Well I decided to dig deeper into the Fitness, Fatigue and Form graph (because well that's what I do).
So, definitions:
COPIED AND PASTED FROM STRAVAISTIX
TRIMP =
"TRaining IMPulse or TRIMP
Represents the amount of heart stress during an activity. The longer you ride at full throttle, the more you SCORE !! So go outside suffer for twelve hours! Or stay here to understand what it returns...
TRIMP is a way to model the human athletic performance. This concept has been introduced by Dr Eric Banister.
Ok, Cool... But how this works?!
StravistiX computes
TRIMP on activities using the most sophisticated approach:
TRIMP Exponental Heart Rate Scaling which use your
Heart Rate Reserve or HRR.
HRR is basically your heart effort level according to your heart capacity .
What are all these terms?! Don't panic... Here is an explanation from a Math view (you may hate that, sorry...).
According this
TRIMP Exponental Heart Rate Scaling formula, the longer you ride at full throttle, the more you SCORE !
But this heart score seems to be
Strava Suffer Score?! Not really...
Strava Suffer Score is only inspired by the TRIMP concept. However the idea is same and both score are correlated.
Need more infos? Then read more about
HRR here and
TRIMP here
These indicators can be more meaningfull than average heart rate itself to analyse activity heart rate. For example, you upload an activity in which you ride pretty fast for a long time. Then, you expect to have a good average heart rate. Unfortunately, you have to go through the city to go home where many red lights and cars behavior slow you down. Your average heart rate then drops very quickly and do not highlight your effort of "riding fast". In this example, the 75% quartile heart rate is representative of the effort you made (eliminating low heart rate associated with the cross of the city)."
So, TRIMP = HOW HARD THE RUN WAS
Fitness = The
Fitness curve is the long-term average daily training load. Default period is fixed to 42 days (or six weeks), so it will take ~6 weeks for your
Fitness to be accurate. It's basically the foundations, the potential availability of the athlete... You can't get into big rides/runs or races without a minimum of fitness acquired. If that curve is too regular or too flat, it is not usually a sign of good training
Fatigue = The
Fatigue curve is the short-term average daily training load. Same way than
Fitness but default period is fixed to 7 days (one week). Conceptually, fatigue is easy to understand: It's the tired feelings which limits your performance. This curve varies much faster than
Fitness curve. On
Fatigue curve, you can see the fatigue climbing sharply in response where you performed workouts with a high stress. But also go down quickly as you take few days off.
Form = The
Form curve is simply the difference between
Fitness and
Fatigue, it's the right balance of stress you should look at to avoid over training for example.
When Form = :
- +25 < Form : Transition zone. Athlete is on form. Case where athlete has an extended break. (e.g. illness, injury or end of the season).
- +5 < Form < +25 : Freshness Zone. Athlete is on form. Ready for a race.
- -10 < Form < +5 : Neutral Zone. Zone reached typically when athlete is in a rest or recovery week. After a race or hard training period.
- -30 < Form < -10 : Optimal Training Zone.
- Form < -30 : Over Load Zone. Athlete is on overload or over-training phase. They should take a rest!
Fitness is the long term gains over time. Fatigue is the short term tired feelings. Form is the balance between Fitness and Fatigue.
This makes sense to me. I've always said that training is the consistency from one training run to the next. If you've got consistency, then you'll continuously improve. If you start to miss runs or adjust things, then you'll probably stagnate. It also means that no one run defines the training cycle. That 150 minute LR is important, but so is the Tempo run proceeding it and the speed workout after it. It just further underlines that training is not just one single important run, but rather the cumulative effect of all the training.
The balancing between Fitness and Fatigue is important too. You could do a massive training week and you'd slightly improve your Fitness, but you would greatly increase Fatigue. Too much fatigue and you increase the chance for injury.
So what's it look like in action:
This is the overall trend from the last year. You can see Dopey Marathon and then time off. Then the Daniels 10k training. Then Daniels race season. Then Lakefront Marathon Training.
Interestingly, I felt like I was peaking right around the end of April and beginning of May and this confirms that. I coincidentally did my first 5k time trial (19:30) that week and had my best performance.
You can also see during Lakefront training everything was going well until I missed a day and started adjusting the plan in mid-August. Fatigue and Fitness were in lock-step up until then, and then I kind of stagnated because of those changes. One because I was feeling tired and the other because of a charley horse. But even that short time only made me stay even in Fitness and not lose anything. Then training continued as normal until now.
But I decided to take it one step further.
This is the data inputted into Excel. First off, I noted that the Fitness score is not the average of the last 42 days of TRIMP (as the description stated) nor is Fatigue the last 7 days. Interestingly enough, I noticed a different trend.
OFF = 2.4% drop in Fitness and 13.3% drop in Fatigue
6 Easy Miles = 0.8-0.9% drop in Fitness and 4.9% drop in Fatigue
7 Easy Miles = 0.6-0.7% drop in Fitness and 4.5% drop in Fatigue
HM Tempo = 1.5% gain in Fitness and 9.5% increase in Fatigue
Max M Tempo = 3% gain in Fitness and 16% increase in Fatigue
12 mile LR = 1-2% gain in Fitness and 4-12% increase in Fatigue
Max LR = 4% gain in Fitness and 20% increase in Fatigue
These workouts seemed to be relatively consistent in their effect on Fitness and Fatigue. So the question became could I pre-predict the effect on training going into my taper?
Original Plan - easy on Tues, Max Tempo, LR 12 miles, 4x400 CV. Total Fitness 107.1 with a Form of 21.1 (Fresh is 5-25).
Max Fitness - HM Tempo on Tues, Max Tempo, LR 12 miles, 4x400 CV. Total Fitness 109.3 with a Form of 10.7 (Fresh is 5-25).
Slight Tweak - HM Tempo on Tues, Max Tempo, Easy, 4x400. Total Fitness 107.4 with a Form of 18.8.
Another Slight Tweak - HM Tempo on Tues, Max Tempo, LR 12, easy. Total Fitness 107.1 with Form of 20.1
When I look at this it looks like I have two options: Max Fitness with just enough rest or optimal plan with the most freshness (but not too much). It's kind of interesting to see the little changes to the plan and how they change the impact on the possible values (based on past historical results).
I looked back at training to see if I could notice a trend. I was Fresh going into two previous training runs this cycle (not ideal as you should be training in the optimal zone).
8/8/17
2 mile WU + 8x800 @ CV w/ 45 sec RI @ WU + 4 x 200m @ R w/ 200m RI + 2 mile CD
CV Pace = 6:23 min/mile (2% less than Lactate Threshold)
CV Window = +/- 3 seconds (3:08.5-3:14.5)
Mile Pace = 5:28 min/mile (41 sec 200m)
Mile Window = +/- 1 sec (40-42 sec)
My legs were feeling relatively good coming into the run. After the last hard run last week Friday, followed by easy, easy, off, I felt as if I was turning a corner again.
T+D of 136 with mostly cloudy skies.
CV Pace = 3:08.7, 3:13, 3:10, 3:09, 3:10, 3:11, 3:10, 3:11
Solid CV pacing all around. 8/8 intervals hit. Some needed to be pushed at the end to get to pace. Some needed to be slowed way down to get to pace. Sometimes it felt easy. Sometimes it felt difficult. But overall, it was a great run!
Mile Pace = 39.5, 39.6, 39.5, 39.0
These were suppose to be at 41 seconds. But if I'm being honest, this was the correct pace. It felt comfortable and I felt fast. Done and done!
8/15/17
2 mile WU + 6 x 1 mile @ HM Tempo w/ .25 mi RI @ WU + 2 mile CD
T+D of 120 and clouds.
HM Tempo = 6:41 min/mile
HM Tempo window = +/- 10 seconds
I was trying to be cautious with this run. I wasn't sure what was up with my legs. A little more tired and sore than normal. But the very slight pain in my left shin was concerning. Was the issues I had during the 2016 Lakefront Marathon returning? I wanted to try a few of the splits at 0 elevation gain and then if things were feeling fine, I'd add back in the hills. My thought process was maybe my shins were taking a beating on the faster paced runs going downhill. Minimize pace on downhill running and maybe things would feel better.
HM Tempo = 6:40, 6:41, 6:47, 6:47, 6:41, 6:43
The first two HM Tempos felt strong. Evenly paced throughout. I decided to give the hill a chance for the next two. The pace was still good. There were points during this run where I thought this pace was sustainable. Then, after successfully completing the first 4 intervals without any shin issues, I wrapped the last two on the flat course (not willing to risk it). Solid run overall! 6/6 intervals hit and the HR average was fairly low for a HM Tempo run. I was awarded a new VO2max (since changing my input data) of 58. This felt like an appropriate improvement since the run felt pretty good overall.
Sounds like I felt pretty good going into both of those runs. So the Freshness score of 5-10 was enough to tell a difference. I'm going to err on the side of more freshness because this is a marathon. I'd venture to guess that requires a higher Freshness score, but I wasn't able to find any advice online. Thoughts?