I’ve been ill a few more times than I appreciate recently and been unable to train. (Generally work and life have also made training tough for a while - sigh).
On Training Peaks Performance Management Chart I’ve been watching my Fatigue and Fitness fall and my Form rise.
Due to being ill this doesn’t seem to be accurate - I definitely don’t feel on form and am very lethargic/slobbish!
Is there a way (or could there be a way on Calendar maybe) to capture the effect of being ill through some kind of ‘illness stress score’ to reflect that form is compromised?
Should I just get a life and stop looking at my droopy numbers and let the chart sort itself out once up and running again??
This points to one (of many?) issues with over-reliance on the PMC. It is focused on taking known stress over known time and calculating values. To my knowledge, there are only “stress adders” or the total lack of stress. That lack of stress on a given day may be a simple rest day with no performance activity.
What you are effectively talking about would be a “stress negater” (sorry for the sloppy term) that would accelerate the decline in the data calculations. That type of idea could likely be applied to an illness, injury or even a stressful period in life (from work/life/etc.).
For now, I would recommend ignoring the chart. Hop on the bike when you are healthy are ready to resume training. And pick up where ever you are.
Personal advice below, feel free to disregard:
Please remember, that you are not your FTP, CTL or any other metric.
They are bits of data with some usefulness, but too often we see people fixate on them to no real benefit (and sometimes to their detriment).
Unless you are making your living from this effort, keep some perspective and try to keep it fun by not over analyzing things that don’t matter that much in the greater picture.
Totally agree with Chad. Life is not just 3 values to be charted. Put notes in your log to denote illness and move on. Large stress needs large rest. Form to me is just feeling good with hard efforts and recovering quickly. Hard to chart.
Fixation on stats and figures is definitely an issue! I guess it’s affecting me having the visual representation of my hard-won fitness drifting away from me.
I’ll give myself a bit of time before knuckling down and letting the numbers fix themselves over time.
Even though you don’t feel well, your form is probably exactly where the PMC says it is. If, hypothetically, your illness were to magically go away in an instant, and you jumped on your bike and did a race, you’d probably have a really great race. But like Chad McNeese said, don’t get too consumed by Training Peaks PMC. It’s simply tracking fitness stress. There isn’t really a quantifiable method to measure work stress, family stress, financial stress, illness, or injury. I’ve been dealing with knee tendinitis since February, and I know it’s impacted my training. But that doesn’t show up at all in the PMC.
On a side note, if you’re really interested in tracking stress, sleep, etc, then I recommend you check out a company called Whoop (www.whoop.com). They make a fitness tracker strap that tracks your daily strain (not just from exercising), your sleep quality each night, and generates a recovery score from 0-100%. I’ve read numerous reviews and some people said that they were able to tell that they were getting sick a couple of days before they were symptomatic because they had a great night’s sleep but their recovery score went down. It’s a subscription based service of $30 a month, and you have to pay for the first 6 months up front (about $180). I’m considering giving it a shot soon. I know I don’t sleep as well as I should and with three young kids and a full-time job, there are probably certain days that I should skip training instead of struggling through a workout.
I’ve heard another coach recommend Whoop as well. Looks the business, but it’s really pricey. As a cheaper alternative for tracking heart rate variability, the HRV4Training app is supposed to be good:
I’ll try not to wallow