- [Taren] Morning Trainiacs.
There is no lazier ride than a rest week
recovery ride.
I'm into it.
So, lately I've mentioned a free alternative
to Training Peaks which I have actually
completely switched over to in place
of Training Peaks.
It's called Elevate for Strava.
And today I want to show how I've set it up
to I think get the most benefit out of it,
with the least cost.
It's free.
That's good.
(music)
So, alright.
Trainiacs, here let's talk about
Elevate for Strava.
So, Elevate for Strava in my opinion
is a really good replacement for
Training Peaks.
Personally, I like Training Peaks but it's
not the be all end all.
It's not worth the 15 or $20 once we convert US
Dollars to the monopoly Canadian money
that I've got to pay in.
That it costs.
There is a lot in there, there's a ton that you
can do in it.
It is certainly beneficial.
And I would actually say that it is the gold
standard.
Today's plan is trying to up end it.
For one on one coaching.
If you have a one on one coach
and you need to interact in your workouts.
Probably the place to do it.
Team Trainiac, isn't.
But what I see, is that for people who are
self coaching, people on Team Trainiac,
it's not everything.
It doesn't have as many benefits for people
that don't need that one on one interaction.
And really just want to get a sense
of, are they trending in the right line.
How intense are all of the workouts.
What's their fatigue level.
How've they performed before in certain races.
And how can they use that to help them decide
on how to taper or prepare for future races.
And I think that Elevate for Strava,
because it's free and largely gives you a lot
of that same data.
Is almost, just as good.
It's what I've switched over almost entirely.
So, how you get it is, number 1;
you need to have a Chrome web extension.
So, what you do is you install the Chrome browser
on whatever computer you've got.
This is for people who are aren't
familiar with that.
If you're on a Windows computer,
this is like Google's version of Internet Explorer.
Or if you're on a Mac, it's Google's version
of Safari.
And you install Chrome.
And then when you search.
First we'll Google search, Elevate for Strava.
Search that.
And the first thing that's going to pop up
is, it's going to be this.
That indicates, Chrome.google.com Elevate for Strava.
And it's an add on.
It plugs onto your Chrome extension.
I already have mine.
But you'll have a button here that says
install to Chrome.
And what's going to pop up is going to be
something like this.
Where up in the top right of your Chrome
extension, you're going to see all of these
little extensions that you've added.
And it's going to be the little mountains.
So, you click on that.
And it gets you to Elevate for Strava.
When you first do that.
It's going to walk you through how to connect
this website to Strava.
So, just go through all that.
I don't even remember going through it.
So that tells me that it's fairly simple to do.
When you do it, you're going to want to set it up
a few certain ways.
What you've got to do, click this gear icon
and we want to configure what data it's pulling.
To get the most reliable data.
So, configure fitness trend.
And it's going to tell you how you need
to set this up.
So, we want to set up this first one,
to get estimated stress scores.
If you end up doing a ride without
a heart rate and to figure out how swimming
fits into that.
So, it' going to guide you through it.
I've already done it.
But we'll go through it here.
You want to set up your athlete settings.
And you want to create a new dated athlete setting.
And here's how we do this.
You put in this date here, you put in your weight
in kilograms.
You set your max heart rate.
Now this max heart rate isn't
the max heart rate that you've got from
the max heart rate test that we've done.
If you've done that.
If you're on Team Train Trainiac you'll
know about that.
You might know that will tend to
result is a lower heart rate than you're
actually capable of.
What you want to do is go back through
about six months worth of data.
Find the highest heart reading
that you've ever put out.
Put that in here.
Set up your resting heart rate.
You can get this from an overnight
resting heart rate.
Any sort of fitness app.
Ideally it's your overnight resting heart rate.
Because that's going to be the lowest.
Lactate threshold heat rate.
I've just left this as default.
Because I've never done a lactate test.
Cycling functional threshold power.
You put in your most recent FTP test results.
Finding your running functional threshold pace.
This is what you would do for a 45 to 60 minute
sustained effort.
So think like your 10K race pace.
Thereabouts, or just a tad slower than your
10K race pace.
And I estimated mine at around 4 minutes
per kilometer.
I think I might be able to get down
just a little bit underneath that.
Now your swimming functional pace.
This if you're on Team Trainic
we do a 100 meter time trial,
or yard time trial.
And a 1000 meter or yard time trial.
What I've calculated is that my one hour
functional threshold pace.
This is what you can sustain for one hour.
Is right around, it's about 85 to 90 percent
of my 1000 meter or yard time trial.
So what I've done is I've taken
that 1000 meter or yard.
I have reduced it by I think about 12 percent
and I've put that in here.
That will kind of get you fairly close.
So you hit add once you've done all that.
I want you to go back to fitness trend.
You're going to click on this gear icon again.
And then make sure that these are switched on.
So that they're purple.
Enable cycling estimated power stress score and
enable running estimated stress score.
Click out here.
And then what you got to do, is if this is
your first time setting it up.
Click this synced button.
First time setting it up, sync
all the activities.
Then what you'll see is every time
you log into this, it will give
you an indication of how long it's been
since you have actually synced your activities.
So you'll often, every time you want
to come in here, sync your recent activities.
It will go through syncing all
of that with Strava.
Once this says synced a few seconds ago,
refresh the page.
Then I want you to change a couple of things.
Number 1, I want you to show enable the training
zones.
I want you to click off enabling the cycling
power data.
The swimming.
I've left off, and I'll show you why,
in a second.
Including electrical assisted rides.
I'm not using e-bikes.
Use of estimated cycling power data.
Yeah, definitely have that if it's available.
And estimated run stress score.
That's what we have added in that gear.
What you're going to have here
is a nice trend to estimate your fitness,
your fatigue and your form.
Your form, is a measure of you fatigue levels
based of your fitness levels.
What you want to do, is you want to see
a fitness score that in your training season,
all the way from your base building season
to your race.
That it's trending upwards.
That's what we're seeing here.
And it's trending quite a bit more upwards
from where I was last year.
(phone ringing)
Hello
Your fatigue, your levels of tiredness.
This is going to trend up.
We're building levels of fatigue.
You might not feel the fatigue, if you manage
it really well.
But you're gradually challenging yourself
a little bit more and a little bit more.
And that builds fatigue.
What you want to measure here, which is why
we set enable, these training zones.
Is you see that when your form
or freshness level is above the freshness score.
You're really well rested and fresh.
You see that I dipped or I got
really fresh during my off season.
Your overload, that's when you start
training really heavy, you're really heavy.
Training is when you're like (moans)
this is really hard.
What you want to do.
Is do most of your training kind of at
and around that optimal form level.
And race in between zero and neutral.
You look back at when I raced here in
Coeur d'Alene.
I was just into some good form.
When I raced in Half Iron Man Worlds,
I was just above neutral.
So I probably lost just a little bit
too much fatigue.
And could have actually trained a little bit
harder in that last week.
And that's kind of how I felt.
So, what we're looking to do here
during race season from base building
to your race season, is build a ton of fitness.
Along with it is going to come
a fair bit of fatigue.
Your form is going to dip down.
Then in the last week or two before a race
you want slowly taper off.
Your fatigue is going to go down, your form
is going to come up.
And we will hopefully, with little bursts of speed
in the taper, we're going to maintain as much
fitness as possible.
Totally natural that your fitness dips
in the last week or two before a race.
But what we're trying to do, is just have it creep
down not (explosion).
Like what happens in the off season.
This is how you start monitoring that.
So Trainiacs, particularly on Team Trainiac,
if you start enjoying data, if you want to see
if you're progressing.
If you want to see where your fitness levels
are at.
How you're progressing through the training.
Where your fatigue levels are at.
If you feel dumpy and you want to know why.
Elevate for Strava is a great free way to do it
that has I think a lot of the benefits
of Training Peaks.
All being free.
So why not do it.
Right Pete?
Pete is always excited.
He always comes for the sign off.
He always comes for the sign off, right Pete?
(dog growling)
I do, I do.
Alright, Trainiacs, go check out Team Trainiac.com
for free 14 day trial.
Try out Elevate for Strava and me and Gracey
thank you for your time.