just the highest number I've ever registered when riding

No

Is it just this '220 minus age' calculation?

No.

You'll only get a good idea of HRmax by doing a max effort test of some sort. Finishing races with a sprint, hill climbs, etc are probably decent ad hoc ways of finding it, but you need to be motivated and all out to see true max.