I started off in late October building up CTL by aiming for ~10hrs of L3 per week. I hit a CTL 80 at Christmas doing so but haven't really seen a increase in power doing some periodic 2x20m intervals to check FTP in the past few weeks. So I figured I needed to up the relative intensity a bit to start building FTP. I took the approach of block training 4x20's at low to mid level 4 with some L2 time after the intervals to pad CTL and keep it rising. My idea was to do the 4x20's everyday with some L2 at the end. Volume of L2 and L2 power target would be adjusted on daily available time to train. When the 4x20 power dropped I would assume I overreached and would take recovery days as needed until I was ready to hit it again. Well today was my 5th day in a row of 4x20's all at mid level 4 and I even hit a 5th 20m right at the bottom of L4 and I was pretty much done. I figured by now I would be overreached but I bet if I had to I could do it again tomorrow judging on how I feel right now. My goal was to do the 4x20's until I hit a plateau where power wasn't increasing across the intervals and then start the same approach with 2x20's until it was time to start tapering a bit and adding L5 work before racing starts. I have a forced day off the bike tomorrow due to family constraints. Truth is I'm tired but I seem to be able to keep hitting this 4x20 power level day after day. Should I keep doing so until I finally overreach enough and power drops? Any other ideas? I know Lydiard had his athletes doing about 10hours of what would probably be low level 4 consistently every week. My guess is that I might have a high capacity to handle a good sized training load that I never knew I had. CTL is at now at 91. When I plateau on these 4x20's my idea is that I will have to add 2x20's and pad that with some l3 time to keep CTL rising until it's time to taper and do some L5 and L6 work to peak. Am I on the right track with my thinking or am I way off base? I guess I'm surprised that I haven't seen a power drop in the 4x20's yet and wonder what other's experience is and if anyone had any suggestions they would like to offer on my plan.
I'm doing the 4x20's at ~95% of FTP. FTP was set by the average power of some random 2x20's over a few weeks in a semi rested state. But whether or not I have underestimated FTP is a mute point since I am doing the 4x20's at a power level that I can only maintain for the whole interval set. But I have been able to back that power up 5 days in a row and feel like I can keep going. Obviously my CTL is high enough for me that the training load from the 4x20's 5 days in a row is not fatiguing me yet. It just seemed to ME that the raw intensity of 4x20's should fatigue me by now and I wouldn't be able to back the power up 5 days in a row no matter what my CTL is. I would assume that even a pro with a CTL of 160 couldn't back up 2x20's at FTP day after day after day. Maybe I am wrong there. Or maybe that 5% drop off of FTP for the 4x20's makes a BIG difference in regards to the fatigue factor. I guess that is kind of what I'm asking.
Underestimating your FTP is not a moot point at all. Correctly determining your FTP is critical if your CTL figures are to be correct. You are trying to figure out how come you can do five days of 4x20 and still not be fatigued with a CTL of 90. Chances are your FTP is too low so your 20 min intervals might be closer to doing them at tempo/L3 and not FTP.
I think that it'd be well worth doing a seperate FTP test - done "to the letter" including the 5 minute blow out effort just prior to it. It would seem that your FTP has increased, so I'd start the actual test a bit higher than what you have the current FTP pegged at for the first 5 minutes of the actual test effort and play it by ear from there. The worst that happens is that you end up doing a different training session and you blow up during the test...
Bear in mind that your FTP indoors on the trainer is mostly likely different from what you'd test at if you did the test outdoors.
