Hey, what's up, triathletes?
Taren here.
If you've found that your triathlon motivation isn't quite what it used to be and other times
where you're super, duper jacked up to get out there and train, take a look at your wrist.
If you find that you're becoming a slave to your wristwatch, and the power numbers and
the metrics that you've devised for all your triathlon training, that might have something
to do with it.
Stick around because today I'm going to talk about how you can avoid being a slave to the
wristwatch, which you see I do not have.
A comment that I got recently on one of my videos is that somebody has been completely
burnt out from training by metrics for so long.
What I've personally seen is that there is a specific training group that I'm familiar
with that they go through every single triathlon workout as a pure slave to their data.
They are looking at their bike computers, and their wristwatch and their heart rate
monitors every single day.
They're taking blood readings and body chemistry composition readings all the time.
They're constantly analyzing that data, trying to become better athletes.
Now, that's cool.
If you're looking to become the absolute tippy top best performing athlete that you possibly
can, you need that type of specificity.
I would probably argue that most professional athletes often have that type of specificity,
but not all of us are professional triathletes whose job it is is to get in those absolute
specific workouts all the time, and they have to hit certain numbers because their plan
is so regimented throughout the year that they have no choice.
In our case, we're age groupers.
We should be having fun with triathlon.
In my opinion, the best approach to triathlon training is finding a system that makes you
faster in the long run because if you're giving up speed over the course of one year but burning
yourself out for the rest of your life because you really didn't enjoy that one year, you
aren't very fast for the rest of your life.
I found that a good way to balance triathlon data with the enjoyment of triathlon training
is a few ways.
Number one, work in times throughout the year that you leave the watch behind.
(Music).
Maybe it's a few months in the off season, maybe it's after a race and before your next
build up starts.
Make sure that there's some training that is unstructured.
Sure, maybe you keep the data going, so you get all those strava segments still in, but
don't even focus on what those numbers say.
Just train freely and train by feel.
This training by feel, by the way, will also make you more in tune with your body, so that
when you get to a race you're better in tune with your capabilities.
Second thing you should do is train with friends.
(Music).
If you're training with friends, and everyone has watches around them, you know what?
Odds are pretty good that people aren't even going to be looking at those watches very
often.
If you end up with a group of training partners who are all similar abilities and have similar
goals, that's enough to self-police.
If you're going on a similar training plan, you can go with the group and that takes your
mind off of the training data while still getting in a good workout because odds are
pretty good you're going to be competitive against each other.
Hey Triathlon Taren
You love triathlons, Mel.
I do love them.
She loves them.
The third way to avoid burning out by training with nothing but training data is to switch
up what training data you're training with.
In the middle of the off season or the beginning of the off season I tend to train more by
heart rate (music), making sure that I'm not hitting and going through a ceiling of heart
rate because I want to build fitness back up, and I want to rebuild my cardiovascular
system.
Later on as we start getting into the meat and potatoes of building strength for the
upcoming race season, we switch over to power.
(Music).
Then once the winter goes away, and we start getting out onto the track, then we start
going for time around the track.
We're always switching it up, and it's staying fresh.
We're not constantly looking at power is on one, power is on one, heart rate is on two,
blah, blah, blah, blah over and over and over.
That repetition is what I think makes training with power a little bit stale and can burn
you out.
The fourth thing that I would focus on is where you focus.
(Music).
Instead of focusing on what the power numbers say, I would focus on things like the small
wins.
I was talking with somebody at one point this past week who was saying it's reassuring to
know that improvement in triathlon doesn't have to come for the next race that is two
months from now and then have massive improvements two months after that.
It's a long, long process.
If you're consistently chipping away at becoming a little bit better, you're going to be very
fast in the long run when we're talking five, six, seven years down the road.
So that you don't have to wait to become fast five, six, seven years down the road, make
sure that you're focusing on the small wins day to day.
Maybe you feel a little bit easier with a certain perceived exertion or a certain metric
or maybe you can go a little big harder.
Focus on those little wins because those are what will make you faster in the race.
Instead of focusing just on the race or just on the numbers over and over, really enjoy
those little wins.
Be grateful for them.
(Music).
Then finally, the fifth thing that I will say about training with metrics is that if
you like them, keep them.
The biggest thing that I want to get across with this is that if you find that it is boring
to constantly be training off of data, and looking at metrics and not enjoying the process,
that's when you should back off.
You know what?
If you're a person that's really numbers driven, be numbers driven.
Keep looking at the training data.
Do whatever it is that makes you want to do triathlons for years to come because it's
a long game, and that's okay.
There you have it, triathletes.
I hope that this helps you pull you out of a slump, if you are in a training slump.
I've been there, I know what it's like.
It ain't fun.
Don't let yourself get there before it's too far gone.
As always, triathletes, happy and hard training and good luck in your next triathlon.
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