Progress

The improvements are gradually coming.

Like many athletes I have a TrainingPeaks account. At first I wasn't convinced about the worth of the program, but I have come around to it somewhat. Having said that, I am still not as zealous about it as some people I know and I can't help but have my concerns that it can cause harm in the wrong hands.
This is because I think fitness and training aren't quite as simple as a numbers on a screen. This simplification can lead people into bad habits if not used correctly. For those unfamiliar, one of the useful things that TrainingPeaks provides is a series of metrics that effectively allow you to measure fitness, fatigue, effort, things like that. If you are online and you see people who seem to be speaking another language using terms like CTL, TSB and ATL, this is what they are talking about. The reason for my concerns is that TainingPeaks essentially calculates gains in fitness by measuring intensity and duration of a session and tracking those sessions over time. Train hard for longer and your fitness numbers etc will go up. Your fatigue numbers will also increase, however, if somebody isn't keeping an eye on that then it is easy to fall into the trap of training too hard, too long, too often in the pursuit of better numbers.

Another potential area of bad habit arises from the fact that TrainingPeaks gives no credit for things like intervals. This means that in TrainingPeaks an hour of running which includes a number of high intensity intervals broken with low intensity recovery can give you the same 'benefit' as you would get for an hour or steady moderate running. It just comes down to average pace and duration of the session. However, as anyone who has done both of these kinds of sessions will tell you, they are very different and achieve different things. What I have seen is that some people who blindly follow TrainingPeaks can get in the habit of training aimlessly. Grinding out volume with no real purpose. Doing so will definitely get will get you fit, but it won't necessarily make you fast.

Anyway, those concerns aside, I do believe that used with guidance and knowledge TrainingPeaks can be a useful tool. Tool being the key word there, not gospel.

So, why bring this up? Well, today I was looking at my TrainingPeaks history and I thought it painted an interesting picture. Once again, I am not reading too much into this, but as I said, I thought it was interesting.

So, based on measures like in TrainingPeaks, after my injury I lost nearly 70% of my fitness. This is based on my fitness at 70.3 Western Sydney, which is about as fit as I have been. Looking at my current fitness on TrainingPeaks I am now 23% down on where I was pre-injury, so I have made good progress. Keep in mind that when I got injured I was still getting fitter according to the TrainingPeaks metrics, I hadn't really reached a maximum, so I am not 23% down on peak fitness (I could be a lot further away than that), just 23% down on where I was pre-injury. Who knows how much higher it might go. Still, before 70.3 Western Sydney I was pretty fit, so getting back to within 23% of that point is an encouraging sign of progress. I have just over three weeks until Rottnest Long Course and while I don't think I will be quite back to pre-injury levels of fitness, I think I will be fairly close.

The other area in which I have made progress is weight. This morning I weighed in at just over 74kg. During my recovery I maxed out at around 78kg, so I made good ground there. I know from previous experience that my absolute minimum weight is around 72kg. When I was last at that point my nutritionist said I didn't really have any more fat to lose. His advice was that if I went lighter I would start to get sick. Added to that, I was told by a lot of people during my recovery that when I was down around 72kg I apparently looked ill. Based on that a nice maintainable weight for me is around 73kg, so I am not far from that point.

Based on the above I have made some definite progress back towards race fitness over the last month or so. My training is bearing that out too, particularly on the bike. As I have said for the last couple of weeks, running and swimming still have some distance to go, but the progress is coming.

Speaking or running, a bit more of that today. Last year I started doing a Saturday morning run session with some proper runners, guys who train for marathons etc. It really opened my eyes as to what real runners could do. Since my injury I have been keen to get back to that point. I am not there yet, however, tonight I will take a step in that direction by heading down and doing an interval session with some people from the squad (some of the slower guys). Should be a good session.

Another small step towards fitness.