Few weeks ago, I tried to explain how I was using the Performance Management Chart into TrainingPeaks to see if I was over training or not, and to track my recovery week in the grand scheme…

Well, you know what I think should be even better than this ?? Planning you training using this tool !!! Imagine, just an instant, close your eyes, you’re dreaming… In 6 months, you have your ‘A’ Race, you know, the one you’re really aiming for… Imagine if you could setup this in TrainingPeaks, and let TrainingPeaks plan your training using the PMC, setuping automatically your recovery, your blocks, how many TSS you should blow by weeks… In just a couple of clicks, you will know exactly the amount of work you will need to put on your bike, the number of laps you will need to suffer, the number of running shoes you will need to buy before your ‘A’ Race… In order for YOU to be at your peak… Imagine that… It could also be possible, maybe, to include in your fitness summary chart a forecast to show you what will be the damage in the upcoming weeks/months… ??

And now, do not open your eyes yet… Last update on TrainingPeaks, a Weather module appeared… Let your imagination do his job… TrainingPeaks could modify automatically your week in relation with the weather forecast… Why not ?? It’s crappy weather in the way, let’s plan some swim time… It’s spring time in winter ?? Grab the bike ! Same amount of TSS per week, same PMC at the end, just some optimization weather-related… You like running in the rain and swimming when the sun is there, maybe an option could allow that ?? Sounds appealing, isn’t it ??

Now, open your eyes… TrainingPeaks cannot do that… TODAY… What about in the future… ??

Oh… I wish I could be on Monday already… Why ?? I don’t know… Monday sounds like a good day to upgrade a piece of software somewhere…

Will we see some of those ideas ? Only TrainingPeaks Gods know…

Back in December 2011, TrainingPeaks added a feature to apply an elevation correction when you use your GPS watch to train/race.

I’m honest, I’ve never used it before… tonight. I was checking on one hill training session but was not very impressed by the graph

We can see the hills on the green line which represents my heart rate but the hills were not very present on the brown line that should represents the elevation…

I clicked on the little magical button… and…

Now we’re talking !!!

You can be ensure now that I will use this little feature more often…

It’s the start of February, and like many athlete, one of the first thing I’m doing at the beginning of the month is to look at my stats of last month, ie January 2012.

I swam 16 km, ride almost 300 km and ran almost 130 km in the month. I did a nice build phase and now I’m recovering gently before starting a new phase. My form is doing very good and I can see/feel I’m already recovering after a couple of days lighter.

I can feel it, but I can also see it and analyze it

How do I know that ? Just one word: Dashboard !

Plenty of data !!!

This is what my dashboard look like into TrainingPeaks. It seems complex but in fact, that is very simple and easy to read once you have some tips.

Let’s starts from the top left to explain a little bit.

First pod: Weather forecast – Beta feature, I suppose it will be released soon

Well, it’s pretty simple for this one. Not so much to explain

Second pod: Performance Management Chart

This looks like very complex but it gives you a simple view of your form by displaying your short term stress (less than 14 days), your long term stress (more than 14 days) and your resulting form/fatigue.

On my chart, we can see by the blue line that my long term stress is increasing, slowly but surely. The pink line is showing my short term stress is more “choppy”. It is really dependant of the type of training I’m doing, if it was a “hard” day or a “gentle” day. On this example, we can see my pink line decreasing as I’ve been off training for about a week at the end of the year. The result of those lines is the yellow one and is a good indicator of my freshness + fitness, or good form. Like, for example, at the end of the year, by skipping a week, it shows that my form increased a little as I was fresh by not exercising as much as previously. And another example, at the far right of the graph, we can see a little trend to increase again as I’m in my recovery week.

Third pod: Trainign duration

Well, pretty simple again. The black line represents what I was supposed to do, the bars what I’ve done. On this pod, you can choose to represent everything or separate by swim/bike/run. I choose to get 4 pods on my dashboard (Total, Swim, Bike, Run). That way, I can track and see why I felt short on a week. In that specific example, that was the swim…

That’s it for now, the remaining pods in another post