Measure What Matters: Nov ‘24

Hey, this is Tom and Emma from High North Performance with the November In-Form Newsletter. We trust your training’s been going well since the last one?

In this edition of the newsletter, we wanted to talk about an important principle that sometimes coaches and self-coached cyclists run into issues with, and that’s measuring what matters…

The central purpose of training is to stimulate specific adaptations in order to improve cycling fitness and performance, whether that be for an event with a particular set of demands or for more informal situations like being faster on a group ride or bagging more Strava segments!

Within this process, measuring and tracking improvements in fitness is important to A) determine if your training approach is producing the desired results and B) to provide motivation and encouragement to keep up with the work of training!

Cycling is a sport that can produce a lot of data and there are plenty of metrics that can be used to help determine whether improvements are occurring and to what extent. But, the thing we think is key to understand is that some metrics are more and less relevant at different times of the year, different phases of the training cycle and when you are focusing on improving particular components/areas of your cycling fitness. 

It’s important to select and look at the right metrics at the right times, or to put it another way, to measure what actually matters and not be led into drawing false conclusions through either tracking the wrong numbers or looking for improvements in areas of your fitness that aren’t the priority temporally. 

As an example, throughout the “base” training period or “general” preparation phase, it’s helpful to track metrics that relate to the building of foundational aerobic fitness such as “Efficiency Factor” (EF), Power:HR decoupling, wattage at the first lactate threshold and RPE in the final 30 minutes of comparable long duration, lower intensity rides. 

The above metrics are distinct from those perhaps more related to typical “peak” or competition periods which, depending on the cycling discipline(s) you’re focusing on, could be more like your VO2max, Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAnT) test performance, or even fresh FTP test numbers.

Tracking some of the peak-associated values at the early stages of your training cycle is possible, but could lead to false conclusions about whether you are progressing and where this progress is occurring. What you don’t want this situation to give rise to is a change in your training approach that might be counterproductive. 

Unfortunately, we do see this happen and the common scenario is athletes prematurely switching from a patient base-building approach to trying to build more advanced elements of their cycling fitness before a sufficiently developed foundation is in place… 

They may use “maximal” metrics like those from a VO2max test, conclude their aerobically-focused training isn’t moving the needle quickly enough, and begin to load their training weeks with more and more high intensity as a result. A few weeks later, after seeing some rapid improvements in these advanced metrics, it’s common for them to experience stagnation, frustration, burnout and sub-par performances.

Perhaps this email is just another way to communicate the important message (particularly at this time of year) to take a long-term view and build fitness patiently! Hopefully though, it’s also helpful more specifically in terms of how you might interpret the work you’re doing in the earlier parts of the year/season and motivate yourself throughout what’s often a difficult period, especially if you’re not looking through the right lens to see the progress you are indeed making!

News

We’re in the process of moving some of our plans (currently built in TrainingPeaks) over to intervals.icu, so that they’re available on that platform too, just like our Complete Workout Library product. 

Please let us know if you’re interested in a particular plan(s) we have for sale on TrainingPeaks that you might want on intervals.icu, and we’ll prioritise converting these over.

As always, our other products are still for sale, including the popular Cycling Physiology guide and Optimal Cycling Nutrition guide. If you’d like to pick up any of these as a gift for a special athlete in your life, just get in touch 👍

Thanks for taking the time to read our emails and we look forward to seeing you in next month’s festive edition! Best of luck with your riding and training until then.

Tom & Emma

High North Performance