Trains, Travels

I’ve long been convinced that training zones were designed to make me feel inadequate – I’m working hard, it’s not very comfortable, but apparently it’s ‘easy’, or worse I’m ‘recovering’. Those occasions when everything actually feels easy are amazing, and unfortunately rare. Trying to relate heart rate zones to perceived exertion is a nightmare, and that’s before I’ve thrown power or pace into the mix; consulting online guides only confirms my apparent shortcomings. My solution is to stop trying – I’ve stopped looking at my heart rate, though I still glance at pace or power, but mostly I worry about how it feels. I don’t stress about zones, when I need to work hard I make sure it feels hard and when I need to go easy I make sure it feels easy.

Of course the many charts and analyses in this blog are a testament to the fact I do still worry; not in the moment, but after the fact, then I study the numbers to gain an awareness of where I stand. At some point we all need reassurance that we’re training appropriately, whether that’s best achieved through race results, test results or through micromanagement of how we train is a more pertinent question. For me race results and occasional reviews of training data are sufficient, but not everyone likes such a casual approach.

Coaching has pulled me back into the mess of training zones. The numerous systems may frustrate me, but they serve a purpose – communication. What do terms like recovery, easy, steady, hard, threshold, or max effort mean? Every athlete has their own interpretation, many need a precise definition. If you’ve invested in a coach you want to be certain you’re training correctly. A lot of my communication, especially in the early days of a coaching relationship, focuses on training zones and intensity. It’s not just a question of how hard to train, it’s how to measure it. There are numerous ways to measure effort – power, pace, heart rate, RPE – and they don’t necessarily agree; where one system says we’re on target, another claims it’s too much.

My own training data confirms as much. A comparison of heart rate and power during 2009 (data I had to hand) show clear signs of the disparity between my heart rate zones and my power zones. On the left I divide the chart by Friel’s power zones (derived from Coggan’s zones) and on the right Friel’s heart rate zones, unsurprisingly they match poorly. Where power is simply the work we are doing, heart rate is a response to it, it lags and is influenced by external factors and our own condition, the correlation between the two is weak. So back in 2009 heart rate zone 1 encompassed both power zones 1 and 2, and heart rate zone 2 was more comparable to power zone 3. No wonder I felt inadequate! Two years on, I’m sure the relationship looks different.

So how to deal with this? Follow one system – if you have power use power, if you have pace use pace and if you only have heart rate use heart rate; even then always be aware of feel (RPE). The relationships may – at times – be weak, but none of these measures stand in isolation, there is a slight hierarchy rather than a union, but it pays to be able to observe them all. After years of doing that, I came to the conclusion that while heart rate and power often disagreed, how I felt was rarely wrong.

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The plan is working. Day one I did do a little more than intended, but with great weather and an opportunity to meet up with one of my athletes, I couldn’t resist; day two compensated as I did a little bit less than planned, my legs were feeling the previous extra effort; today I’m sticking to the plan as it’s only a short session. The flexibility is there and I know not to race ahead of schedule, the urge to cram in more is under control. A good start, but I’ll save declarations of success for three months down the line, rather than three days.

On Wednesday I planned a year of running in the form of a Performance Management Chart (PMC). By managing my weekly training schedule to replicate this intended growth in fitness I should avoid many of the pitfalls from previous seasons without being tied to a rigid timetable. Obviously I also need a plan for cycling (and I should do one for swimming too), so on a clean copy of the spreadsheet I repeated the process.

For those interested in trying this, or in seeing how their current plans line up, I’m going to walk through how I plan with the PMC and have provided a copy of the spreadsheet at the end of this blog.

Everything hinges around Training Stress Scores (TSS), the PMC is built on these after all. Every workout can be assigned a Training Stress Score, it’s calculated from intensity and duration of the session, the longer or harder you train the higher the TSS. Software like Training Peaks can do this automatically from uploaded data files, it weighs the relative intensity of every second to produce a figure. Different workouts will have different TSS and you can achieve the same TSS in many different ways; it is simply a value that attempts to give some indication of the impact of training. So to plan ahead with the PMC we need to estimate the TSS of every session we intend to do.

I’ve developed a sense for the kind of TSS a session will score. There are no set rules and it takes time and experience to develop a good impression of the scores you will likely produce. Some sessions are harder to estimate than others – intervals alternate between the high scoring work and the low scoring recovery, add enough hills into a long ride and similar variability can be there. However experienced you are with the PMC this is not a precise art, but the approach to planning I’m describing here is not intended to be precise.

If you download the spreadsheet the first thing you will need to do is set up some seed data for the PMC algorithm; you’ll find the ‘Seed Data’ sheet at the far end. There are three values in particular we are concerned with – a start date, a starting ATL (fatigue) and a starting CTL (fitness). You can pick any start date you like, the spreadsheet plans for 53 weeks from that date. Dates are only specified to help build the plans from a calendar. The starting ATL and CTL values are a little more complex, for those already using the PMC, set them to the respective values from the day before your plan’s start date. Those who have never used a PMC (and have decided to play with this) should read this information on getting started to help choose values appropriate values that reflect their level of training.

Now our estimation skills come into play. For each day on the PMC Data table we can enter a TSS value to represent the training we intend to do, this value will feed into the algorithm and predict fitness and fatigue. I’ve shown my plans for the period around Ironman 70.3 UK and leading the Pyrenees Multisport Iron Camp at the end of June. As the camp itinerary shows there will be a lot of hard riding over the week, so I’m expecting high duration and moderate to high intensity which means some high TSS. From my table of estimates I’d anticipate sitting in the 50 – 70 TSS per hour region, high for me on long days of cycling. Working around known events and with a rough idea of the sort of sessions I’m likely to do I can fill out the entire table; hard days and long days scoring higher TSS than easier days, and rest days scoring none – allocate these out and a chart develops.

Once again a plan of action in the form of a chart. Reviewing the chart allows me to refine the plan, eliminating periods of overly rapid growth, preventing TSB (form) dipping too low and ensuring I don’t go fallow for too long. As with the run plan I take lessons from the past, while I’ve sustained higher fitness before, doing so often came at a cost and the time involved is incompatible with the run plan. By avoiding rapid spikes in fitness and following a gradual path to greater fitness I should be more consistent across the season. It’s a realistic approach that fits with my available time.

One final chart from the data – total weekly TSS from the plan. Summing the estimated TSS for each week gives an easier figure to follow and target as I attempt to put this PMC into action. It allows me greater freedom within the week, so if my high TSS long ride was scheduled for a Monday, but a Tuesday works better I can just change it; within reason as long as I target weekly TSS I should be on track with my PMC.

So I have plans now and it does seem targeting a weekly Training Stress Score incentivises me, at least so far. For those unfamiliar with the Performance Management Chart this may seem an abstract and convoluted way to work, but on a personal level it fits my needs; for those who use the PMC and haven’t attempted to plan with it before, it can be a useful tool, providing a simple sanity check on your training. At the end of the day it’s just another way to approach planning training.

If you want to build your own Performance Management Chart you can download an excel copy of the PMC Planner.

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Perhaps it’s the weather. As I basked in the sun on the homeward leg of my early morning run I had a thought, “maybe I can race well later this year.” The arrival of an unusually warm spring has broken the negative cycle – my mood is lifted and my desire to train, specifically to run, has returned with full force. And so positive thoughts arrive, the idea that perhaps I can be both fit and capable of racing well enters my head, only compromised by the knowledge that it will take some time and some planning. The path ahead is littered with events, too many to hope to be on top form across them all. I need to take the smart approach, utilising races as part of my development, rather than an end in themselves, stepping stones to greater things.

I suffer from an allergic reaction to strict training schedules, and while there is a strong case – one that made me stop and think – for the benefits having my own coach would bring me, it’s not something I want to pursue right now. But I need something more than loose guidelines to make the longer term transition to greater fitness, something that appreciates the impact of my heavy race season, using those events to build me, not break me. Rather than limiting my use of the Performance Management Chart to retrospective training critiques, I can use it constructively to manage this coming year; utilising my experience of the system to set training targets and a rate of growth for the weeks and months ahead. Perhaps it seems at odds with that desire to train for pleasure, but there are many ways to achieve fitness growth.

I’ve dabbled with the approach before – planning tapers or testing out ideas for a build; manipulating the underlying values of the model to see the effect different work loads are likely to have. It’s a matter of trial and error, adjusting those numbers to produce the pattern I want. At this point I am guided by experience, those times I’ve analysed historical PMC data actually come in useful as I avoid my previous mistakes and attempt to replicate the successes. I tweak until I produce a pattern I like.

By now a familiar chart, but this time the product of good intentions. Reviewing the last four years of run training showed 2009 to be my most successful season, a race heavy year much like the one ahead. I achieved it through a consistent, moderate training plan, 30 runs of at least 30 minutes in 30 days forming a large part of it; I could take that consistency, without excessive overload, and apply it again. Firstly building up through April – perfect for thirty days of running – then maintaining the run fitness from race to race, my work then being to minimise fitness loss. There isn’t time to chase high peaks of fitness, 2010 has taught me the danger of building too rapidly; the volume of running this pattern suggests is a sufficient challenge after a season out of running.

It sounds like a plan, albeit an abstract one defined by the shape of a curve rather than the details of sessions; and it’s that abstraction that gives me the freedom I desire. The curve is the product of a training load deliverable through whatever (sensible) combination of intensity, duration and frequency I desire and I’ve already indicated my preference for a repeat of the high frequency, mixed duration and intensity approach to run training that worked well in 2009. As long as I accumulate a sufficient training load each week my fitness will progress in line with the chart, within reason further details don’t matter; my training is flexible to match my moods.

Finally I’ve found some much needed direction and – perhaps – a way to guide myself towards this goal without feeling overly restricted by a plan. I may not have written a single session down, but I know the kind of work I need to do; starting in April with thirty days of running at least thirty minutes.

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