Trains, Travels

Most athletes train in strict windows of opportunity scheduled around work and family. Coaching allows me the flexibility to adjust my plans, training as and when I need. It has its drawbacks and requires self-discipline; I can’t endlessly postpone workouts and pick favourite sessions over the plan, though sometimes I cross that line. My plans aren’t as rigidly defined as those of my athletes; I rely more on weekly objectives and key sessions.

A time constrained age grouper follows their plan like a timetable; if a threshold session is scheduled for Wednesday evening that’s when it happens, whatever their condition. If they’re off form then they’ll under perform, but that will be the week’s threshold work. In Monday’s blog I discussed how we can’t expect to always be at our best, but it’s important to always aim for goal performances.

My week involves a mix of sessions with differing goals. Having broad windows of opportunity for training means if I feel unable to perform a key session I can postpone it. The week is fluid and I focus on ensuring key workouts are performed well over when they’re performed. If it isn’t happening I may have an easier ride, a swim, a run or perhaps take more rest.

Everyone shuffles their schedule. I build training plans attempting to optimally time workouts and ensure they are performed as intended, but I don’t know what will happen in a fortnight. An athlete could be overloaded with work, sick or even injured; in each case the plans change. Sometimes it’s minor adjustments – swimming a day later or losing an easy run; other times it takes major rearrangements – accommodating a business trip or pool closure. However tight our schedule, flexibility is part of consistent training.

Weekly schedules are the micro level, the building blocks of our fitness. No individual session determines the success of our plans, their cumulative effect builds towards the goals. To be flexible you have to appreciate the macro level, the intent of your training. Understanding those intentions and what you’re working towards enables you to prioritise. You have to know why you’re doing a session before you can decide if you move it or drop it completely.

One of my athletes provided a good example: an FTP test was scheduled for the middle of the week, but on the day he felt exhausted. He’s a strong individual and training well, we were both confident of a notable improvement since his last test. Being that fatigued was unusual and an indication there was too much training leading to the test. He rescheduled for the following day and a new, higher FTP was set. The week’s priority was measuring bike performance so the schedule was adjusted to meet that goal.

As a counter example, I’d arranged to train with a number of the athletes I coach; my usually flexible routine was constrained. Tuesday’s long ride was tough leaving me with considerable fatigue. In normal circumstances I’d postpone Wednesday’s interval session for a better performance, but with commitments to others they went ahead. The session was good, I worked hard, but under performed failing to reach my power targets. Cycling is my priority, but with training going well the individual session wasn’t so important I needed to move it.

Flexibility is good in moderation. The ability to adjust plans and perform key sessions at your best can boost performance, but misused it hinders progress. Before moving a session consider the implications – you’re not only moving the benefits you’re moving the recovery time as well. Postponing an interval set by a day could leave you tired for a long run the day after. What’s the priority? Would it be better to under perform today and run better later?

The worst mistake is considering the week in isolation – viewing the schedule as a checklist. A workout that’s missed or under performed is revisited later in the week; before long the weekend is stacked. You cannot catch up, something has to give. You may complete the week, but you’ve carried the recovery into the following one. Again you need to consider the priorities. Would it be better to miss a session this week so you perform better next?

Plans change. There are no hard rules to being flexible. If anything I find most athletes tend to focus on completing every session and not enough on how well they complete them or how well they recover. If they don’t squeeze everything in they feel guilty. Flexibility should never compromise the goals. Progress comes from consistently performing key sessions well, that takes a little flexibility.

• Tweet
• Comment

Triathlon training takes a lot of hard hours so naturally we want results. Missing targets is a huge disappointment, what happened? A training review follows in an attempt to identify where we’ve gone wrong. If we’re not performing to expectations then training isn’t delivering. Insufficient work is almost always the prime suspect; we’re slacking, we’re not pushing hard enough.

Most of the athletes I encounter do work hard enough. They’re not lacking for effort, but their expectations are skewed. A few recent twitter conversations highlighted this. High expectations for key sessions without factoring in the impact of fatigue and stress. Performance is the result of many factors not just our fitness. When I coach swimming early on a Friday I know it’s not a day to aim for results.

For races we taper to lose fatigue and reduce stress, but key training sessions lack that luxury. The impact of our daily activities can be significant. I want to hit my targets well in key workouts, sometimes it doesn’t happen. I have the flexibility to ease back and try again another day; if I can’t hit threshold on Monday, I’ll do the session on Tuesday. When I’m tired or stressed I don’t perform, extra recovery helps.

An individual session doesn’t matter, it’s the overall trend I look at. Is my performance improving over time? Is it becoming easier or am I able to work harder? I started the year with low fitness and performance. I’ve admitted I was lazy over winter; it wasn’t until the third week of January I rode my bike in earnest. A lot of kilometres have been covered since then resulting in gradual improvements. After four months I feel I’m back in my former shape.

So far this year training stress (TSS) has increased in consistency and volume; I’m working more on the bike now. Increasing work is part of the process, but I expect to see signs performance is improving. Taking twenty minute peak power for every ride gives me a way to consider how my cycling is changing. As the blue dots show it’s variable and even now I record low values on some rides. As a metric it’s dependent on the type of workout – a threshold session will produce a higher value than a recovery ride. As the season progresses there are an increasing number of focussed sessions raising the value.

Categorising for the effort level (darker blue circles for harder efforts) highlights that twenty minute power is generally on the increase, but notable the ‘Focussed‘ efforts are increasing in frequency and intensity. As my fitness grows my ability to complete hard, focussed sessions improves; the ratio of higher intensity work in my training increases. Threshold power is rising and so is my capacity to ride at a high proportion of it. How I feel when I ride and these trends in training tell me I’m on the right path.

Taking the key sessions – the darkest dots – performance varies. It doesn’t climb every week. Despite my flexibility and the advantage of being able to move workouts so I hit them in peak condition, I still don’t see a weekly rise. Sometimes external factors are too much and I’m not ready or willing to perform. Today was a good example: from the moment I left the door my legs were tired, I knew I’d be better off with recovery so took an easy spin. The result should be I ride a better session tomorrow when it counts.

Most working age groupers can’t move their sessions as much. If Tuesday is their threshold session, then tired or not they ride hard on Tuesday. If they’ve been busy at work then they may not hit the numbers they want that week. It doesn’t mean their performance isn’t improving, the external factors count. Patterns matter: if performance remains plateaued or drops then something needs changing, but a single poor session is not the end of a season.

My athletes watch their performance in training, they’ll report back new PBs with delight and struggles with disappointment. I only stress when I see a pattern, then I look deeper for a cause. Testing (and racing) is where it really counts, whilst I may be negligent in this, my athletes regularly test. Testing is training so like any workout is liable to the impact of fatigue and stress. Test sessions are scheduled around easy days, I give every opportunity to ensure they’re performed fresh. Even then there are no guarantees and it’s not been unknown for tests to be revisited due to disappointing results.

Performance will vary. We bring to our training the fitness we’ve built, but also the stress and fatigue we endure; this balance determines performance outcomes. It’s natural to constantly look for improvements and an upward trend, but it is rare to see clean progression. Some days it isn’t going to happen and if that’s the day of a key workout then we won’t see the desired resul. It doesn’t mean training isn’t working until it’s a trend.

Always watch the trends – if performance is consistently below expectations or dropping it’s time to reevaluate. If one week happens to feel harder or fall short put it aside and get on with the work that’s needed; come back better prepared.

• Tweet
• Comment

In March I set out my intentions to hold a home training camp in an article for Endurance Corner. A week at home, focussed on training with the training load of a camp environment. Well motivated there was no reason I couldn’t train as effectively without the cost and hassle of travel. That was the theory at least, things didn’t go perfectly to plan. But I’m fitter for the week and I’ve learnt from the experience.

For Brits the next week is prime training time – Easter is a four day break and the royal wedding repeats that the following weekend. You can take three days of holiday and have an eleven day break. Perfect for some solid training. A few of the athletes I coach are taking this route and I’ll be joining them for some quality riding during the week.

Training camps offer two major benefits: the removal of distractions and the presence of other motivated athletes. At home I was at the heart of my usual routine; my big mistake was not clearing all my work before the week began. The beginning and end of the month are my busiest periods – I’d scheduled the camp to coincide with this. Better organisation would have helped, but work aside all my regular distractions were present. Planning to ignore distractions is easy, actually ignoring them is hard.

I had motivated company from an athlete I coach, as the week progressed it proved vital. By day six both of us would have happily bailed on the ride if the other hadn’t been there. At high volumes fatigue reaches a point where you rely on each other to keep you committed. Being the stronger rider I dictated pace, a new experience, most camps I’ve been on I’ve been chasing. Richie ensured I got out the door, but I had to keep focussed to get the work done.

Injury is always an issue with large increases in volume or intensity. Both of us came into the week with niggles and abandoned plans for regular runs early in the week. Cycling was the priority and the risk of harm from overuse wasn’t worth the benefits of pushing running too. We weren’t going short on training.

Swimming was unaffected by injury, but I still failed to make it to a pool. Limited facilities and inconvenient opening times made the logistics difficult, but tired from cycling I lacked the motivation. As the week progressed Richie dropped the swim to focus on the bike work; swimming alone fatigue got the better of his motivation too. It clearly highlighted the difference in fitness and commitment required to get through Epic Camp to my effort here.

The initial plan structured the week into two blocks of three days with an easy day between, but to avoid a long ride in wet weather we bumped the easy day forward. The downside was three long rides to finish the week. The first two were fine – we were tired, but able to ride well. By Sunday only the fact it was the last day of camp got us through. There was a notable drop in performance, once again fatigue sapped motivation to work harder.

Intensity was controlled throughout; most of the week was at a steady endurance pace. This was a volume orientated camp, not intensity, the easiest mistake would be to go in too hard. Following the recovery day my legs came back and day four’s ride contained a large block of intensity in the latter half. I definitely felt this over the remaining days; the three-one-three structure would have been a better approach.

Thirty-four hours of riding and a Training Stress Score (TSS) of 1700 – it was a big week. Fitness soared and with it fatigue. My Training Stress Balance (TSB) dropped to -100 unseen since last year. The following week had to be easy, sessions were unstructured and power output was down; I cruised. Training didn’t stop, but the emphasis was recovery. Having solely focussed on cycling I rapidly bounced back, by the end of the week was feeling strong. It was a further week before my performance in training actually matched that sense of fitness.

Success isn’t measured by the hours you train it’s the results that follow. After a fortnight they are looking good – key sessions see new peak power records. It’s impossible to separate the impact of one week from the last few months of accumulated work, but there has been a notable upshift in power output. I certainly feel a stronger cyclist and in fantastic shape.

The week wasn’t a perfect success. The absence of running and swimming detracted from my original intention. Injury was a sensible reason to back off running, but logistics were not a good excuse for avoiding swimming. I’ve responded well to high volume training weeks in the past and signs are it’s working again. The home training camp was a success.

• Tweet
• Comment