(upbeat music plays)
- Welcome back to the Triathlon Training Explained show,
powered by Training Peaks.
This week we're going to be running you through how and why
you should be doing a post race analysis.
- Yes, so the idea behind a post race analysis is to
essentially evaluate that race performance and determine
what you're doing well, what you're not doing quite so well,
where your strengths lie and perhaps what needs some
tweaking in your training, and you may well actually be
doing some of this already without realising.
- Yeah, I mean at the end of the day there's no point in
doing race after race without taking a step back and
working out how you're going to improve, and no matter how
good you are, everyone should be doing this.
For example, the likes of Flora Duffy, Jan Frodeno,
Lionel Sanders and Alistair Brownlee will all be doing this.
- It can be all too easy to forget about a bad race and
brush it under the carpet as if it never happened,
but as much times as athletes spend on training and
preparing for an event, pretty much the most effective
use of time comes after the race.
- Yeah, I mean, doing that post race analysis is what,
how you dictate what your day to day training's going to
be like, and how to get more out of yourself.
So, today we're going to be discussing what exactly a
post race analysis is, what it involves,
as well as getting some expert advice.
(fast paced music plays)
- Okay, before we get techy and start looking at the race
data, you need to ask yourselves how you think it went,
without looking at your place or your time you finish.
It's about your own feeling of the race.
- So for this we're going to use something called a
thought analysis that you might recognise from business,
and we're going to adopt something
similar for our post race analysis.
We're going to look at our strengths and weaknesses,
what you did well and maybe what
you didn't do quite so well.
I'm actually going to put you on the spot here, Heather,
because I know you raced quite recently at the
Croyde Ocean triathlon.
- Okay.
- So, what do you think went well,
what were your strengths from the day?
- Going in chronological order,
I think I got my swim start nailed.
It was quite nice it was just women on their own to start
with, so had a good line to the first buoy.
I don't think I was, I wasn't quite the quickest one there,
but I got there first because I had the inside line,
so that put me in a good state for the rest of the race.
Then, my next bit that was probably good,
on the bike I got my nutrition and I'm not used to
racing that kind of distance and at that intensity,
so for me doing nutrition on the bike is important,
but it's more of an experiment and
I think I got it just about right.
Drank enough, it was a hot day.
And then on the run, um, I, it was very, very hilly,
like ridiculously hilly and I think the strategy I took
with walking up some of the steep hills, because I think
I would have run slower actually worked.
Again, still even with that analysis I'm slightly probably
actually analysing against other people, but other people
that were in the race, because people ran past me
on the hill but I overtook them later on, so,
that's sort of a bit of external feedback, I guess,
but it felt like it was what was right for me.
- Well, now let's move on to the weaknesses.
What didn't go quite so well?
- That's easier to do, I find.
I think, like in the swim, I'm still not good at working
hard enough, um, but it's hard to know for the pacing.
A big error was coming out of the swim
and I just couldn't get my wetsuit off.
I don't know why.
Like I've done that, that's one thing I have done lots of
times, and then I lost my concentration for a while in
transition, and then again, my transition are still very
slow because I still oh my transitions, I take a seat,
(laughs), like try and go and
then I get off and then onto the bike.
I felt like I wasn't strong on the bike as I'd hoped.
Whether that's like a weakness or not,
it's something I was disappointed with, I guess.
Onto the run, it was okay, but I think it was, I don't know
what the answer to this is, but I struggled on the sand.
I was running on the sand, and I've made a big hash on the
sand, maybe we should go back and watch that. (laughs)
- Well, I guess this is really interesting then because you
could come away from that event and be very despondent and
negative about all these point that didn't go quite so well,
you considered weaknesses.
But actually you could just see these as opportunities.
- Yeah.
- Things that you can improve.
You can improve your performance,
you can work on in training.
So actually, this is really exciting.
- Actually some people like to write it down, so they know
they've got it and they can analyse it.
Some just make a mental note.
And I personally, talk through it with my coach, but I also
write it, put each section in my Training Peaks, and
actually just write a little analysis I guess for myself
but also then my coach can share that and you have got
that reference, however you do it and then that means
you can make your training that much more specific.
- Yeah, and I do know some athletes actually write books,
or race reports online.
- It's quite interesting to read them, as well, actually.
- Absolutely.
Well, we're actually going to take this post race analysis
a step further now, and I'm actually going to call
on one of my friends.
He's a triathlon coach for Training Peaks and a certified
Ironman coach, Phil Mosley.
- Okay, thank you for joining us today Phil.
- Pleasure to be here.
- So we've already been talking a little bit about those
initial phases of the post race analysis.
Is there anything else you would do
or discuss with an athlete?
- I think going into it, you'd just think about
some of the variables that might crop up, in, in a race.
I mean, in a triathlon there's obviously three dispenses.
There's transitions, as well, and there's everything that
goes before it, leading up to it, so how you slept,
how stressful your week had been leading up to it,
your travel, all kinds of things, how healthy you've been.
So there's so many variables even before you've started,
and then the variables in the race itself.
And they all make a difference.
Kind of important not to draw too many conclusions
too quickly before you've thought about all those things
and what affect they might had had on your event.
- I think that's a really important point, actually,
I remember a lot of athletes, well they kind of forget
what's happened in the lead up to the event and then
suddenly you pry into it and you find out they've been
moving house for a week before the event, so
no wonder you're feeling a little bit rough on race day.
- Yeah, I've had the same where I had a guy that I coached
who had a problem with his bike basically and he didn't tell
me about it and he didn't have a very good bike leg,
then we talked about it and he I subsequently found out
that his wheel wasn't working properly.
(host laughs)
And he mentioned it as to why he might have had a bad bike.
- And then of course, there are the other factors that maybe
you can't control, weather, road conditions, and so yes,
you can compare race results and times, but if the roads are
much worse and road is wet, it's raining, it's wet,
slippery, you can't really, you can't for that.
- No, it's also, certain courses suit certain athletes
better, as well, so for me I never did so well on hilly
courses and I might have a good bike spit on a flat bike
route and other people that I would have beaten on that one
would beat me on the hilly route, and at first, I used to
get disappointed on how I performed,
and then I just kind of realised later they were just
much lighter people than me and they would always
do better than me on a hilly bike route.
- Okay, so we've spoken a lot about our feelings and
those other variable factors, but how about
the hard data, the results.
- What I like to do is, rather than analyse a race
on kind of feelings and looking at too many variables
and getting worried about more, I like to do some tests
before someone races, maybe four weeks, eight weeks,
12 weeks, whatever, but within about a three month period
of when they're going to race.
So, I get them doing a swim test, a CSS swim test, so that's
a 400 and a 200 time trial with a five minute gap
in between, and you can work out what your average pace
for 100 would be over a 1500 metres, um, race.
So that kind of gives you an idea of what you might be
expected to do in a swim and that gives you some
baseline data to work from.
On the bike, I would get them to do a CP20 test, which is a
power test for 20 minutes which you can project what you
might be able to ride for an hour.
Again, that gives some good kind of benchmark figures
to work from, and then running-wise, I'd get them to do
either a 5k race or a threshold running test, which is
essentially a 30 minute time trial.
Once you've got those three tests and the data from those,
you've kind of got quite a good idea of how you should
pace that race and what you might be expecting
to achieve from it.
Without those kind of figures,
you kind of are guessing really.
- Yeah, you could be disappointed by the results,
but actually that was probably what you expected.
- Absolutely, often people are disappointed because their
bike speed, for example, wasn't as fast as it had been
previously, but it was a windy race or whatever,
bad race surface and when you look at the power data
compared to what they've done in their test,
it turns out they've done really well.
They didn't realise it.
People can get quite down about these things until
they see what actually happened, and that's why
analysing a race is really important.
- So one of the things I hear time and time again when
people are looking at their results is that, oh, I beat
such and such in the last race and now they've beaten me,
and oh, it was a terrible race.
What do you think about that sort of thing?
- It's kind of a funny thing to do, isn't it?
I must admit.
I do it myself.
Often I bet you do, as well.
You can't really get much from that because someone might
have had a bad day, or they might not have been fit, or
they might have been taking easy because they might have a
bigger race coming up, or they might have had a cold, or
any number of things, so it's a fun thing to do, but
you can't set too much stock by doing that.
- Sure.
Another thing, again, it's very vague, but you
could potentially look at the race results and say you
placed in the top ten in the swim and the run,
but your bike was in the 129th or something.
- [Mobley] Yeah.
- It's a very good rough ballpark sort of guide that maybe,
okay, I need to work on my bike.
Is that something you do, as well?
- Yeah, it is actually, and particularly because the people
I work with are often trying to qualify for an age group
or squad to go to the World championships or
European championships, and they do look at that and think
hang on, if I, my bike was 30th, but my run was 10th
and my swim was 10th, they can see that's
where they need to improve, really.
It would be difficult to get that improvement from the
swim or the run because they're already pretty good
at that and they're already quite near the top, but when
there's a massive margin for improvement in one particular
discipline, it's quite useful to know.
And sometimes it's kind of quite hard to accept fact,
but you see it there in black and white, don't you.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- [Mobley] And you're like okay, I'm not actually that good
on the bike, am I? (laughs)
I need to really improve on that.
So, it kind of really changes the way you
think about it going forward.
- Okay, our next bit Phil, we're going to get a little bit
techy here, and let's look at the data.
For this, I'm going to grab my laptop, because
I've got here my last race data from my last pro race,
Ironman 70.3 South Africa.
I just thought that maybe we could run through some of the
data from that and some of those sort of important points.
So, I'll run you, sort of talk you through the race a little
bit and how it played out, so, I came out of the water in
the lead and then Romain Guillaume, a French athlete, just
smashed it from the off, so had to make a call early on
on the bike, whether I go with him,
or I settle into my pace.
I went with it for a little bit, and then
decided to let him go.
I know that you know the 70.3 course in South Africa.
It just goes pretty much straight up the hill and then
straight down on the freeway, so it does throw in some
interesting power data for the first half, versus the
second half, so should we take a look then.
- [Mobley] Let's take a look.
- So I'll highlight the first part of the race
here on Training Peaks.
My normalised power is a 318 watts, versus the
second half of my race 276 watts for normalised power.
So the whole race had a normalised power of just over
300 watts for normalised power.
Is there anything that you'd pick out from here,
any important data points?
- What I love about these graphs, is that it's the
true story of all your hard work, and all your training
going into it, and how that race played out and it's all
there, sort of second by second, minute by minute.
At the start of that graph, I can see you're riding very
hard to keep up with the French guy.
- Yeah, I think if we highlight that, so, it's around what
333 watts normalised power.
Now we have discussed this before, actually.
Normalised power is probably worthless, chat about this now.
So normalised power takes into account those surges in pace,
as compared to my average power which is 306 watts, so
the normalised power takes into account those basic
accelerations where I'm going something, maybe 400 watts,
then back down to 100 watts, and that's obviously a lot
harder work than just holding 306 watts.
We can see that with what's called
My Variability Index, 1.09.
A perfect race would be one.
No one does that.
But a 1.09 is quite high variability index,
especially for a 70.3.
- The other thing we can see there, is that the IF,
that stands for Intensity Factor, it says 0.98.
That essentially means Mark was riding at 98 percent
of his best pace or best power for one hour in a time trial.
Baring in mind, and Ironman 70.3 is more like a four hour
race for Mark, or less, so he's essentially going at almost
his one hour pace in the middle of a four hour race.
Obviously, there's only so long you can do that for before
it's going to have an effect.
- That's why I made that call.
- It's good job you did, and also because the first half
of that race is all uphill, so you don't want to be
starting that with tired legs.
Like burning your matches right at the start.
So let's just segment the first half, because when I
analyse someone's data, I tend to do it in sort of three
or four key segments, based on the terrain of the course,
obviously, often the terrain changes as you go through a
bike route, so it's nice to just break that down into those
segments, and see what affect they had on your power.
So in the first half, you're riding uphill.
It's kind of easier to maintain a decent power and by
power, I mean, just how hard you are pedalling and how
fast you are pedalling, when you're riding up
a gradual incline like that.
So, Mark's riding at now 0.94 of his one hour pace,
so that's still quite high for a half Ironman.
So, what often happens in any triathlon when I look at
someone's data is they usually are their power or their
heart rate is normally higher in the first half anyway,
and then kind of fatigue and the effects of nutrition
or lack of, start to set in.
And then when I look at the second half, it's normally
a bit lower and it's just the extent of how much lower
that is that tells you whether they paced it right
or paced it wrong, or how well they performed.
And if they have gone too hard on that bike section,
and they fatigued in the second half, you then would also
think about how that affects their run, as well.
So you might be in great running shape,
but if you've fatigued towards the end of the bike,
that's going to affect your run.
So you can't be to pleased, or too disappointed
about how you do on the run.
You need to look at it in terms of how you've done
on the bike, as well, rather than just on its own.
So in the second half here, it's kind of going downhill.
It's, so it's, like as Mark said, it's a bit hard to push
the watts when you're going down a hill, and you're going
an intensity factor of 0.81 now, so that's kind of more...
- [Mark] Yeah, sustainable.
- More sustainable.
We don't have heart rate data here.
What's interesting to look at is that if Mark was
fatiguing here, his power would go down and his heart rate
would go up and we call that decoupling.
It's a symbol of fatigue and it shows that
you're just going a bit too hard.
It can also be because it's getting hotter and hotter,
as well, and sometimes your heart rate drifts up.
We don't have that heart rate data here, but Mark has
managed to sort of ride fairly consistent.
Intensity factor 0.81 the second half,
so I think you kind of got on top of your pacing
during that race, didn't you?
- [Mark] Yeah, and also, I think you picked up
on the fact that my variability index was
slightly higher on the way back.
That was due to, I mean, my max speed was 80 kilometres
an hour on the way back, so obviously,
I'm trying to get traction.
I'm spinning quite hard for short periods, then tucking
in and going arrow, so we did,
it's an unusual race in that sense.
We're not on a pan flat course where I can hold a
consistent power and I'm trying to utilise what I've got.
So that was really interesting.
One other thing that was very interesting for me
at the time, looking back over my race was that I
actually started to pick up an injury on the run.
I never had it in training going up to the race, and
suddenly I started to get this cramp in my left side,
and actually looking at my bike data, and I'm almost
five percent difference between the legs at some points
during the race, which is a massive,
well 45 percent on one leg and 55 percent on
the other leg is a huge difference.
Just seeing one percent is sometimes quite a lot,
so five percent is much difference, kind of go to
showed on the run, really.
- [Mobley] Yeah.
- Is there anything else that you'd pick out
data-wise from the race?
- The only thing that I would say is not everyone has got a
power metre and when you look at bike data, power is by far
the most effective tool for analysis.
If you don't have a power metre,
you can still look at heart rate.
Power shows you how hard you're going, and heart rate
shows you how hard your body is fighting it.
So, they're two different things, but you can use
heart rate data on its own for some kind of analysis.
It will essentially show you how you've paced that ride,
because you'll see how your heart rate varies throughout,
and if it goes up and up and up, it might suggest you've
paced it a bit too hard, and you've finally fatiguing.
Sometimes heart rate goes down and that's just because
being a bit too tired in the beginning and then, sort of
motivationaly finding it hard to push yourself
in the second half.
What I would say is that a lot of people go on speed
and time and you think oh, what time did I do,
what speed did I do.
My average speed was this.
It's not really that useful, unless it's a pan flat course
with no wind and you're comparing it to another
pan flat course with no wind, there's not a lot of
comparison you can do, really.
Even road surface can make a difference.
Another thing that makes a big difference
is twists and turns.
People don't realise this.
They say, oh, this is a flat course.
I should have done this time.
And actually every time you do a turn, it takes a few
miles an hour off your average, off your speed at that time,
and that affects your overall average, so, it's just things
to think about when you analyse it, so you don't come to
false conclusions, if you'd like.
- Well, that's been really interesting, and I thank you
very much for that, Phil.
- Yeah, I think it just really emphasises, doesn't it,
the fact that sometimes you need to take a step back and
look, you know, on your results from an outside perspective
to actually be able to move forward.
It's also really useful to do with somebody else and to
get that opinion, and just, you know, it's okay to sit and
reflect and then be constructive with your criticism
and then you can make more of a structure and
take the next step.
- Absolutely.
If you'd like to see more videos from GTN, you can just
click on the globe and subscribe and if you'd like to see
our video explaining what critical swim speed is or CSS, as
Phil was explaining earlier on, you see our video just here.