How do you know if you're making progress with your running and cycling?

TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“Your strength training sessions can do it all!”

By Emma O’Toole

Hello and happy Sunday!

I hope you’re having a good February so far and are starting to look ahead and get excited for your upcoming events and races.

I recently held a live training Q&A session in my free online community where members could submit their questions and have them answered live on the call.

A fantastic question came in regarding progress. This is so important as progress motivates us and often relates to how consistent we are with our training because we see the value in it. A happy runner and cyclist = a consistent runner and cyclist.

Progress- Something we all want and strive towards with our training:

• Being able to run/ride for longer,

• Being able to ride/run quicker,

• Feeling fitter when you do run/ride.

Progress is infinite in our sports. But how do we know if we’re making it?

Easy!

1. Being able to run and ride for longer.

2. Being able to run and ride quicker.

Or is it?

Let’s take the above question where this runner has been running on and off now for 6 months and doesn’t know if she is making progress other than by her times.

After a back-and-forth email exchange to learn more, I understand that she’s been running 3-4x most weeks for roughly 40 minutes on 2 different routes from her house. She has had a couple of weeks where she’s only ran once or not at all mainly because of work, and another week where she did 20 minute runs because she was lacking motivation.

The distance she covers in that 40 minutes doesn’t really change, most runs she hits 6km.

So how do we know if she is making progress?

How to measure progress:

Measuring progress by the time it takes to cover a certain distance is a pillar of endurance sports, that’s how races are won. However, if we are to measure progress only by the time it takes to cover a certain distance, we’re going to come up short.

To start with, the distance you cover is going to be relative to where you are running/riding. You wouldn’t choose Great Yarmouth North Beach as a park run course to set a PB on! Similarly, consider how much ground you’d cover going up the Col du Galibier for 40 minutes, compared to the distance you’d cover going down it. In the descent you’d cover a lot more distance and for less effort!

There are many factors at play that will affect your ability to cover a distance in a certain time. From a poor night’s sleep, a stressful week at work to not eating enough to mention just three things that will certainly impact your running and cycling.

You can begin to see just how we can come a little unstuck if we only measure progress by time and distance. We must think bigger.

A key way to monitor progress is to look at your heart rate and ask yourself the following question:

What is my heart rate showing me NOW compared to in the past?

Going back to the question, despite the runner not covering more distance in her 40 minute runs, we found that her average heart rate for the runs had dropped by a huge 19 bpm.

This looked as follows:

So whilst on the face of it, the distance she covered is not showing us progress; her heart rate data shows us otherwise. I would guarantee that if she were to repeat her 40 minute run but go back to holding 162bpm, she’ll cover more than the 6km distance (watch this space as she is going to give it a go!).

This is just one way to use heart rate to monitor progress, let’s take a hypothetical example of a cyclist who has been doing 5× 2 minute intervals with a 2 minute recovery once a week for the past 6 weeks. His average power output for the 2 minute intervals has not increased.

Again, if we are to only measure progress by increased average power output then this rider wouldn’t have made progress. Yet let’s measure progress in a different way!

We can see that in this example, the rider’s heart rate is dropping to 140 bpm a lot quicker, despite his power output largely remaining the same in his intervals. This is a clear indicator that he is making progress and that his recovery between intervals is improving, (it would also be worth looking at his average and peak heart rate in the intervals too).

Other ways to monitor progress:

The above 2 ways of monitoring progress are still quite data driven, this is the sort of information I am looking out for in the athletes I coach. Other approaches less heavy on the data side of things to monitor your progress could be as follows:

• How consistent are you with your training?

  If you've gone from struggling to do 1x ride a week to now consistently doing 3x sessions a week, then that is progress!

• Track your RPE for your runs/rides and compare over time.

  If you’re RPE for a run used to be a solid 8/10, but now it’s more of than not a 6/10, then that is progress!

• Track your RPE across ‘standout segments’ and compare over time.

  Did that last part of your hill typically have you pushing your bike up it, whereas now you’re able to ride to the top? If so, then that is progress!

And perhaps the most important of all…?

• Are you enjoying your training?

  If you’ve gone from feeling that every session was a slog, to now feeling motivated and happy when you do train (not every session, but on the whole!), then this is progress!

Hopefully this helps you see beyond a time and distance equalling progress as there really is so much more to it! Enjoy the ups, downs and everything in between on your running and cycling journey and please reach out if I can help in any way!

If you’d like the link to watch the live Q&A, please click yes below and I’ll send you the link.

Have a great Sunday!

Emma

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