Whilst out on a run today, I was reflecting on the winter months and the training I've completed.
Partly because they are the areas I thought needed improvement and partly because I hate turbo training, I have really focused on my running and swimming.
I started off annoyed because my 12k time has not changed in the last 6 weeks, consistently clocking 55 minutes. But then I remembered this is down from 65 minute when I started in November and in the last 6 weeks my average heart rate for this time has come down from 170 to 160.
Swimming is a similar story. I can't seem to make in roads with my pace which has stayed at about 2min for 100m. However, I have improved my distance up from struggling to complete 200m front crawl to now comfortably being able to knock out 2k.
I was going to ask if this constitutes progress but that appears a little self serving, but how can you quantify good progress over just progress, and how have other forum members seen gains in the off season?
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Comments
your hr going down is not a measure of progress if you are going to try to beat your PB, i would think that your hr should be the same and your time improve, if your hr is coming down your not trying hard enough
a lower hr rate for an equal time would be indicate a gain in efficiency and/ fitness.
as far as swimming goes i couldnt swim even 50m a few months ago but now knock out 4k continuous swims once a week but i do swim about 10k a week - thats what i call real progress at a personal level for me but it takes me 1.50 to swim the 4k which isnt progress as far as the bigger picture goes. i got into tri pretty late in the season last year and I can still remember putting 14minutes down in my expected 400m swim time - at hte time i could even swim that far
to me its a bit of a hobby, stops me getting fatter and stops me playing PC / xbox all day and night, you might have higher ambtions and that why i think progress is personal
I guess the point I was trying to make (badly) is what would be a good off season? Times down 1% / 5% / 10% / 20% or are there other measures (such as efficiency) I should be monitoring?
Cheers