How To Have A Great Season Without “Peaking”

Written by:

Renee Eastman

CTS Premier Cycling Coach

Updated On

June 24, 2025

To peak or not to peak? Is it more valuable for you to achieve your absolute peak fitness for about two weeks or to sustain a high level of fitness (e.g., 90% of absolute peak) for a longer portion of the season? I wrote previously about “How Long Can You Hold Peak Form?”, but for many athletes the question is whether peaking is relevant at all?

Not every athlete needs or wants to chase a peak. One of my athletes summed it up perfectly: “I just want to keep up with the group ride and not be the last one to the top of the hills.” It is a goal I hear a lot, and honestly, it is a good one. For many athletes juggling work, family, and everything life throws at them, that is the sweet spot. They want to feel strong on the bike, recover well after the weekend, and have the kind of fitness where they can say yes to a moderately challenging event without committing to a full-life overhaul. This comes from building a solid foundation of fitness and not necessarily aiming for peak form every season, but having enough in the tank to ride well, have fun, and avoid burnout.

The Cost of Peaking

Training for a true peak, whether it is for an ultra-distance event like the 200-mile Unbound Gravel race or a multi-day tour in the French Alps, demands a significant investment of time, energy, and focus. It often requires athletes to push through lingering fatigue, accept dips in performance, and navigate fluctuating motivation before the reward finally arrives. Afterward, it is common to experience a decline in form, both physically and mentally, and to struggle to regain momentum.

For many athletes, that is not the right tradeoff. They are better served by feeling good most of the time, showing up strong for the weekly group rides or races, and being ready for the occasional big event without the emotional and physical cost of a peak.

Key Principles of Sustainable Form

In other words, how do you train to be reliably very good rather than fleetingly great?

Build Your Best Foundation of Fitness  

Rather than having a steep ramp up, followed by a rapid post-peak decline in form, sustainable training focuses on maintaining a resilient baseline. A strong foundation of fitness means fewer dramatic swings in training load and better durability across the season. This works especially well for Time-Crunched Athletes or those with inconsistent schedules.

Even athletes chasing a peak still need a foundation. Without it, a peak build can backfire with injury, overtraining, or burnout. A solid base allows all athletes to absorb harder training when needed and bounce back quickly.

Find Your Sustainable Chronic Training Load

Time-Crunched Athletes or those chasing consistent form might not push Chronic Training Load (CTL) to the limit, but they can still perform well by keeping a consistent base. The risk comes when an athlete tries to force a peak without the fitness base to sustain it, resulting in a short-lived spike and a quick drop.

A better approach for many is to bank on consistency and train for durability. Your fitness does not need to be flashy to be effective. If you have the strength to show up week to week, you are ahead of the game. Be fit enough to handle most demands, most of the time, with minimal disruption. That comes from consistency week to week, month to month.

Use Periodization with Purpose

Even if you are not chasing a short-lived ultimate peak of performance, it’s still important to train with a plan. Periodization provides a roadmap for consistency, adapting gradually, and making the most of your time. It is less about pushing to the edge and more about when knowing when to nudge and when to hold steady. Think of it like managing rolling terrain: you want smooth transitions rather than hard surges and sharp power drops.

You do not need to be on a pro tour schedule to benefit from a race-inspired training framework: Base, Build, Specialize, and Transition. What changes are the intensity and how tightly you execute each phase. The goal is consistent adaptation that fits your life.

• Base Phase (Winter/Early Season): Build aerobic volume, strength, and durability. Focus on Zone 2 riding but include occasional Zone 3 efforts (tempo or sweet spot) to make the most of limited time. Strength training and consistency matter more than intensity in this phase.
• Build Phase (Spring): Add specificity with threshold work and tempo intervals. For some, especially those preparing for group rides or events, a small amount of VO2 work (like short surges or 30/30s) once a week can improve responsiveness without excessive fatigue.
• Specialization Season (Summer): Maintain fitness. Use events or group rides for intensity. Add just enough sharpness to stay responsive without draining your reserves.
• Transition (Fall): Back off. Use unstructured rides, cross-training, and take a mental reset.

Let Joy Guide the Process

Peaking often requires a level of discipline and focus that is uncomfortable or unpleasant, at least for part of the time. That’s the tradeoff people are willing to accept for the reward of reaching their absolute best. One benefit of a sustainably strong season is that you can lean more into the fun side of training. Long-term consistency depends on enjoyment. That might mean returning to favorite routes, joining group rides for social energy, or riding without structure. Unstructured training could be as simple as heading out with no plan, no power data, and just turning the pedals how you feel that day. This lower-pressure way of training often results in fitness that’s very close to what athletes can achieve through a peaking process, and the key to getting there is through monitoring the load from less structured training.

How to Monitor Training Load in a No-Peak Season

For athletes using TrainingPeaks, metrics like CTL (fitness), ATL (fatigue), and TSB (freshness) offer real-time feedback on load and recovery. Here is how to manage them with a sustainability mindset:

CTL – Chronic Training Load

Think of CTL as your fitness foundation. The number is a weighted average of the last 42 days of Training Stress Scores. No need to max it out. Build it gradually and then maintain it. Once you reach a sustainable CTL that fits your lifestyle and corresponds to feeling “pretty darn good” on the bike, try to stay within +/- 5–10 points. That is enough to support strong performance without teetering into burnout.

ATL & TSB – Fatigue and Freshness

Use ATL (7-day load) and TSB (CTL – ATL) to stay ahead of overreaching:

• ATL should generally stay <15–20 points above CTL, except during short build phases.
• TSB should float between -10 and +10 for most of the season. Significantly negative TSB means you’re accumulating too much fatigue. Significantly positive TSB (+30 or more) means your training load is so low you’ll eventually start losing fitness.
• Before a big event or ride, aim for TSB of +5 to +15 for optimal freshness.

Limitations of a No-Peak Season

Even if sustainable fitness is the goal, any training plan has limitations. Holding a steady load for weeks on end can start to feel flat and boring, both physically and mentally. Fitness plateaus, fatigue builds slowly, and motivation can slip without you realizing it.

That is why sustainability does not mean staying on the same track forever. Even when things are going well, it helps to:

• Build in a lighter week every 3–5 weeks.
• Shift the focus within your training (tempo, threshold, group rides, etc.)
• Go use that fitness for an epic adventure or a big weekend of riding. If you do this right, you’ll have great fitness and performance, and big speed and power.
• Take a short reset mid-season to absorb the work and get back some spark.

Think of it as clearing space so you can keep making progress. A sustainable approach is not just about avoiding burnout. It is about keeping things fresh enough to stay engaged and keep moving forward.

Coach Insight: Consistently Good Beats Fleetingly Great

True peak performance is tricky and fickle. I think everyone should try to achieve it at least once, just to experience what that feels like. But reaching a true peak takes a lot out of a person, physically and emotionally. And it’s the final few percentage points of improvement that exact the greatest toll. You can get almost all the way to peak performance, hold on to it for a lot longer, and enjoy yourself a lot more, if you’re willing to leave those last few percentage points on the table. And that doesn’t mean resigning yourself to a slow or underwhelming season. I’ve been coaching cyclists for more than 20 years and plenty of athletes I’ve worked with achieved their biggest victories or best all-time performances in seasons when they were consistently good, were having fun, and felt less pressure to achieve peak performance.

Great form is not just about hitting peak watts or stacking up the highest weekly TSS. It is about staying healthy, engaged, and being available to train. Sustainable training might not deliver the biggest highs, but it creates long-term resilience, more days of good riding, and more chances to say yes to what you enjoy.

And for a lot of athletes, that is the real win.

References

Foster, C., et al. (1996). Monitoring training in athletes with reference to overtraining syndrome. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 28(1), 116–123.

Seiler, S. (2010). What is best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes? International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 5(3), 276–291.

Turner, A. (2011). The science and practice of periodization: A brief review. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 33(1), 34–46.

TrainingPeaks. (n.d.). The Performance Management Chart Demystified. https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/performance-management-chart-demystified/

About the Author

Renee Eastman is a Premier Coach for Carmichael Training Systems and has been with the company since 2001. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in exercise physiology and is certified as a USA Cycling Level 1 Coach, NSCA Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and NASM Nutrition Coach. She is a former competitive cyclist and a six-time master’s national champion.