FEATURE

The Science Of Endurance: Your Line In The Sand

By Matty Graham

It seems that testing and tracking performance is one aspect that so many athletes lack in their training plan. They invest so much time and effort into their training and do not know if they are getting any better. For most it is not until they cross the finish line of their key race do they know if they have improved on last year's performance or not. Hopefully their training has worked well and they did improve, but if they did not then there is nothing they can do to change it!

Integrating testing sessions into your training allows you to see how your training is progressing long before key races. This gives you the opportunity to then tweak your training if things are not on track or keep doing the stuff that is working. In this article I want to give you some practical ways you can test and track your performance so you can establish a definite 'line in the sand' and see how you are improving.

How to test
There are many different testing sessions that you can perform in both the lab and the field, but one of the most simple ways is to perform a time trial over a set distance (i.e. run 5 km as fast as you can) or set time (i.e. run as far as you can in 30 min). The good thing with time trials is that they are easy to perform, they do not require any expensive lab equipment and with heart rate monitors and GPS now becoming pretty mainstream you can easily get some useful information from throughout the time trial and not just a time on a watch or average heart rate at the end. Also, with power meters becoming more and more affordable it is opening up a whole new realm of testing, tracking and data collection as it is like having a portable laboratory on your bike making specific testing sessions more accurate.

One of the great things about time trials is that they are performed in the real world and therefore not only asses your fitness like a lab test but also things like technique,  handling skills, how you handle specificterrain and all of the things that go into make you swim, bike, run and kayak as fast as you can. This is also the exact thing that is the biggest weakness of time trials.

Because they are performed in the real world there are a lot of external influences that can affect your performance and cannot be controlled as they can in a lab environment. When you are testing your performance through time trialling you are at the mercy of the wind, temperature, course surface, traffic and weather. As you will see below we want to test and then retest our performance to see how we are improving. Finding out that you perform 20% better with a howling tail wind is not much use to anyone. So to try and minimise the effect the environment has on your performance think about the following when planning your time trials.
 

• Choose a course that has minimal traffic and intersections
• Perform your time trial at a time of day that is calm so your performance is not effected by wind. Often the morning can be the calmest time of the day.
• Loop or multi lap courses can also help minimise the effect of wind.
• If kayaking or swimming in tidal bodies of water aim to perform your time trial at the same 'tide time'.
• The surface of your time trial course can have a large influence on your performance. Try and choose quiet back roads and tracks that do not get resurfaced on a regular basis. It is not uncommon for some roads to be resurfaced regularly with 'rough chip' that can significantly impact your performance.

While the external environment plays an import role in standardising your time trials, it is important that you standardise our internal environment as well. Replicate as many details as you can between tests so that hopefully the only reason that your performance has improved is that your 'fitness' has improved not because you have taken a new supplement, are more rested or you have performed a different warm up.
 

• Try and eat a similar meal at a similar time before each time trial. This is also a perfect time to get use to your planned race breakfast.
• Go into your time trial days rested so you can put in a good performance.
• Perform the same warm up before each time trial.
• Whatever you do before your first 'baseline' time trial this is what you should do for all of your subsequent time trials.

When to test
During your testing sessions you should be giving it your all. Because of this they are both physically and mental hard and should NOT be performed to regularly. It is good to perform a series of tests (one for each discipline) at the end of each training phase as well as a baseline test so you can see how each phase of your training is progressing compared to this.

So now that you know why, when and how to test your performance lets have a look at some time trial examples.

Swim: For swimming you can perform a consistent time trial of any distance (depending on your race distance) or I like to use the broken km session which can be a bit more manageable than a straight out time trial. In this test following your standard warm up perform 10x100 m at a maximal effort with 10 s of recovery between each 100 m. Start your watch at the first 100 m and stop it at the end of the tenth one. If it is possible it can be really good to get someone to record the splits for each of the 100 m so you can see any differences in them.

Bike: Depending on your planned race choose a course to suit. It can be dead flat, rolling, it could also be a sustained uphill time trial if that best suits the demands of your race or an off road MTB loop if you are a multisporter or training for an Xterra. I would suggest a course somewhere between 10 and 40 km long in which following your standard warm up you ride as hard as you can over the course.

Run: For running I am a big fan of the 5 km time trial. Choose a course or head to the track and give it heaps.

Kayak: For kayaking I like to use a time trial of around 10 km for most multisport athletes. This is one of the hardest disciplines to control the conditions so depending on your location do your best. Again, following your standard warm up, paddle as hard as you can over the set course.





What data to record In all of your time trials record the time taken to complete the course. You can also time each km or each lap if your course allows and you have the technology to do so. Along with time if you have heart rate record your average heart rate for the time trial, average speed if you have a GPS or speedo and then if you have access to a power meter record your average power output. It is also really good to note down any comments about the conditions and how you felt.

Keep track of this data so that you can compare it to future testing sessions. Depending on how 'nerdy' you are you can construct some graphs (see example below) or tables to track how things are progressing or just refer back to those numbers written in your training diary. One fun way to keep track of this data and monitor your performance is through Strava. Strava is a free website that allows easy analysis of GPS data. You can set your time trial course on here and every time you ride or run this 'segment' it will compare it to past results. Strava also allows you to compare your results with anyone else that has completed the same course and uploaded their GPS data. One problem that athletes need to be careful of when using the likes of Strava is that every session does not become a testing 'smash' session just to clock up another PB, KOM or extend your lead over your mates which I have seen happen way to many times before.

So there you have it. Get out there and draw your 'line in the sand' so you know where you are know and how your training is progressing.

If you have any questions or topics you would like to read about in future articles please feel free to get in touch with me. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter for regular training videos and articles.

Website: www.exponentialperformancecoaching.com


Originally published in New Zealand Triathlon and Multisport Issue 99, November 2014