I’ve finally gotten around to looking at my 2008 season and two things spring to mind. 1) I need to train more and more consistently and 2) it’s nice to see the numbers and the pmc correlating so well with the plan. I won’t comment on #2 much because others have discussed its use much better than I (e.g. see these discussion by Dr. Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen or better yet read their book, Training and Racing with a Power Meter), but as you can see I set season bests for both 1′ and 5′ power while peaking for cross. I gave up a lot of endurance because I was no longer doing any long rides or much tempo or sweet spot work (see the CTL line fall towards the middle of November) but I upped the intensity, thus the higher numbers short term numbers, and my best cross season ever.
As for # 1, this year has reinforced the truism that it is easier to "earn" tss points and thus raise ctl by riding outside (at least for me). Notice to the left of the chart, before I got sick, how shallow the ramp rate is for ctl. After recovering from being sick, there is a steady increase for March and April, and surprise, surprise, that corresponds to my getting outside more often for rides. Living in Chicago, nearly everything before that was indoors. This trend is reinforced by a similar scenario after we moved to VA. In Chicago we lived in a fairly congested area. It was difficult, if not often impossible, to find open roads to train on. Thus, even when the weather was perfect, I’d often get my midweek workouts in on the trainer. In VA, the open road is at my door and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been on the trainer so far (though that will change given our current cold snap). I find it much easier to ride at nearly all levels outdoors. Added to that is the fact that I also find it easier to ride at a higher power level on hilly courses and that there is nary a flat road for miles ’round here, and you can see how both my volume and intensity will have risen simply by changing where I ride.
So, hopefully this increased training load will pay off as we build towards 2009. Of course, I could still have the right volume but still get the mix of workouts wrong, but that is another topic all together.