No Comparison

I fell into a trap this morning. A trap of making comparisons. I think it a trap that athletes, including triathletes fall into pretty regularly.

The comparison trap came up when an acquaintance posted their TrainingPeaks stats on social media. In the post he stated his CTL number, which is a number used to represent fitness, had hit 100 for the first time. Rightly so he was proud of it, according to TrainingPeaks it was the fittest he has ever been. It is a good thing. However, my own mental response was quite the opposite. That's cute I condescendingly thought to myself, come back when you hit some real numbers. For reference my pre-race my CTL is often up around 180 and so I was making a comparison between him and myself and drawing some conclusions based on that comparison.

However, the thing is while TrainingPeaks gives great and valuable data, it is useful when used relative to yourself. TrainingPeaks gives some good guidance around heartrate zones, power zones and pace zones to allow you to estimate how hard you are working and what gains you are making. But that doesn't mean that the somebody has estimated their zones in the same way as you. Perhaps I have estimated my pace zones etc very conservatively so every session seems like I am smashing it. Perhaps this guy on social media made some aggressive estimates and so TrainingPeaks doesn't calculate his gains to be as large. It doesn't really matter, for him his data will be just as accurate as mine is to me. But it is when you start looking at other people and trying to draw parallels that the danger sets in.

Power is another classic danger area for cyclists and triathletes. Power can vary based on numerous factors, different power meters, different power meter mounting points, different weather etc. All these things can play a part. And that doesn't even take into account the significant difference between power and power to weight. One measure is useful, the other much less so. Don't get me wrong, measuring power is a great tool for an individual. Relative to yourself power can help you pace your training and racing as well as track your improvements. Compared to others it serves no other purpose than as a pissing contest and a meaningless one at that.

The list of useless comparisons goes on. Race times, looking at a race like IM Malaysia and thinking, I could smash that field, without taking conditions into account. Bike speeds in Strava without accounting for the fact that the ride included 2000m of climbing. You name it, we compare ourselves to each other about it. I mean damn, that is really what Strava is all about.

Whatever the comparison is, it is never particularly helpful. I stared at Frodeno's run time from Roth last year for a good half an hour and in the end it didn't make me one second quicker. Comparing yourself to what others will doing is never going to make you quicker. Sure they can work as motivation sometimes, but that is about as useful as those comparisons can be. On the whole obsessively comparing your stats with those of somebody else is a distraction and one that doesn't bring any real benefit.

Comparing your stats to your own and working diligently and consistently to improve them. Well that is another matter all together.