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The cold does sap energy. You'll need to eat more than when it's warmer. Also wrap up to keep muscles warm.
If you can increase duration, increase load as you are. But you can't just keep making every session harder as you'll burn out.
That's the issue being time crunched, you will plateau.
skinny-
Thanks for the feedback @skinny
Was well dressed (felt like i had all my cycling wardrobe on!) but i feel cold all the time anyway so i still ended up chilly. Definitely didn't eat enough, ad drank fuck all. Knew i wasn't drinking enough but you just totally stop wanting to do it when it's cold.... Not thirsty and the idea of putting a cold drink down your throat doesn't appeal!
Will continue the increased intensity and volume quest. Am seeking solace in the fact that the days are about to start lengthening and i've started to find sufferfest videos to be quite good. And doing one of them is basically xxx minutes of turning yourself inside out. Thus good intensity - i previously could only face fairly steady chugging indoors.
jim1985
I know it's not all about your CTL, but mine is on a mega-plateau and has been for ages.
Don't really understand how i can start ramping it more at the moment... have upped the intensity in the last weeks, tend to do this each week
1-2 x high intensity turbo (intervals)
1 easy recovery turbo
2 x outdoors - 90-1ookm (steady)
1 x total rest
1 x gym / S&C
But am trying to up the distance of the outdoor rides a bit each week to build volume.
Is proving difficult to up the volume though, there's something about me and winter that just doesn't get on.
Today i went out in the proper cold for the first time in a while and my legs just totally failed to co-operate. Admittedly I was pretty tired (the day before a scheduled rest day), but i felt like the cold just sapped all my energy