Tracking My Fitness Progress
I have the Garmin 910XT and no powermeter. I would like to track my fitness progress. Can you advise me on the things I need to be following when measuring my fitness gains. I'm looking for more than the basics: FTP, VDOT, and swim TT pace.
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I'll think you'll find that at different times in your training cycle you will want different information. For example when biking in the out season one of the best metrics is "did I hit all my intervals". As you head towards race season hours per week for s/b/r may be important.
Of course the best way to track fitness progress is to test on a regular basis. You can do the EN protocols or simply run a 5K every quarter or so, bike the same 40K route regularly and swim 1K yards all out once in a while.
For example I am currently in the OS and I intend to test every 4 weeks, rather than the recommended longer periods between testing.
IMO, the more we work hard (and testing is very hard work), the better we learn to suffer.
For me, the mental challenge is to keeping pushing while the hurt is on, and only slow because physically there is nothing more to give — which is in contrast to slowing because I am in pain.
In these situations I keep telling myself that I am working on my mental six pack.
So I would do as Tom suggests, use a 5 km run TT, a 40 km bike TT, and 1000 yard/metres effort to monitor you fitness gains.
To benchmark fitness, you want to know if you are getting faster. I have three or four routes I run and ride enough that I track my times. I keep track of the times in a spreadsheet and keep track of midpoints and little land marks in my head. Example - a little 3.5 mile hill climb by my house. My PR is 0:21:12. I have another longer climb that is not as steep but the distance is 8.5 miles. PR here is 0:48:40. I also have two flat routes I like to measure. One is about 90 minutes and the other is over 2 hours. These routes are great and have little splits along the way to know if I am on pace for a PR or not. It makes for great fun and it makes Strava.com really interesting as well.
After a few dozen rides on these courses you can quickly see what's happening.... The clock doesn't lie and if you do go the powermeter route it is very valuable to compare your watts to your times.