Tracking Training Stimulus and Fatigue for Triathlon Training.
fatigue, fitness, overtraining, running, stress, training log, training program, triathlon No Comments »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).
