Trains, Travels

It’s day four in Lanzarote and I’m having to ease things back a little to ensure I can continue to walk up and down the stairs to our apartment. The quad killer was a run along the coastal trail to Playa Quemada a reasonable effort in itself given my recent lack of run training. I was feeling good and it’s a lovely trail so once down there the first challenge was to run up to a small plaque on the hill side. Having done this the second challenge was to run up a steep hill to a radio mast. From there you could see an old wall at the top of the next hill obviously I had to go there too.

Whilst 2:15 of comfortably paced running was a bit of a step up it was coming down from those steep hills that really did my legs in. Throw in a couple of big rides at a solid pace round the island and I’m not too shocked by the pain in the quads. Apart from getting myself ready to race an Ironman I also want to use my time here to get back to a full training routine so there’s no rest today. I’m easing back and keeping the intensity way down, but there’s a run and a bike to be done.

Rather than prattle on about how it’s nice to be in the warm again or tot up the hours of training I’m managing I’ve a few thoughts on my return to fitness (again).

The good and bad of a high heart rate. After five weeks of leisurely training the biggest difference at the moment is the ease with which I can raise my heart rate. It really highlights the impact a large training volume has on me. Most of the year I find a lot of my training takes place around the 130bpm mark. More than that requires interval work or some decent hills. The last two weeks I’ve seen the 170s a few times and even the 180s (I’d forgotten I could go there).

The good is I’m able to make myself do harder work more easily. An overall lack of fatigue is giving me the room to push a little bit harder. My general riding is at a higher intensity than it has been and consistently so. It’s affirmative in a sense to see how I can ride at around my typical race pace for long periods of time.

On the other hand whilst I am riding close to that race pace I’m also doing so at a higher average heart rate than I’d normally expect. Whilst I can put this down in part to a lack of suppression from fatigue I also see it as a clear sign that my fitness isn’t there yet. My capacity to work is there, I can ride hard, but the cost to my metabolic and aerobic systems is higher than normal.

I need more time to build up the overall fitness that allows me to support this training load without such relatively high heart rates.

Nutrition and metabolism. Along similar lines I am much more carb reliant during training than I have been. I put this down to the higher work rate and the slightly lower levels of conditioning meaning my body is utilising a bit more carbs and a bit less fat than it typically has on my long rides.

Again there’s fitness adaptations to be made both improving fat utilisation and improving fitness such that the current level of work becomes a lower relative intensity. As the relative intensity drops I would expect to be able to produce the same absolute power for a greater proportion of fat than carbs.

Being aware of this I can sustain a stronger work load by carefully feeding in enough carb rich food on the bike to keep me going. As I’ve experienced in races the important thing is to keep the level just enough to sustain the workload. When the balance is right I can hold the intensity indefinitely (near enough for the purposes of riding). Taking too long a gap between food at the moment results in a more eratic ride with lulls in performance.

The other lesson learnt in my first few days here is I can’t drink fizzy drinks. I’ve known this enough to never touch coke during a race, but a large bottle of diet 7Up on my first ride here led to a very uncomfortable few hours! Fortunately there’s an alternative flat orange flavoured drink. It’s loaded with sugar though so has become a fluid carb source for me as well as a means of hydration.

I was going to write more on fat burning in general and the adaptations for endurance, but for now there’s a good article as part of the diet series over on The Science of Sport.

That’ll do for now. Having got my swim out the way first thing I’m relaxing this morning (in MacDonalds for the wifi access), but I’ll be out for a bike and a run this afternoon. I don’t want it too easy!

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I was expecting to be writing from Lanzarote but for now Reading will be a substitute for Puerto del Carmen. If there’s a silver lining to the volcanic ash cloud it’s that I don’t have to pack my bike for a few more days. It’d be easier to get good training done with a little bit more sun and a few less distractions.

Last week my objective was to go from a lazy, detrained state to someone ready to train hard. Mixed success on that one. Some solid biking and a good swim session have been done whilst running leaves something to be desired. The next few days will be very telling hopefully I can hold it all together.

There’ll be some work involved restoring the massive drop off in fitness I charted last week. I’ve an ambitious goal to achieve it over the next month, but whilst I’m here at low CTL and high TSB my experiences have been interesting. The results a few hard rides all performed in a well rested state have me thinking.

Every reader knows I track and analyse my training through WKO+ and it’s round those lighter training periods that I start to dig into things more. Normally I’ve looked at the Performance Management Chart from the perspective of being well trained. What happens at high CTL and low or negative TSB and especially the process of tapering with them. When it comes to building fitness I’ve taken the simple approach of raising CTL as quickly as I can tolerate. Just check out the massive rises on some past training ventures (along with massive dives in TSB).

The simplistic viewpoint is that the higher the CTL the better. I’m not going to refute this I think its true to a large extent however I’d warn against holding CTL in too high an esteem. Given the large decline in my own CTL I’ve been surprised by recent performances on the bike. It made me wonder if I put too much emphasis on achieving a high CTL by any means.

Whilst CTL is considered analogous to fitness its specifically a measure of the training stress you’ve been applying over a period of weeks. Its a great indicator of how training is going. To keep raising CTL you need to be consistently applying a training stress higher than it’s current value. As CTL rises so does the minimal amount of training stress to keep it growing – progressive overload! CTL indicates fitness because a higher value should indicate a longer or more intense period of high training stress. A high CTL shows you’ve been training hard for a period of time and so should be making adaptations.

As CTL gets higher it also becomes harder to maintain. Sharp peaks from concentrated training blocks rapidly decline during easier periods. There’s enough work in maintaining new higher levels of CTL, let alone building them. My experiences after Epic Camp this year were an example of that. Consistent bike training throughout February never raised my CTL any further. Unable to put in the repeated high training stress days of camp CTL fluctuated at a high level.

If CTL has stabilised that doesn’t mean you can’t progress fitness though it’s easy to fall into that line of thinking (I’m certainly guilty of this). It’s important to remember that the training stress that CTL is calculated from is relative to a threshold pace or power you can hold for a fixed period (an hour in the case of FTP for example). Whilst training is increasing CTL it should also be raising threshold.

A month of solid training gives me a notably higher CTL, but I’m also hoping that I’ll have a higher FTP. The other side to that coin is a month off will give a lower CTL and I’d anticipate my FTP will have dropped. It follows that an hour at 80% effort performed on day one of my training block should be at a lower power than an 80% effort performed on day twenty-eight.

These performances metrics are more important than the exact value of CTL. If training isn’t changing your thresholds month on month then whatever your CTL little is happening to change performance. A high or rising CTL isn’t the goal, but it is a good indicator that your training should be working towards performance improvements. The important thing is to monitor actual performance to ensure what you’re doing is getting the results you want.

Back to my own training and my recent experiences on the bike. Having had a long period of relatively little riding, seeing my CTL drop by two thirds and my TSB rise to very positive levels my expectation was that my FTP would have dropped. Ideally I should go and test this to get precise feedback I’m currently going by number two of the seven deadly sins.

What number two is suggesting to me is that my FTP is comfortably where it was for Ironman New Zealand. With the freshness associated with rest and positive TSB I’m able to go out and ride at higher power than I’d expect. This past week I’ve managed to set new PBs for one minute and five minute power. I’ll admit both were soft before my new one minute PB finally is classified as untrained according to WKO+!

Once I’m warmed up and settled in for the ride my average power for the central hours of a long ride is up close to my previous Ironman averages. Effectively it seems I’m going out and riding at close to what I’ve consider race pace for most of my rides. It’s a very satisfying situation to be in and gives me a lot of optimism that with the right approach I can build on this for Kona.

It suggests to me that whilst CTL declines rapidly other fitness metrics change more slowly. To reasonably maintain my old FTP figure hasn’t taken the large levels of training I was doing to build it up. A few workouts spread over the month and with a mix of intensity in them seems to have slowed decline there. The result is I come out of a real recovery period without losing a lot of what I’d gained.

One caution comes from comparing my heart rate in recent sessions to my major training blocks. After any period of rest I find on return to regular training my heart rate is much higher for the initial week. I put this down to a combination of loss in fitness and freshness. Without my usual fatigue it’s much easier to raise my heart rate to peak levels (setting the one minute power PB on Streatley Hill saw heart rates in rarely reached 180s). If I can continue this bike performance as fatigue builds it’s a good sign.

Increasingly I’m also considering the mental contribution to my current performance. My Ironman New Zealand bike and performance leading into that gave me some confidence. I have to admit I’m coming into rides believing I can ride harder. How much difference does that make? I suspect I’m willing to keep pushing that little bit more and just see what happens.

I can think of a similar situation at the end of last year. I like to use hills to help me work harder on the bike a bit of gradient does a lot to motivate you to push more. When I headed to Busselton for Ironman Western Australia there weren’t any hills and I’d be racing on the flat. It took a couple of sessions to get comfortable with really pushing in those conditions. Once I was used to it I rapidly started riding harder and harder.

This mental aspect, the confidence to train and race hard is another side to training. Whilst I’ve emphasised the importance in raising your threshold through the sessions you’re doing I think developing the ability to consistently work at appropriate percentages of threshold is too. Looking at data from recent races the average and normalised powers I ride at has increased and there’s also been a slight increase in the average heart rate. Recent training has enabled me to work at a higher effort level during races and a lot of that is the mental approach.

This is a long, rambling way to say that I’m returning to normal activity and pleasantly surprised by how little performance has declined. Leading me to conclude I can put too much emphasis on the exact value of metrics like CTL and not enough on the performance I’m getting. Aspects of fitness change at different rates so after a period of rest performance may be better than you expect. Whilst threshold is an important measure of fitness and a guide to performance there’s also developing the mental ability to work at your race pace. Particularly important for longer distances I feel.

Also I should go out and run, because there’s definitely room for work there right now!

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Like so many endurance athletes I almost live in fear of losing fitness. Whilst I’ll rationally acknowledge the need for rest and recovery as part of the process there’s a part of me loathing the lost training time. Tracking training load has probably made it worse as I now have a graphical representation of the process. With that in mind I present this chart.

In the month since Ironman New Zealand I have not been so busy! In a period of five weeks I’ve allowed my CTL (fitness) to drop by about 100. What was I doing over those five weeks to let that happen?!

I wasn’t cycling much and neither was I running that much. On the other hand there was quite a bit of swimming. Unfortunately swimming doesn’t contribute as much to my training load as does biking or running. Cutting those two out ensured a decline especially when I’d been maintaining such a high level for CTL.

After most of my events I’ve returned to normal training after a couple of weeks. This time I was travelling back home in that third week. Then in the fourth week when surely I’d have got back to a routine I managed to get sick. For the fifth week I don’t really have any great excuses! The weather was better (but still not what I’m used to), but the motivation was lacking.

There were a few issues. I’ve had a lot of tightness in my calf muscles and the large volume of swimming had left me with quite tight shoulders. Running more than about 10 minutes caused my calves to start locking up and that’d last for at least a day. I’d experienced something similar after Roth last year, though on that occasion it cleared up quite quickly. The shoulders made swimming more uncomfortable than usual. I was willing to put some work in, but it wasn’t much fun. A massage from The Tri Touch has addressed these two issues and I should be able to get past them now.

I’m not here to make excuses for what’s happened though. It wasn’t the rapid return to training I’d planned. Instead it’s probably been the longest break from structured training I’ve had in two years. The thing is for all my previous fears of losing fitness I’m feeling great for the break.

Sleep has improved massively with eight hours becoming normal when I’d struggle to get that in the past. I feel fresh most of the time, days without experiencing a sense of fatigue. Appetite has stabilised and with a healthy diet I’m losing some excess weight even without hours of exercise. There’s a lot to feel positive about.

The truth is whilst I focus on how little I’ve trained I’ve not been sitting on my backside either. One of those weeks involved forty kilometres of swimming and last week not cycling much still involved almost six hours on the bike. Endurance athletes not only fear losing fitness they develop a somewhat skewed perspective on what constitutes being lazy.

With Ironman Lanzarote getting ever closer I started looking for some reassurance that I didn’t need to be too concerned. At the simplest level just scanning over the graphs confirmed my CTL is still higher than it was six weeks out from either Lanzarote or Kona last year. I started from a lower base point and reached a decent peak in five weeks on both occasions. I can do it again!

A bit of research into detraining revealed that whilst your body will start to lose fitness after as little as a week off it doesn’t take that much to slow the decrease. When I have gone for a swim, bike or run in the past week I’ve found it quite easy to put in some quality work. The emphasis is on quite there is something lacking, but it doesn’t seem too big. With all the fear of lost fitness and performance it’s a relief to find there’s still something in the engine.

Not that I’m proposing regularly taking a long break from structured training, but it clearly has its place. If nothing else the mental break was needed! Two years is a long time to focus primarily on training, I was probably due some time off. That’ll be it for the rest of the year. I’ve still got ambitious goals for my races ahead and that’s going to need work.

There’s five weeks to get myself ready for Lanzarote and go after that sub-10 hour goal there. I may have made that a little more challenging for myself. It’s not the preparation I had planned, but who knows perhaps it’ll have done me some good.

I’ve a long ride tomorrow so I guess I’ll find out if a break has done more harm than good. It could be I’m just clutching for excuses for being so slack!

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