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2014 Season training/racing data/stats

My season is over and during my down time I'm reviewing my training/racing from 2014.  I did one of these last year.  Only a few people played along and shared their data.  Hopefully I'll get more participation this year.  I thought it would be fun to share and discuss numbers , review and compare season over season , race to race (if doing the same race) ,  etc.   So at the very least I hope to prompt people to review their year end data , share , question , discuss.

I'll call my season 12/15/13 - 10/11/14.... 10 months or 43 weeks..... 12/15/13 was the beginning of OS after 5 weeks downtime after IMFL last race of 2013 and 10/11/14 was KONA the last race of the season....  I'm currently on day 13 with ZERO bike/run wko's , eating , sleeping and recharging.

My main goals this season were to get faster at all 3 SBR and secondly maintain consistency through out the year to add to last year's consistency.  I structured my year (based loosely and hacked against the season plan Coach R prepared for me)  with approximately 10 weeks of OS , 9 weeks IMTX build , 3 week taper ,  12 week maintenance mode , 5 week build for IMCHOO , 3 week taper , 2 week recovery , KONA.... While I failed to get noticeably faster in any of the SBR tests (only matching last years bests)  I did benefit from the consistency and had a great year of racing with no injuries.

Training Data totals and averages for 43 weeks , (complete days off in 43 weeks 7days) .

Total  626.9 hrs         14.57 hrs per week       shortest week 8 hrs                longest week 30 hrs

TSS    41,971            976  per week              lowest weekly TSS 400           highest weekly TSS 1694

Swim  457,739 yds   10,645 yds per week    lowest weekly yardage 2000    highest weekly yardage 20,000

Bike  307.75 hrs        7.15 hrs per week        lowest weekly bike time 3:29   highest weekly bike time 18:42

Run  1358.1 miles      31.58 miles per week   lowest weekly run mileage 9   highest weekly mileage 55  

NOTE:  the only data that is not 100% correct is the TSS.... It includes Swim TSS... I was very careful to keep the threshold Swim test/pace updated.... However , when ever using fins, paddles, wetsuits ,PB's , etc the times are faster and therefore records a higher TSS than is realistic.  Rather than trying to adjust threshold pace of the TSS I just let it roll.  

TESTING for the  SBR during the season was 6-7 tests of each SBR all from December to late June... no testing after that....

Racing Data for the 43 weeks .... 21 races total ....  3 IM's ,  3 HIM's  , 2 OLY's , 1 Sprint , 2 HM's(one a DNF) , 5 5k's , 2 swim meets (senior olympics) , 2 bike TT's (senior olympics) , and 1 point to point OWS .....

Going forward for 2015.... Planning another season with 3 IM's... IMLP , KONA , IMAZ ....  The main thing is the season will start in July instead of May... So I will be enjoying an extended break and lots of unstructured training before the 2015 season kick's off.... Have some other idea's and surprises but will put those into another thread!

Feel free to add your own data to the thread for discussion .......

Questions or comments about any of the data I presented or any data I didn't ?   PMC numbers?  Tapering?  Anything?

 

Comments

  • Tim, interesting data. I'm curious when your HIM's were and how they were timed with your ironmans?
  • @ Tim - I'm calling you out again! Every single one of your high weeks vastly exceeds anything I've done. I couldn't approach those numbers unless I were fully retired. Very eye opening to say the least. I look forward to reading about your new surprises!
  • @Tom .... First IM was IMTX 5/17 .... The HIM's were 6/28 , 7/26 , 8/24 .... IMCHOO 9/28 and KONA 10/11 .... The HIM's started 6 weeks after IMTX , then every 4 weeks , after the last one it was 5 weeks to IMCHOO.... All 3 HIM's were done during my 12 week maintenance mode ( meaning 1 FTP ride , 1 speed run wko , 1 3hr ride , 1 90 min run per week). I treated them as serious races but with train through intentions of 2-3 day taper and 2-3 day recoveries. Was very pleased with how it worked out having very good races and great training for maintaining my fitness/speed without having to do another full IM build... I certainly wouldn't recommend a schedule like that unless you have a good background of training/racing and know your recovery.... I did come to the conclusion that in a perfect world I would prefer my last HIM race to be 6 weeks prior to any IM's.... But its not a perfect world and I have already signed up for Patriotman HIM 5 weeks prior to IMLP next year.... It works but I think 6 weeks would be optimum for me anyway. Hope that covers it?
  • Tim...Wow 21 races!! That's some serious effort.  Thanks for sharing all this.  I have one more race to go , and I'll post my data after AZ.  But like Paul's comments, I don't come close to the work you put in.  I'm so gald it pays off for you.  Congrats on another great racing season.  PS - I marvel at your ability to stay healthy with all that racing..
  • Awesome stuff Tim! I plan on doing this same breakdown but my season is still going...

    How did you export this? I have all my data in Training Peaks but I couldn't figure out a way to get a good dump of data per week.
  • @Paul and Bruce.... Yes the weekly high numbers look pretty impressive but those high numbers are extremes... Biggest training week of 30hrs compares to the the next 3 biggest weeks between 20-22hrs , I had 9 weeks between 16-19hrs and most of them fell in the 13-15 range , and 6 weeks under 9hrs.... Swim 20k in one week but the next closest week was 16k , Bike week of 18:42 vs the next closest of 12:46 while most of them were in the 7-8hr range , Run high mileage of 55 vs 2 weeks @ 50 so that one was pretty close.... Averages of extremes.... Oh and Paul I am retired ... Sorry and agree one could never train 30hrs in a week while working but my average of 14hrs per week is right inline with what I used to accomplish while working shift work , nights, days and mids.... The biggest benefit of retirement is not more training but more recovery!

    @Peter.... I did it the hard way... Not very tech savvy.... TP does run a weekly or monthly total for you and then you can do the math from there.... Maybe Garmin , Strava , or TP has a better way but I don't know it.... What I did is keep a running hard copy of my weekly totals that I can track and look at as I go through a build.... I kept the 22 weeks running tab leading into IMTX 2014 next to the 22 week running tab leading into IMTX 2013 to compare real time what I was doing this year compared to last .
  • Tim- how does this season compare to previous training wise and race results wise? did you get a good ROI? (looks to me like u kicked butt but want hour persepctive)

    Ok, I'll play Tim! I don't have the same stats, but here is what I can pull pretty easily:

    Here's training for last 12 months. (Did NOS last year so data goes Nov13-today)

    Swim- 52,800 yds (max month 10k). Swam less this year than previous with no decline in race performance.
    Bike-2,798 mi. (Mx month 356)
    Run- 517 mi (max month 67)

    Races - running: 1- 4.7mi, 5- 5ks, 2- HMs, 2 HIMs, 2 sprints, 1 Oly, 1 relay sprint (bike), 1 bike TT

    I def have less training than most cuz I'm slow and I frequently take the "MS only" very literally. I did have what I consider a good season, with PRs in just about every race I did, however, I feel my run progress is slow. (Not my fave for sure). My goal for the season was to do another non-IM season to build more "fast" before 2015 IMChoo. (My first and only IM was IMFL in '12 in 16:29)
  • @Kim... The first 22 weeks pre-IMTX for 2014 vs. 2013.... 2014 was 51.5hr more training , 1893 more TSS , 35,353 more swim yards , 24hrs more bike , and 160 more run miles.... Can't really compare the remainder of yr over yr due to the broken collarbone debacle in 2013... Was it worth the ROI ? Since all the low hanging fruit is long gone I will take any gains possible with as much work as required. So while for most the ROI will probably not be worth it ... It was too me.... I ended up 26 minutes faster @ IMTX but was a much cooler year. I did not set any new records in training tests. But had many PR swims for all TRI distances (may have been my new ROKA). PR'ed the HIM distance. NO PR's for any other TRI distances , or bike/run splits.... But with the exception of my KONA race was very consistent power/pace ranking wise throughout the year and also noticed no FTP or Vdot fade thru the season as normally happens. So while I wasnt producing any higher power or paces I felt I could race at higher percentages of those numbers and keep them thru the year.

    Kim Your Numbers ? How do they compare to last year and the previous year? Your steady progress and improvement over the years has been impressive. Good analysis of year over year with the data you have should help you design a plan for your assault on IMCHOO.... Look at not just totals and results but look at how much FTP work and run speed work you handled each week etc , that will arm you with questions for the coaches in your season road map !
  • Tim- as long as you're happy with the effort/results, that's a positive ROI! image

    since I didn't do an IM in 2014, I can't really use those numbers to compare. 2013 was a short course only year so def not apples to apples. I will be looking at my training volume from 2012 for sure as I feel I was undertrained. But again, that's mostly a function of my slowness. But since I'm faster than "Kim 2012", that will correct itself quite a bit just from that.

    Did your training represent following EN plan to the letter mostly or did your do any hacks to get to the plan you ultimately followed?
  • @Kim, I hack the plans pretty good. Coach R. built me a season road map which I use through out the year to correlate the amount of FTP/speed etc work per week. I usually do less than all the plans of the speed work. I set some self imposed limits that I think I can handle on a weekly basis for the amount FTP,VO2 , and run speed work.... I pretty much follow the GET fast schedule layout through out the year. That layout enables me to do longbike saturday and longrun sunday.... I found out I can't handle the hard back to back bikes.....
  • My goals this season were to be consistent and get faster than last year (my first year doing long course tri).  I was successful. I also wanted to avoid injury but unfortunately I had a few injuries sprinkled along the way, and am currently working through another one (glutes this time) forcing me to miss  a half marathon tomorrow.  I clearly still need to learn to be patient and listen to my body.   I started the OS on Jan 6 and pretty much hacked everything from then until, now, mostly due to a heck of a lot more swimming and working things around 60-70hrs of work/week and being on call overnight once per 7-8days. 

    42 weeks (Jan 06 until today),  437 hours.  longest week was 18 hours (big bike week in Tucson).  Shortest week was 3.2 hours (March 3-9 family ski vacation).  

    5140km/180 hours cycling, 1300km/ 120 hours running, 264000m/85 hours swimming, 52 hours strength training

    TSS (also includes swimming):  624/week.  shortest 200, longest 1070

    swim: 6500m/week.  shortest week 0 (once).  longest week 10000m/3 hrs.

    bike: 4.5hrs week.  shortest week 0 (3 times this september, october)  Longest week 15 hrs

    run: 31k/week.  shortest week 1.6k (knee injury end of february).  longest week 60k/ 6 hrs

    I did 1 sprint duathlon, 1 sprint triathlon, 2 HIM distance races (Challenge St andrews and Rev3 Maine), 1 5k and 1 10k.  Thats it 6 races.

    Next year I hope to do 3 HIM races was well as the EN tour of California camp as well as maybe 1-2 sprint tris, 1-2 5ks, 1-2 10k, and maybe finally get to that HM.  Hoping to keep building on this years' speed.  I would love to someday do a full distance tri but I think that is maybe 5 years off when the kids are grown. 

  • I'll play Tim (as I did last year). But I'm slammed at work so won't have data for a bit. Poke me if I forget, although with 2 round-trips to Europe in the next 7 days I'll have a some time to kill in airplanes.
  • Tim, Thanks for the data. It's great to see and compare with my own training levels. 

  • My season won't end for another three weeks. I'l provide a summary on or about Nov 18th.

  • Thanks for starting the tread Tim. I'm in.

    This year was my first with EN. Before that I've used plans from Joe Freil and Gale Bernhardt so it was interesting to go back and compare the last couple of years to this one in terms of time, distance, and results. I did one IM this year, a marathon, and a half-marathon. The marathon was the Avenue of the Giants and it was my daughter's first one so I ran it with her at her pace. The HM was at the end of the NOS and I set a personal best so I was pleased with that. The IM was the Vineman in July and it wasn't a PR but it was a very hot day. Even though it wasn't a PR I finished higher overall than I ever have at that race and I won my age group.

    After the Vineman I took a couple of weeks off and then got back into some sporadic training of a couple of runs and a bike per week for about 5 weeks. During that time I was getting a lot of work done on the house so I was spending many hours each week moving around with a 10 pound tool belt around my waist, climbing ladders, etc. When September rolled around I started back into a bike focused plan and was doing mostly 5-7 hours a week except for one week when we went to Penticton to check out the Challenge Penticton course. That week I rode quite a bit and the total time was over 10 hours.

    I started the NOS last year on October 28th and finished the year with the Vineman on July 27th. I didn't include any other totals after that. For comparison sake I used the same time frame for the 2012 season. That year I did a HIM as well as the Vineman. In 2013 I did two HIM's and the season went until September 8th so that training season is longer.

    Here are the totals for the last 3 seasons.(Distances are in miles for bike and run and yards for swim)

    Year 2012 2013 2014
    Total time 369 306 311.5
    Swim 68.5 48 36
    Bike 168 123 169
    Run 125 123 96
    Swim Dis 179700 125300 104800
    Bike dis 2788 2100 2930
    Run dis 815 810 613

    Since I did the Vineman as my A race in 2012 and 2014 I'll compare those two years. I had a personal best time in 2012 with an 11:52. In 2014 I did it in 12:10 but the temps were over 100 on the bike and in the 90's for the first 2 hours of the run. In 2012 I came in 117th overall and in 2014 I was 44th overall. My run in 2014 was only 4 minutes longer than my run in 2012 which I think it a good result given the temps and the fact that I ran 30 hours and 200 miles less this year than in 2012. My swim this year was 2 minutes slower than in 2012, but again I swam 30 hours and 75K yards less this year. I was 10 minutes slower on the bike this year but my VI was much better and I dialed it back early because of the heat. It's interesting that I spent an identical amount of time on the bike this year but I racked up 140 more miles. I like that trend.

    My biggest week this year was 18:20 and my smallest was 0 because I came down with a cold after the marathon and shut it down for the week to recover. My longest bike week was 12:02 with a couple of other 11+ hour weeks but most were in the 5-7 hour range. My longest run week was 5:20 with one other at 5:16 (camp and race rehearsal weeks), most were in the 3:30 range. My longest swim week was 3:28 but most were in the 2 hour range. I de-emphasized swimming this year and I realize that I could make some gains there next year.

    So next year I'm going to do a HM at the end of NOS, the Victoria 70.3 in June and Challenge Penticton in August. I start NOS tomorrow and so it goes. I'm looking forward to seeing how my second year with EN goes.

  • Bumping this back up to see if anyone else wants to share. Here's my report on 2014 training efforts, compared to previous years:

    Year           Swim #/hrs/distance        Bike #/hours/distance    Run #/hours/distance    Weights #/hours  DH Ski #/hours  Total #/hours

    2007          126/103/262653 m          178/349/5081 mi            170/149/1029 mi            79/69                   12/26                 565/695

    2008          137/119/316179              168/327/5062                 180/160/1078                 74/56                   11/29                 570/690

    2009          137/119/323940              177/361/5734                 187/163/1095                 61/48                   19/37                 582/728

    2010          80/62/177487                  125/256/4288                 124/106/745                   28/24                   16/36                373/483

    2011          140/106/284413              144/283/4700                 165/134/926                   85/65                    11/20                545/608

    2012          124/95/254548                141/260/4488                 141/128/875                   65/37                    17/31               488/551

    2013          117/96/6265757               139/274/4589                151/156/1089                 111/44                   7/12                526/584

    2014          113/99/268774                 132/275/4500                149/159/1083                 105/52                  25/49              524/634  

     A few comments about the years:


    • 2009 featured my highest volume, most workouts, and overall best results: 2 course record/IM AG wins, a trip to Kona, and my run and bike PRs for an IM
    • 2010 was cut short in Mid-Sept; extrapolating to a full year, the totals would have been a bit less than the year before
    • 2012 was repeatedly interrupted by a series of minor surgeries, which really ate into my swimming, and disrupted training in general
    • 2014 results: Boston Marathon finish > 5 minutes under the BQ time; IM AG wins x 2 @ CDA and AZ; Qualifying for USAT Nat'l Team for ITU WC in '15; a sorry finish in Kona. Ski #s are inflated by a ski trip this December.

    Conclusion: I think volume does make a difference when searching for the final few % needed for ultimate success. I intend to up the work in all three sports this year, a lot in cycling, some in swimming, and a little in running. Also, the best year I had in triathlon, was also the year I skied the most the previous winter (2009), for whatever that's worth.

  • question"
    where are you pulling this data from? WKO+, Training peaks? garmin? Strava?

  • Posted By Scott Dinhofer on 04 Jan 2015 06:58 PM


    question"

    where are you pulling this data from? WKO+, Training peaks? garmin? Strava?

    My data is from my long-time training log, called "The Athlete's Diary", from Stevens Point software. I keep using it because I have data in it since, oh, about 2002. It has a quick and easy summary mode, to look at weekly/monthly/yearly totals, easily slide and diced by sport and even by key words (like, I can just pull up all my rides which include "Maroon", to get Maroon Creek road rides; all runs labeled "long run" to get those, etc. I like this program because I can include lots of searchable free text incorporating just the elements of each workout that I want to take note of, and then can compare easily similar workouts from build to build.

    As the years have rolled by and new gadgets and apps haver appeared, I find myself also storing workout data in the following places: WKO+ on my mini-PC; Strava, TrainerRoad, and Garmin Connect on the web; and Garmin Training Center and my Athlete's Diary on my Mac. Many of those I can also access from my iPad. I do all those it seems mostly for fun and social sharing, although the charts in WKO come in handy now and then for review.

  • @Scott ... In TP you can configure your Fitness Summary on the Dashboard set to last year.... It will give you a nice pie chart and you can highlight the totals for each sport..

    Follow up totals for me for 2014 year (not season)
    S- 139.5hrs - 18.9%
    B-334 hrs - 49.1%
    R- 236hrs - 32 %
    Total 2014 hrs 709 vs Total 2013 hrs of 612.5
  • Here is my go:

    2014 was my second year as a triathlete. My 'A' races were Oceanside, IMCDA, AG Olympic Nationals, and the CIM marathon. In 2013 I only had 1 'A' race at the end of the year (Austin 70.3). Looking at my numbers I can clearly see that I need to be on the bike more! Also, I sure swim a lot for being so slow. My peak running week was 52 miles and that was gearing up for the marathon. During the Ironman build I had a solid month of 40+ miles per week running. Also, I did a big bike week where I rode for 25 hours!

    My plan for 2015 is to catch up my cycling and swimming to my running abilities and have it all together for Ironman Wisconsin. I am doing the Tour of California which will certainly help on the bike.


    Running:
    2013: 804.6 miles
    2014: 1,382.6 miles

    Cycling
    2013: 2,733 miles
    2014: 3,751 miles

    Swiming:
    2013: 120,000 yards
    2014: 311,000 yards
  • ok, apparently I started using strava last spring and my previous Garmin files didnt upload, anyone know how to get the previous data into Strava?

    garmin is a big fail on the issue of totals. If you search a date range and activity type it will not show you totals. If you download to CSV, apparently it only downloads the visible page you are looking at, not all 12 pages of data! I called garmin on this and they confirmed that this is the case. that SUX

    I do have ALL of my WKOs in garmin. I am in process of getting them into my PC on WKO+ as I had gotten a new PC last year and did not get around to installing WKO+ until the summer, so i have a big hole of data there...
  • Scott... Open Garmin in Classic Version , select tab Analyze, then select Reports , select time frame, select sport!
  • thanks Tim, also learned that Garmin Connect is optimized for Chrome & buggy in Firefox!

    2014 Stats (I took off 9 months ended June 2013, so that year isn't a good comparison)
    Running 147 Runs 997 Miles 142 hours
    biking 123 Rides 3609 Miles 213 Hours
    Swimming 67 Swims 153,120 yards 56 Hours
  • Here are my 2014 numbers (including races):

    Swim: 176 swims, 360,000 meters, 2045 m average per swim

    Bike: 166 rides, 5941 miles, 35.8 miles average per ride

    Run: 213 runs, 1198 miles, 5.6 miles average per run

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