This week is going to be a bit of a hiccup week, with a wedding in Taupo. I need to make sure Maddog marries Mel - it is a worthwhile cause! :-) I needed to cut the running back a little this week anyway, after a good run week last week. So I thought a little more swimming would be in order, and as I decided 50km was a good target for the month, I can't really allow myself to get behind there either! After 4 swim days in a row, I have to say I am a bit swim tired! I am not sure, but I think that is probably the first time I have done proper swim training sessions on 4 consecutive days in probably 8 or 9 years!!! Squad numbers have been a bit light (end of seasons!), so have been doing a bit in a lane on my own, or with those that are not really that motivated to do much - which can make it a little harder mentally than if you have a few others suffering through a session with you. I think last week I mentioned I was struggling with two days in a row, so four was solid! Hopefully in a few days I can lift my arms above my head again...
My training has increased a little, but not hugely. It is far more focused, and more purposeful (even if it much of it is still easy!). But there are a few funny things happening. I am far more analytical at the moment - although this blog is a major contributor to that. I have started playing with training data a little more again. You can measure efforts - with things like HR monitors, lactate measure and outputs like speed (or pace), and power meters. But to get a bit more information out of all this available data needs a bit more analysis. I did this last year with a few athletes I coach, just to try to get a little more "inside" information. No great revelations yet, but I am trying to find a good measure of economy and efficiency at the moment. On the bike a good one is the power-to-HR ratio, and how that varies at different intensities, and if you are tired or not (and how if varies with in a ride). It should be similar with speed/pace swimming and running too. But I am still trying to figure a good way to represent that. I had better not get too in depth here - the geek in me may escape!
I have also had a couple of conversations about the "old days" and how performances have or have-not changed over the years. In triathlon, I have a gut feeling that a lot more emphasis has gone into the bike (for half and Ironman at least), and the bike times are faster, but I think the run times are slower. I started averaging the top 10 bike and run splits for a few years in NZ Ironman, and there were small differences, but I got a bit bored digging through the numbers to get any answers - if in fact there is an answer there. The landscape of Ironman has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. In general swim courses are probably shorter or at least "easier", and I think that is a result of the world being more "PC" and race organizers taking the brunt of abuse with things go wrong, instead of people taking responsibility for their own actions (ie getting fit/fast enough to go the distance comfortably)! Bike and run courses are tending to be flatter and faster, I guess to make them more achievable, but that has it own problems - certainly on the bike with the big bad drafting... There use to be 7 Ironman races around the world, and 2 of those were on the same weekend (due to the time zone difference it was possible to do both in theory, but a private jet was probably required). Now there are some 22 official (WTC) events and probably at least as many non-official events. So the depth of the pro field is certainly not going to be what it was.
I also tripped over a few lists of "all time best" times for running. I am not sure it was complete - it may have just been world champs/ Olympic level, but there were still quite a few times from the '70's and 80's in the top 50. This did surprise me, for a couple of reasons - naturally better athletes coming through, with (hopefully) better training, better facilities, better equipment (for training and racing), and also the amount of drug assisted performances certainly in the late '80's and '90's, where the drug testers were really just filling in their time sheets and only catching those that really stuffed things up. But I think it just goes to show how great athletes like John Walker and Seb Coe were! I think in some respects we have just made things unnecessarily complicated, rather than better...
Right - that is probably enough rambling, I had better get on and do some work!
Ironman from last century!
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