Ryan, 2nd place finisher at the last two Intermountain cup races (Pedalfest and Stan Crane Memorial XC race), asked me "what happened?" both times that he beat me. Here's what happened
This graph is an overview of my last 120 days of training. The blue shaded area is my fitness. It's going up. Good. The red line is my fatigue. It's supposed to fluctuate because you have to beat yourself up to eventually improve fitness. The greenish shaded area is a ratio of fitness and fatigue, named Training Stress Balance (TSB).
Notice at the Draper race my fatigue was going up near the highest point of the last 120 days, and last weekend it hit the highest point. That's probably what happened. Also notice the point where my TSB was perfect coincides with my best finish of the season.
As I was mentioning to someone else yesterday, I am starting to put in some long rides to prepare for a season goal of Park City Point 2 Point and it's hurting me on race day. Since I have another season goal of the Intermountain cup series points I need to decide which goal is most important because it is apparent I cannot support both.
