tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post356716406991168434..comments2023-05-30T09:15:26.291+01:00Comments on Trossachs Trail Runner: Training Log Analysis : Consistency is the key to improving fitnessRobert Osfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16960356368117573952noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-59070934965554269352015-01-07T09:30:49.020+00:002015-01-07T09:30:49.020+00:00Your suggestion of walking the recce of routes is ...Your suggestion of walking the recce of routes is great one, the ability to recover so quickly that it doesn't interrupt the rest of your training would be really valuable.<br /><br />Looking at my own training experience doing big training runs or races can force an extended period of very low mileage, especially if one is injured. Even a week completely off and I see a small step back in fitness, two weeks and my aerobic fitness and fat burning capacity certainly are compromised. A month off I'm not back to square one but it feels like it, it takes many months to get the fitness back.<br /><br />Given this I now feel that one should avoid high injury risks, it's better to back of an run short and slow every day for a week till a niggle disappears than keep trying to follow some fixed training plan. Races up the injury risk, and require recovery time, but if one can go into races fresh and with no niggles, race sensibly then it's possible to get back into light training quite quickly afterwards. Being able to get back running, even if it's only recovery runs for several weeks after a race seems to aid recovery and make the most of the training stimulus that the race provided.Robert Osfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16960356368117573952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-42760408407643077212015-01-07T01:43:20.183+00:002015-01-07T01:43:20.183+00:00Only just got around to reading this, but really i...Only just got around to reading this, but really interesting stuff. I too found in the second half of 2014 that training at really slow paces doesn't stop you achieving race results somewhere almost as good as when you go for a lot of high intensity stuff. I'm definitely coming around to believing that getting out every day, even if some days are just a three or four mile jog, has a lot of merit and I had already decided before reading your post to move from 4 days with recovery to 6/7 days but with similar overall mileage. I have always been an advocate of regular long runs (20+ every couple of weeks) but your comments on this are interesting so I might have a think about this aspect. I like to do events so I get to one a month on average (some only 30 miles or so) so I may try avoiding long runs in between. One often has to do recces to make racedays more straightforward, but again I had already decided that these can be done as long walks which need no recovery time. Have a good 2015!Andy Colehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02484436140840957046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-49454386974971674112014-12-04T14:55:27.536+00:002014-12-04T14:55:27.536+00:00"I wonder what you will learn in 2015??"..."I wonder what you will learn in 2015??"<br /><br />I can't say what I'll learn, but perhaps the first step is to ask what I/we as a community don't yet know that would be useful to explore.<br /><br />At a personal level I want to keep improving my training and racing. I haven't yet managed to combine long runs/back to backs or high intensity training for extended periods without getting injured. This might not be something I learn, but rather develop the resilience to absorb tougher training runs. Perhaps my ligaments, bones, muscles etc. all need learn as well as my mind :-)<br />Robert Osfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16960356368117573952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-47721138704606111862014-12-03T17:44:57.826+00:002014-12-03T17:44:57.826+00:00Really interesting post Robert. I love the way yo...Really interesting post Robert. I love the way you have analysed your training to work out what works best for you. Great stuff.<br /><br />I wonder what you will learn in 2015?? John Kynastonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16436853872576303518noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-64667362954471470802014-12-03T09:11:21.596+00:002014-12-03T09:11:21.596+00:00Hi Canute,
Looking at the data in a more fine gra...Hi Canute,<br /><br />Looking at the data in a more fine grained way (day to day/week to week) does reveal other aspects to the affects of my training but it also adds more noise to the data. Part of the noise is the influence of weather on my HR stats - when it's hot I initially see a reduction in my efficiency. Catching a cold or other ailment also influences the data. Finally stressful training runs have an influence on the efficiency for that particular run and subsequent runs. All these different influences make it more difficult to get any clear and consistent relationship - at least with my crude analysis so far.<br /><br />One aspect that I didn't go into in my post is the influence of volume of training at different intensities and the influence that is has on efficiency at that intensity. In my data I have see a year on year shift at the intensities that I'm most efficient at. I also see affects when re-introducing training at different intensities - initially these new intensities my efficiency is lower but over the weeks things improve. While I've spotted these patterns in my training logs I haven't yet attempted to plot it in a way that we can glean whether there are any consistent relationships.<br /><br />My guess is that there are whole range of metabolic, neuromuscular, heat adaptations etc that can work at different time scales - these all ebb and flow as we add or remove different aspects to out training/racing. The activity of the immune system/nervous system also big influence.<br /><br />Recording more data to track more of these various influences - such as resting Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability, Temperature/Weather conditions, whether one is well/unwell, feeling stressed or relaxed etc. would all give us more to work on for looking at the various influences they have on the data we record as allow to look teasing out more relationships to help our understanding. I does take more work to record all this data day by day, and obviously requires more sophisticated analysis than I'm presently doing (or have time to do as hobby.)<br /><br />Wit the data I have already I will have a bash at looking at the influence of training intensity on my efficiency, if I can glean anything useful that is amenable for presenting to others than I put together another post on it.Robert Osfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16960356368117573952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-55591257161498848982014-12-03T09:07:28.068+00:002014-12-03T09:07:28.068+00:00This comment has been removed by the author.Robert Osfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16960356368117573952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2375743119306394670.post-85985137606805801212014-12-03T00:42:06.724+00:002014-12-03T00:42:06.724+00:00Congratulations on your great year of traning and ...Congratulations on your great year of traning and racing.<br /><br />Very interesting analysis. <br /><br />I agree consistency is the most important feature of training. You raise a very interesting issue regarding the stronger relationship between effective efficiency and month by month increase in number of runs than between EE and increase in time spent running. I suspect this reflects that fact that EE is most likely to increase when the ratio of training load to recovery is optimal. Since both high volume and high intensity can be stressful, relatively short, low or medium intensity runs offer the best prospect of a favourable ration of training load to recovery. I would predict that if a substantial proportion of your runs were short high intensity runs that you would not see the favourable effect on increasing number of runs per month.<br /><br />I wonder whether it is possible to assign a score for each week that reflects training load (taking account of both volume and intensity) and opportunity for recovery (not necessarily rest). I would be interested in testing the hypothesis that such a score might be a strong predictor of improvement in fitness. There are credible measures of training load. The challenge is to find a good measure of opportunity for recovery. I once hoped that resting HR or HRV would be satisfactory measures of recovery, but have found that neither is sufficiently consistent.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com