A near record and a one week vacation

Submitted by Mark EWERS on Mon, 11/13/2006 - 9:54am
Mark EWERS's picture

This week is going to be one of those CTL breaking weeks for me.

Not that CTL has been all that much to write home about lately in the first place, but I have been able to keep it on a fairly steady and slowly rising trajectory. This week, however, is that long business trip I had discussed a few weeks ago - the one I've been looking forward to from a professional point of view. But also the one I have been dreading from a training point of view.

And it doesn't seem as if it could come at a worse time. Motivation has been really good lately. Perhaps it's the cooler weather and all the varied riding I've been doing lately. Maybe it's the stress let-off from getting this business trip fully baked and ready to serve up. Whatever it is, despite steadily rising CTL and the associated depressed TSB, I've been feeling stronger and stronger on the bike.

Yesterday before heading for the airport I jumped on my trainer for a quick ride. Within 5 minutes or so I was feeling pretty good so I ramped up the watts to a Perceived Effort level I felt I could hold for a while. I was astonished to see that self-selected wattage level was right at my current FTP setting.

Ten minutes later I was still feeling pretty good - another pleasant surprise. I knew I didn't have time for a whole hour of training so I made a snap decision to extend this 10 minute so-far-so-good interval into a 30 minute steady state interval. At 35 minutes I cut it off to allow for a quick 5 minutes of cool down. Result, a 30 minute interval just one watt shy of a personal best.

So now I have a week off to think about it. I'll lose about 20 points of CTL in the process. Not that it matters, I'll rebuild it eventually. I'm encouraged that I'm seeing power levels approaching my output before my back pains started. There's a lesson I suppose, even with my back aches and pains I have been able to keep riding at least at reduced duration and intensity. But even that reduced training level has been enough to sustain wattage output well enough that nearly one year later I have not, at the very least, lost ground.

Given where I've been in the past year with this back injury, I'm more than happy with that result.