Oooh – pretty pictures

As I mentioned at the weekend, I’ve decided not to rely on my own slightly crazy planning to get me through Challenge Weymouth. I’ve engaged Ant Gritton as my coach.

Using Training Peaks

One of the first tasks that Ant set was to import my data from Garmin Connect to Training Peaks. I’m usually pretty good with computers, but this was a bit of a battle. It resulted in me reverting to Garmin Training Center. I had to export my data before importing it via Training Peaks Device Agent. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t import my swim data. I had to add that manually. This was the result:

I think the data is likely to be flawed as it doesn’t include everything that I’ve done since January. It also includes some gentle jogs that I’ve done with friends.

Understanding my Training Peaks data image

However, beautiful as the image may be, I needed some info from Coach Ant to be able to interpret it:

Basically the pink line shows the results of any short-term effects your training has had. Basically how much fatigue you are likely to be experiencing. The blue is an estimate of your current level of fitness, the result of long-term training and more importantly consistent training. The yellow is a balance of the two – your form.

It’s a pretty complicated thing, but shows the power of training consistently and being able to monitor and adapt as we need to.

The graph shows that training for you has been a bit inconsistent (possibly as some of the data from your swim isn’t included).

The pink shows fatigue increasing from the start of March and consistently rising without too much recovery time, which is why the yellow line is a bit all over the place.