SERIOUS TRAINING 16
Measure What Matters—The Build Period #2
In the last two weeks I explained why it’s important to pay close attention to only a few metrics on your TrainingPeaks Workout Analyze page. You’ll find a wealth of information there about your just-completed workout. But if you try to digest it all, you may spend more time analyzing than training.
There’s also the possibility that concentrating on less critical metrics could start you down the path of improving things that add little value when it comes to achieving your Big Hairy Goal for the upcoming season.
The path to that goal is made up of objectives—mini-goals that, if achieved along the way, lead to seasonal success. For example, the purpose of the Base period is to improve your weakest Base ability—Aerobic Endurance, Skills, or Muscular Force. If you accomplish that, you are well on your way to achieving your goal. A weak ability is a “limiter”—it’s holding you back. It must be your training focus.
The EF Objective
The Base period is relatively simple when it comes to improving limiters. For most experienced athlete, the Base objective is to fully develop Aerobic Endurance. As I explained last week, this can be measured by how much your Efficiency Factor (EF) changes over time. This metric compares power or pace/speed to heart rate for a workout. EF is a good indicator of endurance progress.
If your Aerobic Endurance is always weak, you’ll never come close to your potential as an endurance athlete. Many self-coached, age-group athletes assume this is of little importance. “I’m already good at going slow,” they usually tell me. Those who are students of serious training understand why such workouts are necessary.
To gauge EF progress, count back eight weeks and find a workout like today’s zone 1 or zone 2 steady-state session. Compare the EF for both workouts—today’s and the one from eight weeks ago. Over time, that metric should rise if you are training consistently in zones 1 and 2. But realize that it’s likely to dip down on occasion. That’s normal. It should gradually ratchet upward over time until it plateaus.
The Build period is a bit different. There are three possible objectives, depending on the type of event you do. But, of course, each objective still focuses on improving an ability which is a limiter. For long-course athletes in events lasting longer than about one hour, the most important is usually Durability. I’ve written about this in SERIOUS TRAINING 4 and again last week in SERIOUS TRAINING 15.
There are two other abilities I consider important for some athletes in the Build period. If you do shorter events—those taking about an hour or less—the most important is likely to be Aerobic Capacity training. But if you are an athlete whose performance is based on sprinting (almost exclusively cyclists), then Sprint Power training is a key to success.
In the following article, I introduce the training metrics that give you feedback on how your training for these two abilities is progressing. They’re considerably different from those used for Aerobic Endurance and Durability.
