Gary’s Fitness Blog

It’s fairly common in conversations about triathlon training today to discuss watts, normalized power, TSS, functional thresholds and intensity factors.  These terms are all the result of more cyclists using power meters to monitor training intensity and even race efforts.

I have been using WKO+ (formerly cycling peaks) for a little while now, primarily with my Garmin 305 (because I still haven’t justified the power meter expense) to monitor my run training.  The WKO+ software is really great and allows an athlete to get deeper into the training data more than any other training software and log program I’ve ever used.  Because I don’t have a power meter it does have limitations.

The biggest limitation for me is that because I don’t have a power meter, the software’s performance management analysis doesn’t give me an accurate picture for triathlon training.  Why?  Because I have no way of quantifying the work done (TSS, CTL and ATL) on the bike that allows the software to analyze the data.

As a triathlete we also have to consider swimming.  Can we monitor power in the water in a downloadable manner?  Not yet.

So as I look at the athlete’s that I’m trying to help prepare for the 2009 triathlon season (specifically, Ironman Louisville) I have several issues when trying to use a similar method for monitoring training stimulus over time:

1.  no one uses a power meter (and likely are not going to purchase one)
2.  few have a Garmin 305/405 to monitor their running workouts
3.  if they had all this equipment, it takes a lot of time to download and analyze, which they may or may not do.
4.  they have to use the power meter and/or Garmin device for EVERY workout, or they can just estimate the workouts and enter a best estimate TSS or rTSS for the individual workout (which gets us back to why use it anyway)

So, while I am very excited to see some of the data that comes from my Garmin (and yes, hopefully soon my power meter?) it is not a practical solution right now to help my athletes by using the WKO+ software and the Performance Management Charts.  (I have to say though, it is a lot of fun to spend time with the data I can get.  It’s amazing the kind of data we can get in the field better data than what we had in the exercise phys lab on the Monarch.)

How we are tracking long term / short term training stimulus:  (the post to my Ironman athletes)

In the past years I have used total hours of training as my main monitoring system. This was a good method because the majority of the exercise that I did was done at a very reasonable almost easy intensity.

For most of us, this is still going to be the biggest limiter (steady state ability and duration we can hold that intensity).

But with powermeters, heart rate monitors, gps’s, etc…. coaches and athletes are now getting pretty analytical in these monitoring methods. In my opinion, we are making a lot of things too difficult - especially for Ironman training when it matters more that we are consistent and gradually build duration. .. but ..

I realize that we all don’t have powermeters/gps’s so I’ve been thinking about how to add in an "Intensity Factor" to our monitoring.

Here is what I’ve decided to do:

A mixture of the Aerobic Points System (as seen on slowtwitch ) and Borg’s 10 Point RPE Scale (as discussed in the power training article by Dr. Coggan )

Here’s how the scoring it works:

10min swimming = 3 point
10min cycling = 1 point
10min running = 4 point

So as an example: 9.5 hours balanced week
1.5 hours (90 mins)of running: 36pts
6 hours (360 mins)of cycling: 36pts
2 hours (120 mins)of swimming: 36pts

That was just an example of how to add the total times, now to look at the RPE scale / intensity. We’ll be using the Borg 10 point scale , notice the Borg Scale is weighted so that the higher numbers are more spaced out. (Which is done for a number of physiological reasons that Dr. Coggan explains in the article also.)

Example of a workout calculation:

60 minute swim, effort at 3 RPE = 6*3 = 18pts * 0.3 = 5.4

45 minute run, effort at 2 RPE = 4.5*4 = 18pts * 0.2 = 3.6

60 minute cycle, effort at 5 RPE = 6*1 = 6pts * 0.5 = 3.0

Does this make sense? What I’d like you to do is calculate your total points at the end of each week, but you’ll need to write the "RPE" score in the comments as you log each workout.

The key to this system is that you are honest with your RPE scoring, otherwise we could just track hours. We will be tracking hours each week, etc… but I like how this system will account for the differences in intensity, plus we get to track it across all 3 sports, not just power on the bike or pace on the run.

One other data chart that we’ve been tracking:

I had an athlete that put together her own spreadsheet to track her RPE score, aerobic points and what we are calling intensity factor (which isn’t the same as IF for WKO+ which is NP/FTP).  One of the charts that she set up was to a plot of the intensity factor to workout duration.  By plotting that chart we can monitor the ratio on a week-to-week basis.

Feedback?

I would love to hear what others have to say about this concept.  We’ve just started using it several weeks ago, so until we get more data I’m not going to make any conclusions.  I am sure that those triathletes and/or runners that are used to monitoring their hard data from high tech devices with balk at the idea of using RPE.  But I’m not worried about that, I’ve come to peace with using a subjective data point like RPE.  In fact, I think that it can incorporate variables that impact training that a power meter can’t - such as psychological variables (fatigue) and health implications (early stages of sickness and stress).

Last month I wrote a post titled “Testing to know your fitness and racing abilities.” One of the ideas was to use a regular workout and the workout data to monitor the changes in your fitness. You can use the link and go read the post if you are interested.

Here is what I wanted to share that makes this easy to track at Sweat365:

Use your “categories” or “tags” to label these specific workouts. An example that I just started is a workout that I labeled “Athen’s School“. It is a workout that I get in regularly during the week now that I’m getting outdoors on the bike. As I continue to do the workout, I can use the label and in the future I can pull up all the workouts by going to that label’s page.

This is a very simple way to keep your fitness tests organized, it makes them easily accessible and an easy way to review the data.

I mentioned the other day that I had surpassed the amout of swimming I had completed in 2006… well yesterday, I surpassed the amount of cycling that I did in 2006 too!

This was a pretty big surprise for me when I started looking at the numbers, mainly due to the fact that I felt like all I did last summer was cycle … little running - no swimming.

But now that I think about it, I didn’t start cycling again until May of 2006. In contrast, I have made a point to be consistent with my cycling even during the winter months (thanks to a little bit of encouragement from Dean Hewson).

Why am I so hung up on my total amounts of swimming, biking and running? Read my post - “How to pass the ’suck threshold’ in triathlon” and you’ll get an idea why. The other reason for me is that it displays a little sign of consistency in training. It can be very hard to train a lot of hours over a years time if you are taking weeks or months off.

Recently I’ve seen my swimming benefit… hopefully other improvements will be witnessed too.

If you read my post “Talk yourself into a better triathlon performance“, then you know that I’ve been working in the vocabulary I use to describe myself and others. The Power of the Positive!

I shared that one way I always describe myself is by saying that I am a poor swimmer. Today I’ve become a swimmer for the year 2007! This fits well with the power statement I’ve been repeating, “I am a strong swimmer”.

Why am I a swimmer today? Because I just passed the total number of hours that I swam in the entire 2006 calendar year! In 2006, I swam a total of 30:53 hours…. a really low amount. Especially when you consider the majorit of that swimming was done in November and December. As of today, for 2007, I have swum 31:24 hours.

Look, I know it still needs to increase, but for today…. I am a swimmer! Check out my training log…… here.