Fooling Ourselves

“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s 5:30 am on a Sunday morning and I find myself lying on my back, wide awake, with my world spinning. Surprisingly enough, my foggy head this time isn’t the result of a bike crash concussion or a big night on the town (Vegas is next week, folks! :-) Nope, I’m lying on my back with my head spinning after Sensai Gordo Byrn took me down in an Aikido match.

Let me elaborate, we all know I’m a big fan of the metaphor in my writing and in this case, Gordo didn’t really strap on a gi and a blackbelt and throw me over his shoulder. No, I chose this metaphor as representative of the way that Gordo and I tend to tackle a difference of opinion. In this case, a difference of opinion on the topic of athletic potential.

I am very accustomed to arguing. In fact, on some level, I really enjoy it. It may come as a surprise to those who know my introverted tendencies to know that I was on the debate team back in high school. In fact, it wasn’t just a case of being ‘on the team’, I hope it’s not too conceited of me to say that back in our day, we kicked ass (quarter finals at State ass to be specific :-). Anyhow, point being I have no problem drawing a line in the sand when necessary and not backing down.

On most matters, I think Gordo and I see eye to eye. In the world of elite athletics, if you talk to enough people at the top you begin to realize that the commonalities far exceed the differences. Recently, however, you may have noticed a, somewhat antipolar viewpoint in the matters of ‘hard vs. soft’ approach to goal achievement and, more significantly, the topic of athletic potential. It has always been my stance that endurance athletics is largely an area in life where you get what you deserve. Recently, I have noticed a departure in the G-mans philosophy, away from this stance (to be frank, I have a feeling that I may have been unintentionally instrumental in this departure, but that is beside the point).

The short point of my metaphorical introduction to this morning’s post is simply this – the Gman got me thinking.

In and of itself, this is no small feat. If you’ve been unfortunate enough to bear witness to some of my online forum debates with one or two of the well known sports scientists out there you’ll know that my general way of War, my Big-A-Do :-), if you will is, when someone pushes me, I brace myself, strengthen my position and push back ten times as hard. With the appropriate firepower, this is a great way to win an argument, but not a great way to grow. By contrast, Gordo has a knack of using your own energy against you and leaving you on your back, with your head spinning, reconsidering your approach (hence my long winded Aikido metaphor).

In this situation, my head is spinning with the question “do I show potential?”, or on another front “am I getting what I deserve out of what I am putting into the sport or am I ‘fooling myself’? I also want to challenge myself and you all by pointing out another way that as triathletes we typically ‘fool ourselves’.

I have had 3 times in my life where I would (now) consider myself relatively ‘fast’ as an endurance athlete (interestingly enough, in at least one of these cases, at the time I considered myself distinctly ‘slow’ in relation to my peer group. Relativity to your peer group is huge as Mat pointed out a while ago in his piece, ‘Fast in Indiana’.)

Being ‘Fast’ #1: The Swim

The first time was when I swam 18:03 for a 1500m Freestyle back in 1992. Not surprisingly, in the context of Australia distance swimming, at the time relative to my squad members, this felt ‘slow’. Funny how things change. Right now if I could get back to that form I’d be one of the first swimmers out of the water in most of the local races, even out here in Boulder.

So, what was I doing at that time that set me up to swim that ‘fast’? I swam this time toward the end of our summer break in 1992. At the time I was riding my heavy ‘Old School’ road bike 40mi a day to get to and from my morning and evening swim practice. I was swimming 5-7km in the morning and another 5-7 in the afternoon.

So, am I fooling myself as to my potential as a swimmer? I don’t think so. Am I fooling myself as to the price I have to pay to get back there? Yes.

Being ‘Fast’ #2: The Bike.

The fastest that I have been on the bike was 58min for a hilly 40K Time Trial back in 2003. It was a pretty solid course that I would do each week as a benchmark ride. I was consistently under 1 hour. At the time, I was also doing some training rides with the Division 1 University cycling team. I was placing top 5 in their weekly Time Trials and was holding my own on the weekend group rides.

The Cost:

At the time, I had just broken up with my wife and cycling was my outlet. In a 3 month period, my smallest week was 313mi, my biggest was 404mi. I would regularly ride my bike from Gainesville to Orlando (~120mi), crash at a Days Inn near Disney World and then ride back the next day.

Am I fooling myself as to my potential as a cyclist? I don’t think so. Am I fooling myself as to the price I have to pay to get back there? Yes.

Being ‘Fast’ #3: The Run.

The fastest that I have run was a 2:53 Marathon back in 2003. At the time I also ran several 5K’s in and around 18 minutes and a 37min 10K.

The Cost:

Still a little psychologically screwy, after getting injured (meniscus) after my big bout of cycling, I threw my energy into two things:

a) Running a lot
b) Losing weight.

I had a 3 month block of 70-120k per week. I obsessively monitored everything that I ate and got my bodyweight (for my 6’4” frame) down to 158lbs. I was running to work and back twice most days (20K/day)

Am I fooling myself as to my potential as a runner? I don’t think so. Am I fooling myself as to the price I have to pay to get back there? Yes.

I certainly don’t present my past as an example of what to do. I have made a lot of errors along the way. However, I do present it as a bit of a reality check on the sort of volume that decent single sport athletes are doing. While my mind-set may have been a little different to the folks around me who were finishing at about the same time, I assure you my training volume wasn’t, 50-70mi a week isn’t anything ‘special’ to a runner. 400mi a week is pretty standard for a Cat 2/3 cyclist and 70K a week in the pool is nothing for a decent club level Aussie swimmer.

Of course, the challenge as a triathlete is to find the space in your life and the energy to do the requisite training volume. However keep in mind that even for you, as a triathlete, doing the work in all sports is a requisite. The notion of ‘cross-training’ is B.S. If you want to run like a runner, you must run like a runner, If you want to swim like a swimmer…. Well, you get my drift.

Sometimes as athletes, I think we (want to) forget these realities. Fool others, by all means, but whatever you do, don’t fool yourself.

The Stotan Code

I will be in the city of sin next week, if I am to be honest with you (and myself), I will probably be working out or sleeping while the rest of the city’s populous (including my brother, who is visiting from Australia) is sinning in one way, shape or form :-). I think I have always found more lasting joy in Asceticism than sin. I was pleasantly surprised, during my first road trip with the G-man, to discover that Nevada offers plenty of both. I’m looking forward to returning.

Anyhow, not sure how much time I will have to write next week so I thought I would throw up a second blog for this week. Speaking of asceticism, in this post, I am going to reproduce (blatantly copy) one of my favourite, & most inspirational pieces of writing on the subject: Percy Cerutty’s Stotan Code.

I gave a brief history of Cerutty and his ‘Stotan’ philosophy in a former blog. I was pleased to hear that it resonated with a number of readers in the same way it does me (I have highlighted some of the lines in this piece that most speak to me). I hope the following post provides more ‘fuel for the fire’ for the week of training ahead.

See you out there.

AC

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The Stotan Code
Percy Cerutty
‘Maker of Champions’

A Stotan is one who hardens, strengthens, toughens and beautifies the body by consistent habits and regular exercises, which are consciously and irrevocably made part of the life plan of the individual, as well as consciously determining that the mind will be cultivated upon such abstractions as purity, beauty and logic. Erudition, in as complete a degree as possible shall be the lifelong aim: Truth, in relation to all aspects of life, the unending search.

Stotans will, by virtue of their philosophy, be nature lovers, with a respect and appreciation of all evolved or created things. They will appreciate the sanctity of creative effort both in themselves and in others. They will strive to understand the significance implied by reality, will be able to discern the real from the spurious, and see no anomaly in nudity, either in body or mind. But neither will they cast pearls before swine.

Stotans, for all the reasons that their philosophy stands for (viz: hardness, toughness, unswerving devotion to an ideal), would look upon the sea (or mountains) as their pristine element and endeavour to associate themselves with their primeval source by immersing themselves at least once per month in all seasons of the year. No practice is disposed to toughen, both the body and the morale, more than this.

Stotans believe that neither the body nor the mind can be maintained at a high pitch of efficiency unless sufficient and regular rest is obtained, and aim at a daily average of of 8 hours sleep. Stotans, also, will not be found in social places after midnight. Stotans shall so regulate their lives that at the end of a period, varying with the intensity of effort, each shall realize that they have attained, without conscious striving, to a state of knowledge, and a position of leadership within the community. It is axiomatic that only the pure can understand purity, only the cultivated appreciate beauty, and only the strong truly measure their strength. Therefore, only the self-disciplined can command genuine respect.

A program shall be aimed at which shall be designed to [train each Stotan]:-

(a)… to withstand physical hardship, to accomplish feats of strength and endurance, to understand orderliness, and the true meaning of intelligence.

(b) To know himself as an organism and a personality

(c) To emerge, eventually emancipated, from all dogmas, creeds, and beliefs, as well as worldly and unworldly hopes and fears.

(d) To habitually function upon the highest planes of thought and physical effort.

(e) To place the objective of an alert, informed intelligence, and a perfected body, as primary in Life. And to arrive at the conclusion that all else will follow on.

(f) To learn that on this basis, the whole world, and all that it has to offer, opens out as a vision, splendid, normal and realizable.

(g) To understand that Past, Futures, Fates, Fears, Death, Selfishness, Egoism, Pride, Envy, Hate and Prejudice can be replaced by Intelligence that controls emotion, dominates destiny, manifests completeness and exults in Life.

(h) To understand that, in actuality, evolved man is a King, but without the trappings. That Kingship is his right and his destiny. That we can make ourselves, in time, all that we would. That we honour real men but are subservient to none.

In addition, Stotans shall train themselves to withstand, stoically, personal criticism, also, scepticism as the necessity or wisdom of such a Way of Life. In this regard, Stotans soon learn that they command knowledge, experience and ability not available to the prejudiced, the ignorant or the slothful.

Also, having embarked upon the Stotan Way of Life, like the Spartans, one must go through with it to the end. There is no giving up throughout life. The first pre-requisite for a Stotan is tenacity. The next is to understand that his loyalties are towards making the most of the material that is his, to the expansion, or at least the manifestation of the Life Force, and a constant identification of himself with his Life Force through his Way of Life.

To live this Way of Life is hard. It is not for weaklings. It is the Way that is travelled by all the truly great ones. It requires strenuous effort of body and mind.

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The passage above is taken from the Graem Sims biography of Percy Cerutty, entitled “Why Die”. It is one of my favourite reads.

Onward Stotans!!!

AC.

Consistency

“Duncan Armstrong (1988 Olympic Gold medallist in the 200m Freestyle) had witnessed the ruthless dedication displayed by Jono Sieben in his quest for his Olympic Gold (1984 200m Butterfly). In 12 months of training he did not miss one day, one session.”
- Lawrie Lawrence (coach of multiple Olympic champions)


“Give me 1000 x 6000m swim sessions without missing 1 and I guarantee you an Olympic Berth”
- Brett Sutton
Note: The athlete in question missed his first session after the 500th, his second was 870 session after starting. The day after his 3rd missed session he destroyed the national record and made the Olympic Team.


“The only secret of those of us who were training at Caulfield and Ferny Creek was the consistency of our training. None of us ever missed a day, as a result, we were all improving. Although each of our sessions would physically stretch us, we never finished a day so exhausted that we were not able to train to the same standard the following day.”
- Ron Clarke (19x World Record Holder)

There is a great quote (I think it’s Mark Twain) that comes to mind:

“He who picks up a cat by the tail learns something that he can learn no other way”

The point, of course, is that sometimes it takes a serious physical or emotional punch in order for us to truly learn, on the deepest level, a simple lesson. This is particularly appropriate to this week’s post because, as you probably read in my last update, I have recently had a week off and a week of very light training following my last crash – lots of time to think (& mope) about lost training.

Of course, we read about the importance of consistency again and again, but for some of us (e.g. me), we don’t truly realize just how important consistency is until we are forced into a period of inconsistent training. I’ll chat about my experiences over the past couple of weeks in a bit, but first a little background reading…

There are a number of studies out there that have demonstrated the immediacy of detraining upon cessation of training. Detraining occurs as quickly as 3 days after training ends and within 1-3 weeks, performance can be expected to drop by 25-30%. If you are unfortunate enough to be forced into a 1-3 month period of no training, expect a loss in performance of 40-50%. For all but elite athletes, this kind of loss will bring most athletes back to pre-training levels (McArdle, Katch and Katch, 1996). When one looks at these numbers, the importance of doing whatever it takes to keep the engine ‘ticking over’ becomes readily apparent.

The mechanisms behind these fitness losses are equally interesting: In just one week of training, athletes can lose 50% of additional mitochondria produced during 5 weeks of training. Once lost, up to 4 weeks of additional training are needed to regain this mitochondria (Olbrecht, 2000). This 4:1 rule is pretty commonly touted among coaches and seems well supported by the literature and my own personal experience, (as I have outlined below).

Similarly, glycogen stores rapidly decrease upon cessation of training, with losses of 40-60% to be expected following 4 weeks of de-training (Wilmore and Costill, 1999). This has direct implications on the athlete’s work tolerance upon resuming training. Even following 1 week of de-training, the athlete will often not reach pre-break training volume until 1 month or more of training resumption.

As mentioned above, my own experiences over the past couple of weeks are tying in well with the literature (I have actually had this blog in the works for a couple of weeks now. I was hopeful that I would be able to show data from my training break through to the return to my normal training/performance levels, but I am afraid, despite my wishes, I am falling in line with what the literature suggests and don’t expect to be back to this level for at least another week!)

My session by session average power and heart rate (from the session before my break through to now) is shown graphically below:

The 2 red lines represent my average training power and heart rate from my last month of training. As you can see, if my average power continues it’s trend, it will be July 1st before I am back to my average power output (201W) for the month of May. In other words, after 1 week off, it is taking me another 3 weeks to just get back to ‘normal’ training levels. This has huge implication for those athletes who have regular 3-7 day breaks in their schedule, e.g. travel for work etc. It is imperative that some level of maintenance training is done even during these relatively short time periods to ensure that the athlete is not continually playing catch up.

For athletes who are forced to take longer periods off due to injury, the importance of maintenance training becomes more pronounced. After reading about just how aggressive Floyd Landis was in his return to training after his hip fracture and comparing it to my own conservative approach (that resulted in being confined to a wheelchair for the better part of 3 months), I realize the importance that elite athletes give to ‘keeping the engine ticking over’.

In the end, as the elite coaches and athletes quoted at the start of this piece have concluded, CONSISTENCY TRUMPS ALL!

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Maintenance Training

Jason asks:

"Just wondering what kind of guidelines there are for maintaining one's current fitness level?"

There is good news on this front. Generally, studies show that performance can be maintained (or in the case of tapering, improved) with reductions in training volume of 80-90% of peak seasonal volume for 7-10days of training or 65-80% of peak seasonal volume for longer time periods (up to 4 weeks), providing intensity, particularly intensity in excess of the lactate threshold is maintained at normal levels. (Anderson et al., 1992, Costill et al. 1985, Mujika et al. 1996).

Because it's there!

“Unless you push the limits, you stagnate. Only when you try to go way beyond where you’ve been before do you really grow. That’s when you’re alive. That’s when you’re really living.” – Mark Allen.

I have a couple of blog posts in the works that are more in line with my typical genre of exercise physiology and training prescription (one on the final phase of annual periodization – The Race Preparation Phase, and another on the realities of de-training), but after reading Gordo’s latest blog, I had a bunch of thoughts swirling around that I wanted to put on paper. I hope you find my catharsis entertaining :-)

In said blog, the g-man asks the question:

“What is the point of achievement if we need to damage ourselves in the process?”

Gordo goes on to point out something that, while the masses may not understand, something that, as athletes, we all (eventually) get: Athletic achievement and personal wellness are not synonomous. In fact, at the highest elite level, they are completely incongruent.

And so, as athletes, as people, we ultimately must answer the question “Why on earth would I choose to pursue an activity that may shorten, if not prematurely end my life?” For some, the answer is simple, “I wouldn’t” and so triathlon is pursued only to the extent that it enriches their health and the rest of their lives. They hike the small peaks and turn around when the footing becomes a little loose.

Others, perhaps the majority of athletes out there secretly enjoy the challenge, but rationally convince themselves that their level of involvement in triathlon supports their health and greater goals. As renowned exercise physiologist, Cooper, concluded back in the day, physiologically this is not the case: ‘If you are training more than 5 hours a week you are doing it for reasons other than health.’ For these athletes, drawing that fine line between achievement and wellness is a constant struggle.

For others, like the climber who inspired the title for today’s piece, the answer to Gordo’s question is just as easy (while perhaps not as rational) as the first group. When, in 1924, George Mallory was asked “Why would you want to climb Everest (when there is every chance of failure/death)?” he simply, and definitively replied “Because it’s there!”. Soon after, Mallory and his colleague, Andrew Comyn Irvine disappeared on the mountain and were not seen again until an expedition discovered their frozen bodies in 1999, 75 years, and some 1100 successful summits since Mallory made his decision.

In my mind, the perspective you take on Mallory’s quest, whether an ill-thought decision that resulted in failure or an inspiring example of ‘going for it 100%’ and living without fear says a lot about your potential as a triathlete.

We all choose (if and) when we turn around on the mountain.

The Mummy Returns

Yes, after managing to keep a safe distance between me and the pavement for the better part of a year and a half now (since my last crash in which I broke my hip and a couple of other things), my streak came to a crashing halt last Tuesday when I ran into some relatively immovable object on the roadway and came off second best.

Let me tell you, broken fingers aren’t too far down the pain scale from broken hips, but thanks to my friendly nurse with his morphine drip on hand, the pain was relatively short lived. Unfortunately, my ER doc’s attempt of ‘popping’ one of my fingers back into place didn’t work out and I wound up in surgery getting my finger pinned in place and my fractured elbow drained.

It maybe a little sad to admit that the first thought that went through my head after hitting the deck was “How much fitness am I going to lose this time?”. After my last experience of going from lifetime best fitness to completely starting over, after 3 months of bed rest, I must say, having to do it again is one of my greatest fears.

As it turns out, the answer to my question was 1 week (it would have been sooner but my doc made me promise not to work out until I was off the pain meds!!) I just got back from my first workout back, 1hr on the bike trainer followed by 30 minutes on the treadmill. After pushing a dismal 160W in my aerobic zone (50W less than usual), I am reminded yet again of the power of consistency. Avoid time off at all costs. Keep the engine ticking over at all times. Even in recovery cycles, movement is good!!

But, I digress. As promised, the topic of this week’s post is a follow up to my post 2 weeks ago on practical ways to improve fat oxidation. I will present a brief (typing with one hand sucks!! :-) case study of the athlete that we have witnessed the greatest improvement in fat oxidation thus far and I will highlight some of the practical methods that we have used to get him to this point.

I have been coaching this athlete for a little over a year now. He came to me as a relative ‘newbie’ to the sport (2yrs), with no experience over long-course triathlon (but a tendency for a performance drop off with increased duration, if we compare his best single sport efforts with his best longer duration tri efforts). Incidentally, this profile describes the majority of male athletes coming to me to prepare for their first Ironman. When we look at this athletes first substrate profile, it is not hard to see why many athletes do great over short duration efforts but have a hard time fuelling long duration efforts, e.g the Ironman.



As many of you know, my rule of thumb for best case Ironman (and day to day) pacing for an intermediate triathlete is ~10kcal of CHO/min. This is based on the simple math of average glycogen stores going into the event plus the maximum rate of glycogen sparing if the athlete fuels appropriately. Based on this athletes first test, even at his slowest pace he was expending >10kcal of CHO/min. If he raced at this level of fitness, clearly he would be in for a very long day with a best case scenario of walking the marathon. With very respectable ‘top end’ performances of 18:15 for a 5K and sub 60min for a 40K TT, clearly fat oxidation was the big limiter.

ACTION PLAN:

Nutrition: Our 2 goals for this athlete were (A) an improvement in fat oxidation at all intensities (B) a reduction in bodyweight. In order to accomplish these goals, I put this athlete on a diet of 400g of CHO/200g of (lean) Protein and 100g of (good) Fat. This represents 3300kcal/day and 48%/24%/28% macronutrient breakdown. Irrespective of whether the diet is eucaloric or not, I have found these percentages to be ideal in the base phase of training. This is (indirectly) also supported by the literature, e.g. Bergstrom et al. (1967) – check this study out. Lots of practical implications for the endurance athlete!!

Training: To support our objectives, training volume was quite high (20-23hrs/wk) but initially of a very low intensity (with most sessions having a cap of 50 beats below max!!) Incidentally, this is the sort of training that a very successful German ex-pro triathlete advocated when I was fortunate enough to chat with him about how he reached the pinnacle of the sport. It is what Dan Empfield called in an article about how the Germans trained “ridiculously slow”.

Our key sessions each week were a 4hr long flat bike (usually a trainer session due to weather constraints) followed the day after by a long, relatively flat hike of 4+ hours. Other sessions during the week were an aerobic maintenance brick, a strength maintenance session and several technique focused swims.

A couple of important caveats to the athlete looking to undertake such a program:

1. The athlete is a graduate student with limited commitments and therefore has ample time to devote to such a program without losing sleep.
2. The athlete is one of the most focused and compliant athletes in my stable. The above program is for the athlete intent on improving performance whatever it takes. This is not for everyone.
3. This athlete had one of the widest gaps between his ‘top end’ performance and his ‘all day’ performance. Most of the programs for my other athletes, while similar in overall emphasis are more ‘balanced’ across the intensity spectrum.

So, what results did 9 months on the above program yield…….



Simply, the highest rate of fat oxidation that we have seen to date (elites included) and, the first athlete to achieve the golden number that Professor Tim Noakes hypothesized that Mark Allen must have averaged to support his Kona performances, i.e 10 kcal of fat burned per minute!! In some ways to us, that barrier was like the 4 minute mile, something that sounded theoretically possible but something that we wouldn’t really buy into until we witnessed it first hand. Well, we witnessed it and it was glorious!!

This is not to say that I’m expecting this guy to be challenging Macca for the Kona win anytime soon. If you look at the charts you will see that while his overall economy is dramatically improving, he is still a big guy that chews up a good amount of juice to hold a given pace. However, having a physiological quality that very few people on earth possess (if our sample is anything close to representative) is a great starting point!!

With the sort of base that this athlete has patiently and deliberately taken the time to establish, I will be expecting big things from him in the coming years.

I can see Paradise by the dashboard lights

OK, I have to admit it, the title for today’s post is a little cryptic, even by my standards, the result of one of those long rides where one thought leads to another, then another and, kind of like Chinese whispers, the final thought winds up pretty far removed from where it all began, actually, with a Meatloaf song title :-). So let me explain….

I’ve never been much of a fan of blind faith. If any of my Sunday School teachers are reading this (highly unlikely :-) I’m sure they would concur. Gordo recently posted a discussion on the top 5 questions that we ask ourselves as triathletes. One of the big common questions was “how good can I be?” In a sport that demands the sort of time commitment that triathlon does, the answer to this question can be a (if not THE) big determining factor on whether we make the decision to continue exploring our potential or if we decide that we’ll never make it, “no matter what we do” after a disappointing race result. It is scary to me, as a coach, how fickle many very good athletes’ motivation really is. Make no mistake, if you want to swing your belief pendulum over to the side of genetic determinism, there will be no shortage of references for you to find that will back up your belief. Sometimes when I am reading studies that take this stance, I ask myself if the sports scientist authoring the study was a victim of his own self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me explain.....

Many folks wind up in sports science undergrad programs because of a passion for their own sporting pursuits. For the more ‘academically gifted’ (note the inverted commas!!), a cross-roads will eventually be reached in which the student is forced to make the decision to dedicate themselves to academia (masters, doctorate etc etc) or to continue to pursue their passion in the practice of athletics. It is not a huge leap for the (slightly jaded) PhD candidate to start to look for justifications for the decision that they have made. As one of the few sports scientists who took the other, more bumpy, much less green :-), fork in the road, I am in the unique position to have the background to tell you THE secret – there is no research out there that unequivocally proves that your potential as an athlete is genetically determined. None. Nada. There are short term studies that look at the relative plateau of one element of fitness over a short period of time and come to this conclusion. But there is also the “real life” evidence of (the majority?) of world class athletes who have improved their performance over the course of a decade or more. Science has a hard time explaining why, other than putting it down to a wide range of individual ‘trainability’. To be frank, if you ask a sports scientist “how good can I be?”, the only honest answer he/she can give you is “You’ll have to try and find out”.

However, as I said before, blind faith isn’t really my thing. While, I am by nature an “all in” kind of gambler, I’m not the kind of guy that would invest my life savings in a particular stock, never take the time to look at how it’s trending, and just hope it matures to $10,000,000 within the next decade. Yet, this metaphor exactly describes the way that many athletes approach their pursuit of the sport. Never getting any worthwhile feedback as to how their investment of time is doing. Just hoping that it will work out. Also, never taking the time to systematically investigate other investment options that may return a higher yield. When one fails to embrace this long term view of “how they are doing”, it can be very easy to become swayed by short term feedback. Personal example – Triple T. It would be very easy for me to ascribe my mid-pack performance at the Triple T race to a lack of genetic potential, if I wasn’t keeping the bigger picture in mind. So, what is the “bigger picture”?

One of my buddies/clients, Ryan Novak coined the term “dashboard” for the Excel charts that I generate to track our key performance indicators. I like this term, by keeping our eyes on the ‘dashboard’, we adopt an appropriate speed, we don’t run out of gas, and with the new GPS systems, we even make sure that we stay on the roads that will ultimately lead us to our destination.

An example of one of the “gauges” from my dashboard is shown below (my bike fitness vs. intensity breakdown over the past 17 months).


This chart is the synthesis of A LOT of data points over the course of the previous year. The trend is obvious. While the performance curve is one of diminishing returns, if we play it out to a decade or more, if the trend continues, it places me at a fitness index of ~1.9, equivalent to 270W at my IM heart rate in another 8 years (at age 40). Of course, there are no guarantees here. Like any forecasting, many things could happen between now and then that change the end result. However, now at least it is a calculated risk, one that I can make a conscious, informed decision on whether it is worth taking. It may seem crazy to make the decision to commit the next decade of my life to a result that is by no means guaranteed. However, in my mind, the true ‘reward’ is in making that commitment to spending my 30’s living with a conscious purpose rather than just whittling away my time unconsciously before waking up on my 40th birthday screaming “what have I done with the first half of my life?”. That’s not for me.

Of course, by keeping an eye on my investment, if things start heading South, I can also make a conscious, informed decision to pull the plug (unlikely), or at the very least, I can make the decision that my current strategy is not giving me the return on my time investment that I deserve and try something else (more likely).

What are you basing your training decisions on?

Train smart.

AC.

Note: My Part II on case studies of improvements in fat oxidation will be up next week. I got pumped up by this idea and wanted to post the 'dashboard' blog first.