Putting that Pricey Math Minor to Use, Sort Of..

Early in the week you may have noticed my coach (Frank Overton, owner of Fascat Coaching) posted on Facebook "This graph and the athlete's race(s) this past weekend makes me a very happy coach" and attached this:

Which gave me the idea to tell you all what that means, and how Frank's plan, and my legs, come together to make me the best possible cyclist at the perfect time. Its science and math, I love science and math. SO, here we go. This is my job.

Frank is a pioneering contributor and implementer of a mathematical model originally developed by Dr. Andy Coggan, Ph.D that aims to predict an athlete's peak capabilities by quantifying his fitness according to his training over time. Their concept hinges on a very simple formula:

Fitness - Fatigue = Form

Simple enough, right? Form, as a cyclist would describe it, is another way of saying an athlete's ability to do well, often an athlete is described as "being on great form" when he is peaking. Mathematically, form is best described as an athlete's potential to do well, like a rock held up high has the potential to create energy if let go, the higher the rock, the more potential it has to do work. Ultimately, form is an athlete's ability to do work, more specifically, form is POWER.

Every day I ride with a power meter, which records my energy output and saves the data to be later transferred to Frank so he can monitor my training. Power meters provide a unique opportunity for cyclists to quantify with great certainty the difficulty of a training ride. Dr. Coggan developed a method of quantifying training with a metric aptly named "Training Stress Score" or "TSS":

TSS = Exercise Duration * Normalized Power * Intensity Factor ^ 2

Using my power data, and Dr. Coggan's mathematical model, Frank is able to determine my Training Stress Score (TSS) for every ride I do, and thereby can determine the following graph (don't worry, its not as confusing as it looks):

Behold! The Performance Management Chart, 'Ye Holy Grail o Training

This is my Performance Management Chart, starting on October 1, 2013 and showing all the way out to mid-April. There are 3 important lines, numbered sections (which I have added) that correspond to different training blocks, and dots (which you do not need to worry about). SO, Lets get right to it:

• Blue Line with area beneath shaded: This is my Chronic Training Load (CTL). CTL is fitness.  It describes the historic load on an athlete over time according to training. It is logical to say that as you train more, you gain more training load, and you have more ability to perform as that load increases. Think of CTL as lifting that rock higher and higher.
• Purple Line: This is my Acute Training Load (ATL). ATL is fatigue.  It describes the recent effect training has on the athlete, or the negative gain training has on an athlete in the recent future. In other words, if you do a 6 hour day, your ATL will go way up, showing the fatigue associated to the intense load of that training day, however if you take the next 2 days off, ATL decreases as you recover from the effort. So, the higher the purple line, the more tired I am. 
• Yellow Line: This is the Training Stress Balance (TSB). TSB is form, which I talked about above. Form is what we are training for, and it is the relationship between your historic training load (CTL) and your recent activity (ATL).

See? Its not that complicated. We use TSS to quantify the training load each day. That has 2 effects on an athlete:

1. He gets more fit.
2. He gets more tired.

It is easy to conclude, then, that an athlete wants to increase his ability to preform as much as possible, without getting too tired. That is where Frank comes in, and where those numbered boxes are useful (which I will list at the end of this explanation for those interested). Frank implements Dr. Coggan's training model in order to monitor my rising fitness and fatigue, and applies scientifically proven training planning to help me increase my fitness as much as possible before the season of racing begins without getting too tired. Getting too tired can result in over-training, which can be detrimental to an athlete's season, and Frank knows how to walk the line without crossing it (believe me).

Every day during the build Frank has a targeted TSS that I am to hit. My job is to do everything in my power to be ready to hit that number, which means sleeping, eating properly an and off the bike, actually riding said bike, naping, stretching, and self massage with a triggerpoint roller. I also need to give him feedback with how I am feeling during and after rides, which can be valuable information when determining how much ATL is too much ATL. 

Put this all together, and you can actually schedule a peak performance. Look at the Performance Management Chart, on the right side you see dates that have not actually happened yet. That is the model's prediction of the 3 metrics if I were to take each day completely off as far as the chart shows (Frank often puts future training on the chart, which shows where I will be, but for this blog I kept it with 0 training to show what happens). My ATL (fatigue) plummets with the rest, while my CTL (fitness) gradually decreases and my TSB (form) rockets upwards. This, as my coach so eloquently puts it, is "The Shit That Will Kill Them." or the TSTWKT training plan.

That is my job. You can see why sometimes I feel like Frank's surrogate for graph making, because truly that's what I am; a spandex-wearing, sometimes princess-like, surrogate for Franks TSTWKT. Going back to that first graph Frank posted at the top of this blog; the first test of the season was a success that showed Frank we were on track for a great year with a 31 minute 376 watt effort in the opening time trial of the Madera Stage Race. 

We are both working hard and looking forward to a very successful season!

That concludes blog proper, here is the in-depth look at what each box was for my training so far this year (Yellow boxes are rest blocks):

1. Off Season. I was not riding during this time. You can see my CTL decrease from where it left off at the end of the 2013 season.
2. Double Days Part 1: Mornings in the weight room (Adaptation and Hypertrophy phases) and afternoons on the bike in Zone 2 with strength intervals
3. Visit Jackson for some time off.
4. Double Days Part 2: Mornings in the weight room (Strength and Power phases) with afternoons on the bike in zone 2 with anaerobic intervals.
5. Visit Jackson for some ski touring and rest.
6. Double Days Part 2 Cont.: Final build before Christmas break.
7. Christmas in Milwaukee, some weight room and spinning, mostly rest.
8. Riding Build 1: Monk mode training. Eat, sleep, ride, sleep some more. I dealt with some over-training symptoms for most of this build, luckily Frank kept an eye on the power numbers and kept the foot on the gas and got me through it. Big CTL gains with 6, 5, and 4 hour ride blocks with tempo and sweet-spot intervals.
9. Jackson rest with ski touring.
10. Riding Build 2: More CTL building, lots of tempo and sweet-spot intervals. The arrow at the top of the build was the highest CTL I had ever achieved to date, that includes after Tour of California last year. Thats some HUGE training!
11. Rest weekend in Jackson
12. Maintenance rides before camp
13. Rest before Team Camp
14. 5-Hour Energy p/b Kenda Team Camp
15. Big Regeneration Block in Jackson before transitioning into VO2 Efforts and training races.
16. Madera Stage Race and getting sick from the pollen, doing maintenance rides while my body heals.
17. The future!

Now you know how to train. Frank is probably going to be mad that I told you (read more here and here).