Sunday, September 11, 2011

Mid-Season Base: Wrap-Up

Ok, so have spent the last 4 weeks loosely speaking - building some base back.
Post injury and illness I found that CTL had fallen significantly, so I designed a program of high volume, mostly lower intensity work designed to get CTL back up to ~100TSS/d while also tuning up the aerobic engine..


In reference to the PMC above:
A: Peak
B: Post injury and illness trough
C: End of mid season base (today)

CTL ramp was aggressive:
Wk1: +5
Wk2: +7
Wk3: +7
Wk4: +0

There was an element of risk associated with such a steep ramp; I hadn't planned on the back to back 7's but followed the training plan nevertheless as many days consisted of two separate sessions - allowing for recovery in-between.
Week4 was planned as a "rest" to acclimatise to CTL at 100TSS/d before moving forward. With the reduced volume this week I still felt tired toward the end of the week and did less than planned.
Progress from here will be at a rate of +3 to 4 CTL/week until reaching ~110-115. I have found from previous experience that once CTL reaches 100TSS/d I'm starting to feel strong and able to cope with longer, more intense and race-like training sessions.

FTP was down at least 11% from level realised at peak(A) (based on sustainable output over 2 back-back 20min intervals at beginning of week2). End of week4 this has climbed by 7%  which I'm happy with - but have 4% to claw back before any real inroads to progress can be made.. 

Build phase begins tomorrow.

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