28W and 6bpm recovery so far

Against Crystal Palace race last week and the intervening time off the bike (only 2 hour long sessions since then) my recovey has been slow with my max HR on the Saturday test getting up to 179bpm and then tonights session and test up to 181bpm. Still a long way short of 188/9bpm, which was last achived over christmas and looking back at my log the only other excursion into the 180 zone was to 184bpm at the end of the march when I set a new 60 second power output personal best. That has left me confused as I though that over trained showed through as a decrease in power ability rather than lower HR and increased power, unless the training had compensated to a certain degree and the over training (or under recovery) just showed through as a lower than possible reading ?
Will take it easy for the rest of the week and at the weekend go for a long steady paced ride or ride in to work on Friday at a much reduced pace.

Over trained and 14bpm short at Palace as a result

From the increased number of outings, which were generally a TSS of 100+ my CTL increased rather quickly, while my TSB dropped like a stone. Not really listening to my body until it was a point blank refusal to play ball when I did my first race of the season at Crystal Palace last night.

The original plan was to ride into work the previous day and then ride out to Palace to watch the first race of the season. Instead I ended up riding into work and then to Palace and entering, which racked up over 40 miles prior to racing.

On the line the people were still signing on and thinking there were going to be some crashes due to the number of people (50+) navigating the hairpin I thought I'd get out of the way. With this in mind as soons as the start was given I was off and first round the hairpin and into the next curve before easing up a little. Nobody passed before the next corner so I eased up again and then the stream started as about 10 riders passed and I thought I'd recover a bit. This is when I noticed my heart rate was not quite behaving normal as it was only 166bpm after the effort (528W over 1min 28sec). Keeping up with the bunch up the hill was then a bit more of a struggle but did not let too much space slip as the hill min to max averaged 456W (44 sec).

The first lap (excluding the hairpin turn) took 2min 8sec at an average 463W and the second lap over the same distance then averaged 1min 54sec at 354W with 10 seconds null output for the hairpin. Third lap was chasing the lead split in the bunch as it was big enough to stay and bridging the gaps from riders dropping out of the bunch, which ended up with a 382W lap (inc hairpin). Fith lap much the same but at 406W and a maximum heart rate over the race of 175bpm. This time it was blatent that something was wrong as it was now 8 minutes into the race with a 396W average (438W norm) and my heart rate was 14bpm below maximum so I eased off after catching the bunch and the next lap averaged 290W. Next lap 324W, still not feeling right. Next lap another gap and 342W, 330W, 379W, 354W. By the 11th lap I was chasing the lead bunch and cought them as 3 riders peeled off the back, which opened up yet another gap to bridge, which was 20 years and ended up averaging 422W through and up the hill and my heart rate was now only 169bpm. Time to pull up.

After drifting down to the start line I pulled over and out of the race after 22min 22sec and an average wattage of 361W (407W norm) with my max heart rate 14bmp below my normal maximum at an average of 162bpm. Cadence 92rpm, 175m climbing, 47.7TSS 1.131IF, 38.5kph.

By this time I'd clocked up a TSS for the day of over 200 over around 50 miles with commuting, getting to the event and racing, which should not have been too bad if I was rested. Even now, I still feel very tired and in need of a few days R&R with some easy short rides at the weekend only. Time to allow the CTL to drift back to the 60's and feel right.

CTL 80+ for a win and a CAT 3/4 road event ?

Been thinking about the race performance last year and my training level at the time, which brings me to one of 2 criteria for a win in my target road race event (56 miles 804m climbing over 6 laps). Either you have to have "quality" CTL above 80 and / or get a good set of wheels.

The wheels and tyres would focus around 20-30W back onto road speed rather than blowing in the wind (5-10W for the tyres and 20W for the wheels) and will make a >5% difference. When it comes to the hill the lower weight of myself and the bike (3kg down from a month ago) should make a difference on the one long climb of just over 100m. Providing the bunch does not disintegrate totally within the first lap and at least holds together for 2-3 laps it should provide a good warm up for the 2nd hour.

For the next month, ahread of the race, I have 3 weeks (last week taper) of training to add around 3-4TSS / week to my CTL, which should bring the level up to around 82-85 before dropping back ahead of the event.

Too much too soon, patience...

CTL peaked at 76.5 yesterday after the commute to London and felt quite good. TSB was -35 after the commute on Wednesday after dipping to -42 on Sunday and recovering on Monday/Tuesday to -15. From the weekend and commuting experience this week the benefit seems to be dipping to around -35 to the most -40 steadily and then recovering but the impact does not come through if you don't get the TSB down enough and most importantly recover effectively. Monday was a bit of a wakeup as I knew that something was a little wrong as I noticed I had a runny nose first thing when I woke up with the alarm and felt pretty bad on top of that. Back to bed and waking up around 5 hours later seemed to work wonders and felt a lot lot better for it.

The only other recent time that my TSB has gone lower was around Christmas time when it dipped to -50 after a few rides (Fri 85, Sun 136 and Mon 274) which pushed the ATL up far too quickly at the time to a high of at the time 96 compared to the ATL of 117 on Sunday. The CTL increase at Christmas was from 38.4 to 45.7 in a few days vs the step of 68.5 to 76.5 over last week.

Lesson - too much too quickly... time for a little easy spinning and sleep.

Slow and steady progress - maybe a bit too slow

With time constraints bound by a family and work commitments the the challenge of fitting in all the training becomes a trade off at times between quality and quantity. Commuting to work gives some of the quantity but not the quality (and tires you out in the process) while dedicated trainer sessions are good quality but you need to leave your brain outside to do 90 minutes plus.

So far the commuting went well, although a bit of a transition in training as the training stress from 1 day took a while to get used to, which also meant that the quality took a hit as London commuting is not the best of trining environments. Recovery time seems to be improving and having 1 week off the commute (replaced with leaving work early and going out for an hour and a bit) and holding the training stress seems to feel better now. Possibly from increased recovery time and a more balanced workload throughout the week.

Plan for the next week is ride in and get some extra quality time in at the weekend to build up the training stress before racing the week after at Crystal Palace. What I'll be racing on I'm not quite sure as there is a slight o slim chance I'll have a new bike ready in time for the first event.

The Criteriums on Tuesday and Thursday (Crystal Palace and Milton Keynes) will hopefully provide an incremental training load for the following month ahead of the road race.