Trains, Travels

Well here I am in Kona. My first day here, but rather than writing about how great it’s been swimming in the ocean or riding the Queen K I’m saving that to start talking about the taper. I have already deviated from the plan with Steven inviting me on his ride. What was to be one hour of easy riding became 4 hours 30 minutes of moderately paced stuff (actually the Powertap says it was easier than I thought, I was just knackered). Harder than I wanted and my legs were sore thanks to hours of flying and little sleep. The plus side is all the swelling seems to have gone down!

Eating paleo is proving pretty easy here too which is a big bonus! Plenty of options as long as you’re selective. All been low on carbs so far with lots of proteins and fats. Hopefully that’ll see me lean through to race day. You want to be lean here believe me. When all the athletes are out on parade there’s no room for body fat! I’m told I look like I fit in so that’s good.

Enough of that though – the taper plan. As mentioned recently I’m breaking this down into the bike and run separately. Today’s post is about the evidence from my previous races which is guiding my plan for Kona.

Bike Performance Management

Not a chart, but a table pulled from WKO+ then with a bit of work in Excel assembled here (also with some callings on my old web developer skills!) What we’re looking at here is the four weeks leading up to each of my Ironman races this year. I’ve arbitrarily chosen to look at the ATL/CTL/TSB values on one day each of those weeks. The idea being to see how they changed over that time. Then knowing how the race went and how I felt during it I can assess the value of the figures.

As a reminder Acute Training Load (ATL) is sometimes known as fatigue I want this to be fairly low for a race. Chronic Training Load (CTL) is fitness, a high value should mean better performance really. Also the advice out there suggests not dropping it more than 10% during your taper. Finally Training Stress Balance (TSB) is the difference between the two and called form. Positive TSB is good, but too much is bad! The guidelines I’ve seen talk of values in the 10 to 20 range prior to a race.

That out the way from my four races I would say Ironman Australia was a poor day for me and I never felt good at any stage. Ironman Lanzarote is discounted unfortunately as my injury at the time ruined the race. Roth was a good race though I felt a little tired on the bike, but went well on the run. Ironman UK was also good the bike picked up towards the end and the run was solid.

If I’m going to learn anything from these numbers it seems Roth and UK are my guides and Oz is what to avoid. I’m a little wary with Ironman UK given that it was unusual circumstances leading up to that. From the data though my suspicion is that a TSB of 20ish will be good for the bike here. I may try and get it as high as 25 given I felt tired in Roth. The massively high TSB in Oz helps explain why I felt so flat on the bike out there!

Feeling tired in Roth might have something to do with the relatively small change in CTL. In fact an increase over the 4 weeks leading into the race. Even considering the shorter taper I opted for as the UK was my main race it was a small decline in the final week. I think I need to be much closer to the 10% drop off figure for the duration of the taper here. The UK was an exceptionally heavy drop off due to the struggle to train between the two. Not strictly relevant to Kona, but with ITU Long Course Worlds two weeks after Hawaii getting myself moving again will be essential this time.

Lanza might have had potential too!

Run Performance Management

Well I can skip the explanation of terms this time! Look at the figures and 10 to 15 stands out for TSB. Lanza might have been a little low, not that I’ll know for sure. Oz may have been a little too high. More significantly in Oz I think the drop off in CTL was once again way too high. Clearly no where near as high as for the UK, but again I cite special circumstances.

I suspect that the very regular nature of my run training now lends itself to a smaller more controlled lowering of CTL as general daily stress isn’t too bad even if CTL can end up quite high. My focus on consistency lets my body tolerate a very steady level of CTL. The biggest thing is dropping the ATL enough to get the positive TSB and a bit less fatigue overall. Simply shortening my longer runs and cutting a couple of regular runs is nearly enough for that.

Overall Performance Management?

Just for completeness this is the overall performance table. It combines the values from bike and run. Previously I had been using this as a very rough guide during my tapers. To be honest in the past my tapers were far closer to art than science! Really digging into the numbers like this is all new to me!

The problem with viewing the combined table is overly tapering for the run or bike can hide under tapering for the other. Whilst there are interactions between the two, they both use the same limbs after all, in terms of tapering I now feel that viewing them separately is important. A TSB of 30 to 35 may be great for racing, but probably not is it’s made up of a TSB of 50 on the bike and -15 on the run for example. I’d expect to be running very poorly in that extreme instance.

The factor that is a little more surprising here though is how high the combined TSB seems to end up being. Again the UK is exceptionally high, but Roth is also 35. Guidelines talk of 10 to 20, but I’m now considering that in individual sports. The resulting total TSB is much higher as a consequence, but seems to work well.

Whilst CTL is high, the percent change doesn’t vary much from 10% still. That remains fairly true. As before you’ll note how small it was for Roth and how large for the UK. In planning Kona I should be hitting much closer to 10% over the taper period.

A final limitation of the combined chart, in fact of all of this tapering system. The lack of swim training stress. I can’t taper swimming individually at the moment and it obviously doesn’t factor into the combined table one bit. I aim to work on this in the build for Western Australia and hopefully have something in place so I can work with data in the coming year.

In the end there is an element of art to tapering and however much I try to bring maths and science into it I’ll be going on feel a good amount of the time. I was surprised when I came to draw up the final taper plan for Kona that I had so much training to do in the time. It wasn’t anywhere near as restful as I usually do. It eases off as the race gets closer, but still has a solid amount of work in week one. A taper week over 20 hours? I’m not 100% sure of that one!

Of course here I am on day two of the taper and I’ve done far more than intended. The ride today was much bigger than expected! Still it seems to have helped clear some of the travel out of the legs and hopefully tomorrow’s bigger ride will feel much nicer. What it does mean is I can reduce some of the training later in the weak to balance things out. And that means more time in coffee shops. Perfect!

Part two will look at projecting the numbers for Kona and possibly that ITU World Champs too. I’ll also put out the taper plan and notes on how it’s going. Before I post that I’ll try and get a more colourful Kona experience blog up. I’ve had a great first day and am really looking forward to the week ahead.

Just a quick one as I’ll be boarding my flight to Kona a little later this morning! I’m excited and can’t wait to get out there!

I’ll blog and get as many pictures as I can whilst I’m away so hopefully those of you following events here can get a good feel for what’s going on. I still have my week five analysis to do for those that prefer the more analytical stuff (does anyone?) More interestingly there’s my taper to talk about. That’s waiting on my working out how best to represent some tabulated data.

This taper could be interesting, as I discussed a post or two back I have some new ideas about the numbers coming out of Training Peaks WKO+. I spent some of yesterday playing with my planned workouts and seeing what they meant for race day. I’ve ended up with more training than expected at the moment! Not sure how that will actually work out.

For all the talk of science and maths I’ll be sticking to some basic tapering rules of listening to my body and how I feel more than anything else though. I want a good first race in Kona as well as having the experience. Should you want to follow me on the big day my race number is 1492 and ironman.com will have tracking.

Right I need to get ready and go. Next time it’ll be Aloha from Hawaii!

Whilst I’m offering value here I can’t guarantee quality. We are two days out from the official start of the taper and I’m on some heavy days. I’m sorry to say I need my sleep more than I need to post to this blog. Plus of course I’ve been distracted by some analysis relating to tapers anyway! I shouldn’t promise when I’m going to deliver these things.

Power : Heart Rate

Presented more for completeness than anything else. As mentioned in my week two analysis I’ve come to consider this graph of limited value. There’s a number of reasons for that. In the case of the third week of training the fact my powertap ran out of batteries lost some data. Immediately we’re lacking the complete picture.

I’ll admit though it was the fact that the numbers weren’t higher than week two that first got me thinking. It was an ego thing, the line should be rising as I get fitter! I noticed in my training it was harder to raise the heart rate outside of climbing. Not that I couldn’t, but there’s a bigger mental step involved.

My initial thoughts were along the lines of limitations of the samples and the influence of the environment. For example when climbing in the Pyrenees you can often be on a Col taking an hour to complete. You’re working all that time and so at a higher heart rate and power. Compare with my riding back home where my longest hill is done in twenty minutes and only the last five are really that hard. One thing this means is I have much more data for 130 BPM and above than usual. In a way this data is probably more ‘fair’ as a representation of my riding.

So why the drop? Well it was obvious really and has been pointed out in conversation too. Fatigue! After two very solid weeks coming from being completely fresh I was tired. A couple of light days before I hit the climbs didn’t cut it as a true break. What the chart lacks is a way to factor in fatigue.

Currently I’m contemplating whether the best value for this sort of comparison would come from only using specific, focussed sessions when you know you’re rested. Races for example would be perfect. That Roth line may be the most useful on there. A side effect of all this is I’ve ordered a wheel cover to convert my powertap to a disc wheel for some of my up coming races. You can’t underestimate the value of racing with power and this way I get the benefits of aero too.

Week 4 was very much about recovering and really adds nothing to the chart so I’ve not included it.

Fatigue and Rest

So how about that fatigue then. If I pull up the Performance Management Chart from WKO+ you get to see just what it was like. I’ve had it pointed out that my last post was quite confusing if you’re not familiar with the software. I can only apologise I just didn’t want to explain the terminology again. I suggest reading here to better understand it. I will work on my own page to cover the data as a quick reference in the future.

Back to the chart then. Look at the start of week three highlighted in yellow. The thing to note is that my Training Stress Balance (TSB) is already negative. You can see it had an increase before the week started thanks to those two days off, but I start the week from a point of fatigue and build from there.

Then I really ramp things up. Taking my Acute Training Load (ATL) or fatigue as it can be known up by about 50%. That’s a massive shift again. I was very aware in the week that I was doing this to myself and a little uncertain how it’d go. I was increasingly tired, but found that a good eight to nine hours sleep a night was doing a lot to combat the issues.

When it came to the final day’s big ride and I saw TSB already below -100 I was a little nervous. I’ve never taken it so low. With an extra nap though and a good night’s rest beforehand I got through the final big day relatively unscathed. Had I had power data it would be very interesting to see what the affect was.

If I learnt anything from the week in terms of fatigue it was firstly that I can cope with a lot more than I thought, but it does affect quality. It becomes harder to do the hard work and not to slack off. Having mountains helps as there’s no easy way up them! Secondly the value of a lot of sleep is immense. Get enough and you can deal with very big training days over and over again. Finally a day with a 32km run and 60km bike in is not an easier day in the scheme of things!

Skimming through week four the only thing to note is how much I had to let things drop down to recover and start to get back on track by the end of the week. I couldn’t back up really big weeks like that too often. The numbers for week four are a little low because I don’t assign a Training Stress Score to swimming at the moment.

DOMS! Should I lift?

A very specific piece of fatigue I experience was DOMS! I’ve not really had it before, but made the mistake of doing a big weights session just before I went out to France. I think I ended up pushing bigger weights than usual on the legs because I felt it for the first few days of the trip.

Fortunately it passed and I don’t think the soreness was too much of an issue, but it raised questions about the value of weights in my training. Reading around the topic online it would seem DOMs isn’t uncommon when starting back at weights or doing high loads. On this occasion it was almost certainly the latter.

I’m not going to go into too much detail for now. Weights are a contentious issue in endurance training. My feeling is that they aren’t strictly necessary and if time constrained you shouldn’t worry too much. Core work is more important in the overall scheme of things. I do however think regular weights work is beneficial for my swimming and my running. I’m not convinced it’s done much for my cycling. Also whilst I’ve been losing weight for my race, it helps ensure muscle mass remains.

During week four I experienced a bit more of the DOMS as I got back to the gym, but I’m pleased to say as I come to the end of week five that’s all cleared up. I will continue weights in the program, though will be a little easier in my reintroductions after time off from now on!

Recovery

I’ve already mentioned the benefits of sleep. This is huge! Once I’m comfortably hitting over eight hours it became much easier to tolerate big day after big day. Despite the building fatigue as the week goes on I was still able to keep going with a slight dip on day five. I’m trying to replicate the sleep pattern more at home. With more distractions it becomes a lot harder though.

Once back home in week four those hours of sleep did suffer, but I cut back the biking and running and focussed on the swimming. Time in the pool was less stressful on the body and it gave me some chance to recover. As you can see in the chart above I’m still in negative TSB though. That was a big training load I put in and it takes time to get clear of it. My Kona taper should deal with the rest of that, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

My original plan for week four had been to get another solid training week in. The reality was that I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted to. Just too plain tired so I had to stick to keeping things simple and doing what I felt I could manage. Despite this I somehow ended up with another big week by hours, but a little shorter on overall load.

Positive Signs

I could be disappointed with how week four went. It wasn’t what I had on paper, but reality doesn’t always live up to the plan. By the end of the fourth week I was starting to feel a bit more like normal. A swim focus had got me past any concerns I might have had that the absence of swim time in France might have set me back. In fact week four was great for getting me back into pool swimming.

My running and biking has picked up and I’m definitely feeling a little stronger for the time in France. Right now I’m feeling pretty strong and positive. The only thing holding me back is the fatigue in the system and that’s what the taper is all about. I’m in good form and excited to see what happens when Kona comes around on the 10th.

Week five is now almost over, but before I analyse how it’s gone I’ll be doing a couple of posts on my taper plans. As my last post covered a bit I’ve some new ideas to work with and will have a much more specific taper period for it. Having discussed it with others you can see some of their thoughts posted already. Maryka has a three parter looking at her taper and Steven has adopted a TSB model into his training analysis.