Today's session should be ……. ?

And what should I do today?

If you are following a plan the best advice is to stick to it. Sometimes you might be a little more or less able to do what the plan says (or what you thought you were going to do if you have no plan)

But how do you KNOW what to do?

My Garmin Fenix2 sports watch has a recovery option. It tells you how long you need to wait to recover from your last (or presumably cumulative) session(s). It told me to wait 71 hours…ouch! I had had a mammoth swim+run session yesterday so I do need to recover. It spotted that. (Though without looking at my HR when swimming I’m not quite sure how). I think it best to see these indicators on watches as being how long to wait until your next hard/VO2 session. That then might not be too unreasonable in this case…71 hours!!

I also looked at my training load in SportTracks. TSB=-4. Not quite sure exactly what that means other than I wouldn’t race well today, it can go down to -15 or more. Other than that my recent load has been quite high and that I am not recovered, it doesn’t really tell me how long I need to wait. It doesn’t really tell me what to do today. I could probably do nothing today and still have a good VO2 session tomorrow. (Whereas the Fenix2 told me to wait a further day)

I’ve also been looking at HRV – Heart Rate Variability (ithlete, bioforceHRV). The measure for that has fallen since yesterday as yesterday’s was influenced by a VO2 bike on Friday. Again a sign that I should take today easy for sure. But also a good sign that there might be something in this HRV malarkey….watch this space.

Well. I didn’t FEEL like a hard session. So I listened to my body and had a fairly easy ride. I had actually planned to do a 3-to-4 hour easy ride but it was raining!! I think I could have done the plan but I whimped out a bit having done more yesterday than I should.

Anyway, the point is. We have all these tools and you shouldn’t be fully dependent on one of them. Know it’s weaknesses and also listen to your body (it probably knows best). If you have a coach, listen to them and trust them but also feedback how you feel to them.

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