Leslie Shaw finished 4th overall women at the Human Race earlier in May while winning here age group.
Amanda Erwin finished 3rd overall at Memphis In May with a performance that has been years in the making :0) ... she immediately qualifies for her pro card with that result!
Marie Muchow threw down a 5k PR this past weekend! Well done Marie ;)
Pat "The King" Krueger gets kudos for conquering his third jewel of the California Triple Crown! I'm glad he wants to sit on a bike that long because I don't ... PLUS he was top 20!
Racing and event season hits hit full swing starting this weekend and moving forward ... Route 66 Tri, Auburn Tri's, Rancho Seco Races, Summer Training Camp, Ironman 70.3 Kansas, Ironman CDA, Ironman Austria and the list goes on!
TECHNOLOGY
I have been meaning to write some pieces on the training and racing technology that folks are using these days such as HR Monitors, Garmins, Power Measuring Devices and even software that "predicts" when you should be going good or not so good! These devices are all great used in the right context and I hope to provide a little insight on how best to use any one of these devices or using them together.
I'm going to start with the one thing that goes along with using any one of these devices and then downloading it. The picture above is a graph from the performance management chart using the WKO software. (there are others like it) Essentially the chart is suppose to "tell you" when you might have a good day or the potential for a bad day or when it may be better to rest. Brief, and hopefully simple, explanation ...
* Blue Line ... your "chronic training load" which is your volume & intensity load over time
* Pink Line ... your "acute training load" or your training you have done most recently
* Yellow Line ... your training stress balance. This is a combination of overall training load and your acute load of training.
The raw, simplicity of this says the closer your yellow line is to the blue line OR or if it is over the blue line the chances of having a good race or training day are high. Even better, if the pink line is below and the yellow line is above you should be going really good, right? In theory ...
Problem is these predictors don't take into accordance how much sleep you got (or didn't get), how much non training stress you have (name it, there are many), how dehydrated you are and the list goes on. Overall too many athletes take numbers, HR's, watts, and charts and make them black and white. There is a reason why there are more colors than that.!
EXAMPLE ... about 2/3 of the way across that chart you see some prime real estate for having a great day or two or three of training and racing. This section emulates a similar period of mine (sorry this isn't my chart ... i couldn't get mine on here) when Jen and I had been preparing to move and while moving into the new house. During this time I got very minimal training and exercise in, to the point where I should have been VERY fresh and going good. The reality, I was miserably tired (lack of sleep) and my legs and back were stiff from going up and down ladders and lifting boxes and a bike ride felt good mentally but it was horribly slow! The chart never toldme that. I have to admit the chart makes alot of sense and is in-line for the most part. BUT, I can always predict what the chart is going to show before I ever look at it ;)
My message in this installment, a soon to be repeated theme, is ... take the data and the numbers with a grain of salt. Listen to your body (it's smarter than you and your devices are) and coordinate them with the technical feedback you get to make the best decisions you can!
I'm just sayin' ... DL
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