The Relationship Between Performance Level and Training Stress

Training Concepts
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I’ve just read this article by @trevor and think it’s one of the best I’ve read about training stress, annual performance potential, genetic potential, importance of base training, importance of the off season, risk of injury etc.

In November 21, having not read this article at that point, I opted for a solid 4 months of base training to reset after a good 18 months of pandemic drift in my training.

Here I am 13 months on and today I found myself maintaining the same average speed over the same course and similar weather at an average heart rate that is 21 bpm below a year ago. A phenomenal change in aerobic conditioning. The article helps put some reasoning around how much that long base helped bring that about.

You may ask why I didn’t ride in same heart rate range as a year ago. The simple answer is that my wife has started training and today was her easy long ride which meant my going easier if I was to guide her round the route.

I’m currently in my base training for next year having had my off season. The article helped answer some of the questions I didn’t even know I wanted to ask.

I think I’ll come back to this article each year when I’m thinking about my training phases and events for the year ahead.

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@Phil, you just made my holidays! Thanks for the very kind words! I’m really glad the article helped and you’ve seen such a dramatic improvement with long slow training! Though, I do have to really give the credit to my mentor Glenn Swan for this one. He was the one to create this graph - and he had to hit me over the head with it more than a few times.

Happy Holidays!
Trevor

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Phil "November 21, having not read this article at that point, I opted for a solid 4 months of base training to reset after a good 18 months of pandemic drift in my training.

Here I am 13 months on and today I found myself maintaining the same average speed over the same course and similar weather at an average heart rate that is 21 bpm below a year ago. A phenomenal change in aerobic conditioning."

Congrats! That is an amazing change, and a validation of the real slow concept. You are right: Trevor’s article was great, especially the part of how the training stress curves shifts left when in sustained performance levels.

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