A week is a long time in sport. So they say. The goal for the last few weeks has been to build consistency and momentum.
I am happy to report in. Goal achieved. I managed 3 swims, 4 rides and 3 runs for the week along with 2 strength sessions and 5 rehab sessions through out the week.
The photo below although really poorly edited shows a few things. To me as a self coaching athlete right now and at the start of the base phase of training, the important metric is EF or efficiency factor. What this little metric shows is my cardiac response to the training session just completed. The one on the left is a run last week and the one on the right is from Monday this week.
Other than the obvious I went a little faster this week. I ran nearly 700 meters further than last week in just over 2 minutes longer. Those facts by them self can sound pretty good. But you can see that even though I went faster my heart rate didn’t raise as much and stayed relatively steady through out the run, avg HRT Rate 123, max 132. But the most telling metric is EF. Aerobic Efficiency or the factor of what is know as Aerobic decoupling. The number went from 1.37 to 1.40. Which implies that a small amount of cardiac efficiency improvement between the 2 runs has happened. Now don’t get me wrong. 2 runs don’t make a trend. I have to look over the next 3 - 5 runs to see if that finding is consistent or an anomaly. This is why consistency is the magic sauce. Consistency is where I will see small little gains that over time will start to add up to a significant fitness gain when I need it the most.
Apart from the facts and figures I had fun training this week. After I had an AHA moment during my bike fit this week where what I sort of suspected turned out to be pretty true. My motivation or Froth factor went up a lot after I found that out.
I did my bike fit after my first set of polarised efforts Tuesday last week. I’ll tell you why in a sec. I had programmed: 10 x 2 min @ VO2 power efforts on the bike on a stationary trainer. Problem was that I never made the power zones from the very start. I struggled through 5 and was blowing up. What I realised later was a few factors going against me. 1 the power meter on my road bike reads 15 - 20 watts low, 2 I just wasn’t ready for 10 x 2 minute efforts yet, and 3 the burning pain in my left medial hamstring had come back with a vengeance.
I will do the same workout this week on the Time trial bike on the trainer, to see power comparisons and see if I can get through the 10 efforts. I will also be doing the first ROTB (Run of the bike) as well to see how the hamstring is feeling. This run will be very steady and there no intensity at all involved in that.
I did my bike fit after my first set of polarised efforts Tuesday last week. Because as I said the return of the medial hamstring pain in the left leg told me nothing had really changed in my body. During the bike fit I did last week, part of which can be seen on the Facebook page I noticed that no matter how many adjustments I made on the bike, my right hip always sort of dropped, or rotated during the pedalling action. I always sort of felt a little crooked on the saddle, and my history tells me that this is the case especially after Ironman Cairns this year where I rode well but caused a lot of damage to myself down in the sit area. While looking at the video what could plainly be seen was my right hip dropping under all intensities getting much worse under high power levels. I improved it a little bit by changing to a more mid foot cleat position, then improved it further by taking the stance of the shoes wider. But the biggest improvement came after I put some shims under my right cleat, to basically lift the right foot closer or shortening the seat post for my right leg while leaving it where it was for the left. After getting the shimming done on the right shoe I was sitting square on the seat, my hip wasn’t dropping anymore, and all hamstring tightness and burning had completely stopped.
As I suspected a few weeks back was that even though my hamstring strain may have happened on the run. My riding style was the catalyst for the over use of the left medial hamstring. The right hip drop caused the left hamstring to have to compensate to work harder to both produce power and also try to get me square on the seat.
Now I have a significant set of shims under right cleat which feels a little funny while walking around. But on the bike I feel fantastic already even though I have only had 3 rides like this.my legs feel symmetrical and funnily enough my left/right power balance has also evened out even though I have not concentrated on it at all. I am excited to get out on the Time trial bike over the next week or two to see how it translates to comfort and speed while in aero position.
My swim this week has been really steady. I had my first polarised interval session which was a set of 6 x 200 meter efforts with 2 minutes rest between each one. The times were consistent, with all of them coming in under 3 minutes. Which considering for the last month or so all swimming has basically been plodding along working on swim mechanics with no intensity. This was a great result showing me that the base swimming has started building a great aerobic base that I will be able to build on as the season progresses.
Mick Rand