Triathlon: What a Coach Can Do For You

I competed in my first triathlon in 2005.  It was a local sprint event in Colchester, Vermont.  At the time I was a serious rock climber;  I used swimming and running to stay in shape, but my sport was about pushing vertical limits.  I also sea kayaked a fair amount because it was more social and it rains a lot in the Northeast......the crags are not safe to climb when they're wet, but paddling in wet weather is no problem at all.

In the summer of 2005 I injured my back and couldn't climb for a while.  I found that swimming didn't aggravate my injury, nor did riding my mountain bike.  While I was recuperating an acquaintance, Rayne Herzog at the Shelburne Athletic Club, asked me to paddle my kayak at a Sprint Triathlon held in Shelburne, Vermont.  This race venue at Shelburne Beach is a beautiful place to compete in a triathlon and has become one of my favorite places to train, as well as to relax in good company while drinking wine, enjoying good food, and watching the sun set over the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Champlain.

I had never seen a triathlon before and it was a great experience to paddle with the racers, giving aid when necessary, and then, after the last swimmer exited the water, move to Transition to guide bikers to dismount at the line for their T2 and then direct them on to the run course.  Basically at that point I was hooked.  I volunteered to work at the next couple of races and I studied what the top competitors did......I also started shopping for a road bike.

Over the next couple of years I climbed less and focused on triathlon more.  I read about it, developed training plans, bought lots of stuff, and raced in local sprints as well as a few Olympic distance events.  I got better, but not drastically.  In 2009 I raced my first Half-Ironman event, the Providence, Rhode Island 70.3 and at the end of that season I raced the Lobsterman in Freeport, Maine.  I did alright at my first half and I actually won my age group at Lobsterman, but I felt like I had reached the end of my ability to improve, I didn't know what to do next.

Up to this point I had been self coached, relying on books and articles by Gale Bernhardt and Joe Friel.  I think these were great places to start, but I felt like I wasn't peaking, or if I was, the timing of the peaks didn't coincide with my races. 

I decided I needed two things, better data and someone to help me interpret that data.  I bought a Garmin Forerunner 310XT GPS watch and a Garmin Edge 705 bike computer so I would have accurate running pace, bike speed, and distance travelled available to me while training.  The big investment, however, was in an SRM Power Meter so I would have unequivocal data of my output on the bike.

Technology accounted for, I began to shop for a coach.  I wanted someone based in the Northeast so we could actually meet from time to time.  I also wanted a coach that used the latest tools, namely power based data on the bike and Training Peaks or similar for delivery of workouts and review of data.  I did phone interviews with several prospects and selected Kurt Perham at Personal Best Multisport Coaching (www.pbmcoaching.com).  I chose Kurt because he uses the tools mentioned above, doesn't impose contact limits, is flexible regarding workouts and changing schedules, and he is experienced as both competitor and coach.

I hired Kurt to coach me in the Fall of 2009, and since that time I have steadily improved in terms of my fitness, my maturity as an athlete, and my performance.  I haven't always met my goals or raced as well as I expected, but in every race I have completed since starting to work with Kurt, I have improved, and in most of these races I set personal bests in one or more disciplines.  I turned 48 this year and I have been a life-long athlete.  Nevertheless, in the last 12 months I have run faster at every distance I have attempted than I have ever run in my life.  I am seeing similar gains in the water and on the bike, although I have less competitive history to draw upon in those realms.  In 2011 I finished 5th at the Providence 70.3, qualified for Age Group Nationals, and earned All-American Honors from USA Triathlon.  I was nationally ranked for the first time at 165th in the Mens 45-49 division.

I don't know all of the data that Kurt looks at, but I know he pays attention to the composite fitness index developed by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan, PhD called a Performance Management Chart, or PMC for short.  You can learn more about this chart and the data / calculations that go into it on the TrainingPeaks website (http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/what-is-the-performance-management-chart.aspx) (http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/triathlon/fitness,-fatigue-and-form.aspx), as well as from Joe Friel's The Training Bible book series.

I will summarize briefly and if I mess it up, I'm sure someone will let me know.  The PMC represents three aspects of training: fatigue, fitness, and race readiness.

Fatigue is technically referred to as Acute Training Load (ATL) and is a numeric representation of how hard you are training.  Increased training stress from longer and/or higher intensity workouts will show as upward spikes when graphed. 

Fitness comes as a result of our workouts.  Referred to as Chronic Training Load (CTL), it is a numeric representation of what the hard training has yielded.  ATL and CTL are complimentary, that is, hard training produces greater fitness.

Race Readiness is sometimes also know as form.  It is technically referred to as Training Stress Balance (TSB) and is a numeric representation of how rested we are, a measurement of our recovery following hard training. In order to be race ready we need to recover just enough from our fatigue to be sharp, but not so much that we lose fitness. Effectively balancing rest and training stress is a knife edge when it comes to fitness.

Shown below is my PMC spanning the last two years.  The first third of the chart shows my first season (2010) after hiring Kurt as my coach.  The blue line is my CTL, which as a reminder, represents fitness.  My fitness peaked for my main race that year, the Timberman 70.3 in August.  I did alright at that race, improving significantly over my first 70.3 the year before, but I was still way back in the pack, 345th overall and 33rd in my division.  My off-the-bike half-marathon run time was 1:48.

Two Year Performance Management Chart

The middle third on the chart is last season (2011) where I peaked for the Providence 70.3 in July, with a second peak for Age Group Nationals in August.  These peaks, and the associated ATL, are significantly higher than in 2010.  In my second year with Kurt I was able to place 88th overall and 5th in my age division at a major 70.3 event - I was on the podium!  My off-the-bike half-marathon run time had decreased to 1:36.  I didn't place as well at the Age Group National Championships in my hometown of Burlington, Vermont, but I did PR the 10K run and finished 28th against some of the fastest men in my division in the country, which was quite satisfying.

The final third of the chart is this season (2012). I raced Mooseman 70.3 on 3-June and didn't have the bike ride I was looking for, however, I ran off-the-bike in 1:34, which is a PR for me in a half-ironman event. To be fair, I have been focused more on getting ready for the Lake Placid Ironman. From the chart it is clear that my fitness is higher, but I may have lost too much of it for Mooseman due to an injury a few weeks prior to the race, which the chart shows as a decrease in CTL and a rise in TSB. Hopefully I am on my way to a good peak for Lake Placid next month and a faster race at Age Group Nationals in August.

This has been a long winded way of making a point, which is that I never could have made these gains in performance on my own. The chart shows clearly my improvements in fitness and I am absolutely convinced that it has been Kurt's patience with me, his knowledge of training and training tools, his well prescribed workouts, his willingness to adapt to my changing schedule and unforeseen issues, and his advice and tips on everything from race strategy to nutrition to injury treatment and recovery, that have made it possible for me to improve beyond what I thought possible.

I'm not saying such improvement can't be accomplished on your own, but I am certain that I couldn't have done it without Kurt's coaching.  I think the objectivity that a coach can have versus what we as athletes perceive day in and day out during training is invaluable. So my advice to any triathlete even moderately serious about the sport is to fore go the newest bike, the latest aero this or that, and consider hiring a coach.  The gains will be much more dramatic and measurable over time.