Triathlon 2.0 by Jim Vance
Jim Vance's recent book Triathlon 2.0 was a fun read for a triathlete who's interested in using all of that data that we generate.
Here is a high level list of bullet points from the book
- It provides a solid list of key metrics along with their definitions as well as tables of typical values for finishers, competitive age groupers and elite athletes.
- It really presents the case for CTL, ATL and TSB measurements.
- It proposes that we should track P30, P60, P90 and decoupling to gauge fitness.
- It gives guidance on how to identify your weaknesses.
- It gives guidance on how to detect that you've plateaued in a particular skill.
- It covers everything from planning your season to post race analysis.
- It plans bike race specific training and racing based on TSS
- It has specific and measurable goals for tapering
- It discusses how to asses the right bike cadence for you based on data
- It offers specific suggestions for what you display on your watch while racing and why
Quoteable Quotes
"Your plan better not be good- it must be great"
"Stop focusing on the pace and focus more on good pacing"
"It's hard to become faster if, in general, you are slow in your training."
"If athletes aren't continuously improving, they are soon left behind, and this trend will only continue."
Let me lead off the discussion:
- He spoke at length about training and planning a particular TSS for a given race. In particular he said that you should pick a TSS that you want to do your bike leg in. You should then use that number to base race specific workouts around. So if you plan to bike 180 TSS on you 70.3 bike leg then you should have several bike workouts of 180 TSS that run off of so you know what that feels like. It also will give you a very realistic measure of race day performance.
- What are the teams thoughts on this? I train in a very flat area and often race in a hilly one. Would a TSS target be a better race simulation than a distance?
- How do you pick a target TSS? I can look at past races. Can we relate this to out IF vs finish time chart?
0
Comments
EN provides some good guidance regarding your second question above in the Wiki. For example, in the Racing with Power section, the tables show us we want to race ~180 TSS for the bike leg of an HIM and ~285 TSS for the full distance IM bike leg in order to run effectively off of the bike.
During my Race Rehearsals found in my EN plan I shoot for those numbers. During non-race rehearsals I will purposefully train at higher TSS loads. I have found that by following the interval guidance in the plans, I often see my fitness levels improve thereby making me faster at given TSS loads as I progress throughout the training cycle, retest and reset my fitness baseline.
I also employ the EN pacing guidance for the run portions of those races and find that guidance to right on the money in most cases factoring weather conditions.
What kind of guidance does the book recommend for TSS loads when biking an HIM, IM race and execution for the run?
so so does anyone train to specific TSS scores in the race prep phase?
Anyway...when you're talking about TSS scores in the race prep phase you're beginning to discuss the Performance Manager Chart (PMC), Acute Training Load (ATL), and Chronic Training Load (CTL). That stuff is more useful to track and manage vs targeting a specific TSS for a specific workout.
That said, I think it's can be useful to keep that 265-300 TSS range in mind for a long bike. For example, if you do a long ride and rack up ^that^ level of TSS, you've basically done IM-bike level of work.
@Chris Oubre I've never aligned the TSS is the race prep phase to the chart but the work you are doing there with the harder intervals during the long bike ride should rack up a fair amount of TSS and make the IM bike ride seem easier at .7-.74.
I remember reading this stuff back in 2009 when I joined the team and purchase the original power webinar. Rich and Patrick were years ahead of the curve on this one.