[Mark Postle]

bbarlin,

These are good questions and complex ones for sure.  I have coached quite few Everest climbers and of course am always trying to related their CTL scores to their readiness and success.  As you touch on here you can make some conclusions between individuals with the same TrainingPeaks metrics but there is a ton of variability.  So many other factors weigh in heavily. The way I like to think about the CTL is to use it as a measure of progress and direction more than anything and as a VERY general measure of readiness.  The reality is that you are going to want to train up towards the limit of what your body can absorb and RECOVER from given your individual parameters.  Any more or less based on a CTL number will likely do you a disservice.  All that said I would add 2 things.  1) If you’re holding 85 steadily then its likely you can ramp up to something that peaks north of 120+ over a time period for a big climb.  2) 15 months is totally sufficient IMO.  If you have a reasonable training history and last 2 years have been consistent then that is plenty of time.  If you use that time wisely its unlikely that an additional year is going to move the needle dramatically from a strictly fitness perspective.   Hope that helps!