By Chris Carmichael, Founder and Head Coach of CTS
I have always enjoyed getting to know people and hearing their cycling stories during group rides, and it’s also interesting to listen to the advice riders give to each other in the pace line or at the coffee stop. Most of the time it’s good advice but there are several cycling training misconceptions I commonly hear repeated at ride after ride. So, when the rider next to you gives you the advice below, just smile, nod your head and take it with a grain of salt.
Riding more is the best/only way to get faster
With the popularity and widespread usage of training tools like TrainingPeaks and Strava, cyclists have grown familiar with the concept of Chronic Training Load (CTL), which is also displayed as “Fitness” in Strava’s “Fitness and Freshness” graphs. TrainingPeaks’ CTL represents a weighted average of daily Training Stress Score over the past 42 days. Athletes have adopted this value as a measure of current fitness, with a higher number meaning greater fitness.
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