HOW TO ASSESS METRICS VISUALLY

So that’s a lot of talking about the theory of managing a ‘season’, but it’s often better conveyed visually. In this chart, the performance manager chart (PMC), we see an athlete’s progression from off the couch, to racing a 60km, 1600m elevation mountain bike marathon.

Visually, you can see the CTL or fitness gradually rising with occasional small peaks followed by small dips. Concurrently, in this graph the relationship between acute load (pink line) and fatigue (yellow fill) is very clearly represented; it’s obvious this athlete was systematic in the way he approached his training! Frequent rises in this athlete’s fatigue (yellow) indicate his recovery weeks.

You can also see in the graph that around 6 weeks from the end of the graph (his target race was at the end) was where his training load peaked, and while we did reduce volume slightly, the increase in intensity leading into the event meant that he was able to maintain a high training load right to the taper. The yellow peak at the end is where we instigated a taper leading into the event; shortened workouts with high intensity (albeit reduced reps of efforts) allowed his ‘freshness’ to increase, and he set a PB and bringing home some well-earned bling.

This masters rider identified that recovery was a challenge for him and we worked on. 2:1 work: rest recovery mesocycle, and this TSS/week chart (or weekly load), which really shows the three-weekly mesocycles.