Apps and the Tech I use

I thought it may be useful to show how I prepare, carry out and analyse my training, in my youth this would be paper, stopwatch and verbal from my coach!

10 years ago we did have some technology, I had a Garmin Forerunner 405 which I loved and used both for running and on the bike. These days the market is flooded with devices, apps and websites so I will demonstrate how and why I selected my “tools”.

At the heart of my technology stack is Garmin, I typically stick to one hardware vendor, this has been Apple for the last 10 years, Mac, iPad, iPhone and watch.

The watch has been useful health tracker, running and swimming, I have always used the cellular version so the ability to call, text and stream music (Only Apple Music as they don’t allow 3rd party streaming services like Spotify) very useful when out and about and don’t need to carry a phone.

It was after the Conwy Half marathon earlier this year switched from using Apple Watch to Garmin, it has long been a bug bear that the Apple Watch relies on the touch screen for much of its operation, when wet it becomes unusable!

The Conway Half is a great race and I thoroughly recommend it, super route, friendly runners chatting as you go around. This year there was a deluge as I was finishing and I could not stop the watch (Using the Strava App) as the screen was wet, it took 5 min to stop the watch... very frustrating. So vowed to go back to a watch which uses buttons to start and stop the session!

The flow below shows how data is moved around from device to websites or apps as they like to called these days.

The core to my training is the Garmin Connect app on the iPhone, it collects and sends data to the watch and bike computer. To get courses (Routes) to the devices, you have to use Garmin Express on a computer which still feels a little outdated. 

I use a Wahoo tickr heart rate strap, I got this originally for my (now dead) turbo trainer, it is a basic one with Bluetooth and Ant+ I think it was around £40. Although the forerunner has a built in optical HR capability it can often be erratic due to wrist movement when running, so my advise use a chest HR strap,the Edge 520 paired straight away using ANT+

Strava is a good website for analysing your training, socialising and motivation, I have set Garmin Connect to send activities from the Edge and ForeRunner as soon as they sync. This posts sessions directly to Strava and TrainingPeaks.

The Garmin Connect app and website are okay systems giving you feedback and basic activity but are no match for the other two.

TrainingPeaks is my key training tool, it allows you to plan your week, setting goals (Races) and tracking your fitness. It estimates a Training Stress Score (TSS) for your activity, it uses a basic maths to work out your Fitness, Fatigue and Form.

You want your fitness to go up (TSS drives this), the fatigue to stay low (TSS drives this!) and Form to be around 0 to 10 which is only achieved by tapering down your training... just enough so you are ready for the race.

Currently I have a fairly high Fatigue rating, the Fitness is steadily growing and Form is okay for now as I have no races in the near future.

On the phone app

On a web browser

In the calendar view you add sessions, move them around and see high level stats of how you did

You can easily drag and drop sessions, copy individual sessions, days or weeks to quickly build a basic plan for the coming months.

Once you compete a session the tile will go
Green - If you completed as planned i.e. pace, distance and HR (with a bit of allowance)
Yellow - you got something wrong (Often I go too long or too fast!)
Orange - You were way off... too fast/slow far/nor far enough
Red - You missed the session!
Grey - If you do an unplanned session

As you go through the week it is important to assess how your training has gone and amend your future sessions accordingly.

Yes I still need to estimate my bike sessions better, it is brand new session type so now getting reference data and soon it will be straight forward to create sessions and estimate properly

One of the ways I amend my plan during the week is to check the relative stress score on Strava

By using this view I can see the maximum “Effort” I should do this week, in this case I have a maximum of 578 for the week, I like a long run of around 10 miles on a Sunday so like to reserve my “points’ for that. Last week I did 10.5 miles and was 130 points so 578 - 240 -130 = 208 points remaining.

You can see the white wave is the range of effort that a) has been b) coming, the dots are my weekly effort scores, I have been overtraining in the last few weeks and I can definitely feel it.

Remember YOU are the best source of information about how your training is going... always listen to your body.

Now I go back to Training peaks and see what I have planned

If I roughly say TSS is the same as Relative effort then I have 148 points planned, so can choose to make the sessions harder and/or longer... or leave it as my fitness will have improved a good deal this week anyway, the trick is not to over train.

If you are training for marathons over training is the worst thing as injuries pop at you!

This week I had a go at a brick session, this is were you do at least two activities back to back, so did a bike ride (in cycling bib and jersey) then dumped the bike at home and went for a run. The first thing is the change in muscle groups, bike and run do not necessarily use the same muscles in the same way, so it takes a little while to adjust, also the seat padding in the bike shorts takes a bit of getting used to running in.
I had it in my head that people may have been looking at running past and thinking “That guy has lost his bike” haha 😝

I have been reading up on brick sessions and they are key for duathlon and triathlon folks to not only get use to muscle group changes but the activities during transition like shoe swapping.
It is also prevalent to limit how many of these sessions to do and looks like one a week is the max, I can vouch that they are tough and might pop them in as a Wednesday session.

I was a bit fed up on Thursday so thought lets use some points up on a fast effort, this week my new trainers arrived Brooks Ravenna 11 from upandrunning.co.uk discounted to £99. When I run, I over pronate slightly so have to buy trainers with light support. I used to use Ravennas and they are similar to Adrenaline, they feel great and my pace for the HR very good today.

Friday was a busy day with my Dads birthday so took a rest day, Saturday I was feeling unwell so again missed out on training.

I did by chance catch a few moments with fellow club mates Dave and Colin as they were doing a long long run. The club is planning a return to group training and hopefully I can regain my coach role and at least start off as a run leader when we are allowed!

Sunday and time to take stock of a week and its been a tale of test, effort and sickness, hopefully an insight into how I plan my training and deal with the changes that are sometimes thrown at you.

I went for a 5K run to finish the week off, my Strava Relative effort was at the lower end due to the lay off but still a positive week, Debbie is still recovering from illness so making a great effort and return to fitness

I did this weeks blog post entirely on the iPad and Kensington keyboard, it is a bit fiddly but doable as I become less dependant on the MacBook the world becoming more tablet capable.

Also take note that the features I use on Strava and TrainingPeaks are premium and come at a cost, roughly £45 a year each.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog and as always... keep running everyone.

Mark