Building a Road Map

I’ve recently been looking over some of my old training data and trying to apply it to training for three sports instead of one (swim/bike/run).  I thought it might be a fun idea to share a little bit about how I track my training/racing.

TrainingPeaks.com

TrainingPeaks.com is an awesome resource for tracking training and metric data.  One that I’ve been using for a long time in conjunction with WKO+.  Thankfully, both utilities work incredibly well with triathlon.  Essentially, TrainingPeaks.com allows you to both plan workouts and then go back and analyze data as well as gauge fitness.  This includes things like power/heart rate data, GPS, and your own personal description of the workout.  You can track race data as well, but it’s not quite as robust as it should be.  The main issue is handling multisport files.

Currently my data is in a state of flux as I learn how I handle the training stress of multisport training.  The biggest surprise has been the fatigue interaction between the sports.

Racing Log

I became accustomed with keeping a training log after one of my former team mates, Tim Srenaski, wrote a blog article about the importance of keeping one.  Since then, I’ve kept a pretty comprehensive race log with such mundane entries such as the weather, number of competitors, course type, etc all the way down to the important stuff such as how the races actually unfolded.

Unfortunately, I’m having to start from scratch with this as I will be doing my first race in about a month.  That said, my race log has always treated me well.  You’d be surprised at how much you can learn about your habits as well as what works and what doesn’t.

The Conclusion

After reviewing and comparing data from these two sources I’ve come to two major conclusions:

1) I need a midweek easy day or else I struggle to complete my workouts heading into the weekend.

2) I don’t currently have a strength, which is kind of cool.  Many triathletes have an “Achilles’s Heel” in their game plan, but I seem to be progressing evenly in each sport.  This makes race planning easier because I don’t have to rely on gaining a ton of time in one sport in order to lose it in another.

Now that I know some of my strengths and weaknesses as well as what kind of training works, I can go formulate a more precises training program as cherry pick some races that have features that suit my abilities!

How do you guys track your training and racing?  Any notable difference.  Comment below!