Jane:
That’s cool that you have been observant of the connection between high CTL and injury. Higher CTL comes at the cost of higher ATL (fatigue). For most of us, training while carrying a high chronic fatigue load is running the risk of something going wrong.
Some ideas….
To boost CTL how about adding min more cross training to avoid over use or injury problems
Have a more gradual ramping of CTL.
Take more frequent recovery days and weeks.
Overall I think it is best to not focus too much on the numbers like CTL. Instead I recommend finding a course that you can use easily and frequently and do an AeT time trial on it. Then occasionally repeat this test. Say every month on a day when you feel good. I far prefer actual field tests like this to proxies like CTL or even lab tests. Performance is what matters so we should be monitoring performance not proxies.
I hope this helps’
Scott