Who Dares ?

So, another training video repeated itself, I wanted to take the opportunity to take a look a the data, as I did previously with the ISLAGIATT session.

The Sufferfest: Who Dares from The Sufferfest on Vimeo.

This is the data from April first

This from May 24th

What can we make of this data? How can it be useful to keep a training diary ?

Let me break it down for you. In this session, the same targets, same efforts are required.
What we are now reviewing is what was the metabolic cost for it.

Regarding the session, we can see that on April I was able to do  155/179W average/NP.
Yesterday's session was 158/182W, so basically the same, but a slight improvement.
It is basically due to not cracking so much on recovery period, or just hitting/sustaining the targets better, but still very close. Only a 400 virtual meters difference for almost an hour.

Regarding on the metabolic cost, we can simply look at heart rate,we have an average of 146bpm vs 136 now. This is a massive improvement !!
Max heart rate is similar, so basically the improvement is due to recovering faster, i.e. heart rate dropping faster after the intense stuff.

Training peaks also has some nice metrics, which are "aerobic decoupling" and Efficiency factor.

This are the ones that tell the whole story !!
Efficiency factor jumped from 1,23 to 1.34, and aerobic decoupling from 4% to 2,77% !!

What this means, is that there is an improvement in my aerobic fitness !!!
Which is exactly what I wanted to improve, due to it being my weakness.

In April, some results were already appearing, as the Pw:Hr was under 5%, but now it is almost half of that !

I think I am on the good way to improve my sustained effort weakness !
(Which kind of led me down a path of a dilema, but I am preparing a post just for that later).

Below the description for Aerobic Decoupling and EF.

Aerobic Decoupling (Pw:Hr And Pa:HR) And Efficiency Factor (EF)

Efficiency factor (EF) is the ratio of Normalized Power to heart rate (cycling) or Normalized Graded Pace to heart rate (running) for a given activity.  An increase in this value for steady-state, aerobic endurance intensity rides may indicate an improvement in aerobic fitness.

Aerobic Decoupling compares the Efficiency factor from the first half of an activity to the second half. A smaller change in EF (less than 5%) from the first half to the second half may indicate improving aerobic endurance.

P.S. I normally use "Golden Cheetah for this kind of analysis, but the computer I have it installed is now permanently connected to the trainer/TV, so I take printouts of whatever web based software I find to illustrate the point).