Outlaw Triathlon - Part 3 - My Race Performance

This is one of a three part set of posts about my first iron distance triathlon: Outlaw Triathlon 2017. This post contains the analysis of my race performance. You can also read about my training and my review of the event.

In this final post in my series on the Outlaw Triathlon I want to review my performance, look at what I learnt and how to improve if (when) I do another event of this distance in the future.

Context

Prior to this event I'd never done an iron distance triathlon before. In fact, apart from the middle distance event I did in the build up, the longest I'd gone before was an olympic distance tri. I'd also previously run two marathons, including a 2:59:34 at London in 2016.

I've already covered training in another post in this series and felt that I was going into the race in the best possible shape that I could be. No injuries or niggles. Calves felt a fraction tight, but I find that's quite common for me after a taper period.

The Swim

I've been working really hard on my swim in the build up. Made some huge improvements. Prior to starting the training plan the longest I had ever swum in one go was 2.4km. Target pace was 2:00/100m that I'd been practising in training.

The main thing I don't like in a mass start swim is the washing machine that occurs while everyone gets going and jostles for a good position. I hate having my legs pushed down from behind. However, over the last couple of races I've been made a real effort to start in the middle of the pack to help overcome this fear. It worked!

I positioned myself at the front of bay 3 (70-90 minute swim time), figuring that my target time of 75-80 minutes would let me swim at the same speed as those around me. As it turns out this was a great decision. I was able to get away cleanly and by the time we merged with bays 1 and 2 the fast swimmers were already away and I had got into a good rhythm.

I managed to get in with a good bunch who all seemed to be able to swim in a mostly straight line. Got my stroke nice and smooth and my breathing nice and even. Being in a group like this creates a great drafting effect, meaning it's possible to swim quite fast with far less effort. Also the nice straight Outlaw swim course meant I didn't have to spend much time sighting as I have the fortune of generally being able to swim in a straight line in open water.

The swim seemed to fly by and I came out of the water with a swim time of 1:13:52 at a pace of 1:54/100m, so significantly quicker than expected. Got my wetsuit off fine, but a slight touch of cramp in both calf muscles while doing so was a bit worrying. Fortunately it didn't turn into a full cramp and eased off as soon as I started moving into the change tent – but did leave me with calf muscles tighter that I would have liked.

T1

I swam with my tri-suit under my wetsuit, so no need to get changed in T1. Just a quick foot dry and put some socks on. Number belt, gloves, sungalsses and bike hat plus a few essentials into the rear pockets. Transition time of 5:37, which I would have liked to have been at least a minute quicker. Need more practice getting stuff in and out of kit bags!

Bike

I had a brilliant bike leg. During my long training rides I'd been averaging a speed of just over 29kph on a slightly hillier route than the Outlaw. I was therefore hoping that less hills and race day fitness would allow me to push that above 30kph and thus hit the sub-6-hour bike split. It worked!

The bike course is made up of three loops. Over the first two I was averaging around 32kph. By the third lap I was starting to tire a bit but also my calf muscles continued to tighten up. Knowing that I'm prone to tight calves at the end of a marathon I took the decision to back off just a fraction to preserve my legs for the run as much as possible. However, I was able keep the average speed high and come home with a bike time of 5:58:26, so job definitely done.

Given that prior to starting training for the Outlaw I'd only ever done one ride over 100 miles, to achieve such a good bike time was more than I had hoped for. I also feel that I got the bike nutrition pretty much spot on (but that's covered in its own section later).

T2

Nothing particularly special about T2. The marshals rack your bike for you, which is most welcome. Then it's into the change tent to switch to run gear. I decided to run in my Saucony Type A6 racing flats and go with tie up laces. I felt the few seconds spent tying laces was well worth it given the extra comfort and fit over using elastic ones. Time in T2 was 3:15, which was good considering the amount of kit bag faffing involved!

Run

The run was tough: far harder than I was expecting. Given that I did a sub-3-hour marathon in 2016 I was hoping to breeze round a 3:30 with the goal of pushing for a 3:20 if possible. Having never done this distance triathlon before I was slightly caught out at just how hard the run would be directly after such a long swim and bike.

(Note: actually a 3:46:58 as my watch died 8km from the end!)

My run problems were three-fold: not getting my run plan right; not getting my run nutrition right; and the tight calf muscles carried over from the end of the swim and the bike leg. This resulted in a 1:43:53 first half of the marathon, followed by an abysmal 2:03:05 for the second half. I've certainly learnt some good stuff for the future! I think the main problem was that I approached the run as if it was a standalone marathon (something I was already familiar with) rather than the third element of a long distance tri.

A happy face at the start of the run

I'd done all my long brick sessions with a run at target race pace of 3:37/km, with runs up to 1 hours duration. Throughout the training I always felt comfortable at this pace so set my race plan accordingly to just come off the bike and hit and hold this as a steady pace. I also planned a run nutrition strategy around what I would normally do for a marathon (see the nutrition section below).

What I discovered about 18km into the marathon was that this strategy didn't work. I then had to slow down quite a lot and take more time in the feed stations getting my fuelling correct. However, the constant stopping and starting really aggravated my tight calves, meaning that for the second half of the run my form and efficiency were way below normal. The result being that the run became even harder and my pace slowed down to about 5:30/km, which is way slower than even my typical long run pace of 5:10/km.

Feeling the pain towards the end

The final half of the run just became a case of breaking the distance down into a series of short sections from the current feed station to the next, walk through the feed station taking on fluid and fuel, and then sum up the energy to start running to again towards the next feed station. On the plus side I did still manage to pick up the pace for the last lap of the lake and run faster down the finish funnel!

One further problem on the run was that my watch ran out of battery with 8km to go. Not a major issue as by that time I wasn't using it for pacing as I was just moving the best my legs would allow. However, it would have been a disaster if I was close to target pace and relying on the power data from my Stryd footpod.

Overall, happy to have finished the run in an acceptable time of 3:46:58. I learnt a lot and will definitely be planning a different strategy if (when) I ever do another long distance triathlon.

Nutrition

As already mentioned, my nutrition was a bit of a mixed bag. I think I got it pretty much right until I hit the run, as which point my plan was totally broken.

Pre-race was my standard approach of a huge bowl of porridge and a coffee for breakfast, followed by a banana and sipping a bottle of water about 30 minutes before racing.

On the bike I planned drinking four 750ml bottles of fluid: half water and half High-5 Zero electrolyte drink. Aiming to drink every 15 mins. Food wise I went with a mix of Chia Charge flapjack bars and small bags of pretzels. These were consumed as follows:

• 0:15:00 – Chia Charge bar
• 1:00:00 & 1:30:00 – half Chia Charge bar
• 2:00:00 – 30g pretzels
• 2:30:00 & 3:00:00 - half Chia Charge bar
• 3:30:00 – 30g pretzels
• 4:00:00 & 4:30:00 - half Chia Charge bar
• 5:00:00 – 30g pretzels
• 5:30:00 – Chia Charge bar

The first Chia Charge bar was to refuel after the swim. Then eating every 30 minutes was a great way to break down the ride into smaller segments (useful advice I got from a magazine article). This plan worked out at about 55g of carbs per hour, which I think was pretty much spot on for fuelling on the bike.

The only complaint I have about my bike fuel strategy was that I struggled with the very last Chia Charge bar being way too sweet. I don't normally each a huge amount of sweet carbs so I think five flapjack bars was a bit too much.

I came off the bike feeling well fuelled and hydrated ready for the run. (The fact I made it 18km into the run before problems hit shows I probably got it right). However, my run nutrition plan turned out to be rather lacking!

For a standalone marathon, my nutrition is usually to just take on a couple of mouthfuls of water every 5km and a 33Shake chia gel every 8km. This has always worked well for me, so that's what I went for. However, I didn't take account of the fact that my normal marathon nutrition is based on having reserves of fuel and hydration in my body at the start of the marathon, so my race intake is just top-up rather than replenishment.

On the first half of the run I ran through each feed station, taking a mouthful of water as I felt like it and hitting my chia gel intake at 8km and 16km as planned. However, the chia gels only have 11g of carbs each and I probably only drank about 100ml of fluid in the first part of the run. Therefore at about 18km I hit both energy and fluid deficit, which massively curtailed my pace.

Realising what was happening I backed off and make an effort over the next few aid stations to walk through them and take on plenty of electrolyte drink, some flat coke and a goodly number of Jaffa Cakes! It took about another 10km of this strategy before I felt my energy levels starting to restore.

The remaining 14km of the run I switched to a strategy of walking each feed station making sure that I kept fluid and fuel levels topped up. No more energy dips, but by this time my tight calf muscles were the main hindrance to me being able to get back to any measure of a decent running pace.

Learnings

Having never put all three event distances together in one go before there were always going to be lots of things to learn from the experience. This post details my analysis of my race and here are my list of learnings that I will take forward for the future:

• Pre-race massages for tight calves - I know that I generally suffer from tight calves, especially towards the end of a marathon. However at shorter distances it doesn't normally impact on my performance. For long distance events like this I need to spend more time ensuring that there's no tightness carried over from training into race day. A few visits to my sports massage guy in the weeks before race day will definitely be built into my training plan next time!
• More savoury items on the bike - fuelling on the bike was sound but too much sweet stuff, swap at least one flapkjack for something more savoury.
• Different race plan for the run - need to adapt the plan for the fact that it's not a standalone marathon. In particular adjust the target pace to allow for a few seconds of walking through the feed stations to ensure time to fully take on fluid and fuel.
• Better nutrition strategy for the start of the run - plan run nutrition to continue intake of around 55g of carbs per hour plus aiming to consume 1,500ml fluid over the marathon distance. This requires fully utilising the feed stations in the early stages of the run so that fuel reserves never drop too low.
• Different watch configuration - I had my bike watch config set to 'Good' GPS quality (rather than 'Best') but this still consumed too much battery. Reduce the GPS quality to 'Okay' for future long distance events .

Conclusions

It was a tough day with both high and low points. However, I finished my first long distance triathlon and smashed my 11:30:00 target by almost 22 minutes!

Will I do an iron distance triathlon again? Yes, probably

Next year? Definitely not!

I'm planning an easier year next year with some shorter distance triathlons, a few more running events and a bit more focus on athletics. Watch this space for a 2019 event though...

More Stryd Experiments

In my previous post I described my first impressions of the Stryd running power meter. I've now had a chance to do a few more interesting runs and so far the power readings are looking pretty good.

Lactate Threshold Session

The first run I did since my last post was a Lactate Threshold session. This was 6km long with about 1.5km warm-up and then the remainder at my lactate threshold pace of 3:58/km. This is the pace I ran my fastest half marathon at and gives me an average heart rate of somewhere in the high 160's.

This run was recorded using the Stryd Beta iOS App synced straight to the Stryd Power Center (all graphs below are extracted from Power Centre). I also ran with my Suunto Ambit3 paired with a different heart rate strap to compare data sets. Happily the data from Stryd Power Centre matches pretty closely to that recorded by the Ambit3

Power vs Elevation vs Heart Rate

This graph shows plots for the LT part of the run with power in orange, heart rate in purple and elevation in pink. It's quite obvious to see that I had big power spikes on each of the two small hills that made up the run (around 8 minutes and 16 minutes in). You can also see a power drop during the downhill section (10 minutes).

Certainly something to work on in the future is trying to smooth these spike by adjusting effort and pace in order to maintain a steady power level throughout the run. I believe that this is much more the objective when running with power as the primary metric.

As expected, my heart rate gradually raises over time as I start to tire and this is usually what I see when I'm trying to maintain a consistent pace for a period of time. What is interesting is that average power output seems to remain fairly steady even though heart rate is going up.

What's also very noticeable is the steep rise in heart rate corresponding to the power spikes on the hills and that although my heart rate decreases after each hill it never returns to the level that it was at before that hill. I would expect that by trying to smooth out the power spikes on those hills, I would also get a much lower heart rate increase and perhaps be able to achieve a lower average for the same pace across the whole run. Something to test out in a future session and a good long term goal to aim for.

Power vs Pace

The second graph plots for the LT part of the run with power in orange and pace in blue. Not sure what happened between 12 and 13 minutes into the run as my Ambit3 didn't record such a pace fluctuation, so I'm going to assume this is just a data anomaly with the iPhone GPS readings.

What you can see from this graph is that I maintained a consistent pace across the whole run, even though there were a few small hills along the way. This consistent pace is the cause of the power spikes and heart rate raises on the hills. Again, next run the aim will be to try to keep a consistent power and let the pace vary as necessary.

Average Power Output

If I exclude the power spikes, caused by inconsistent pacing on the hills, and focus just on the two flat sections where power was steady I'm achieving an average power output of 345 watts (4.6 watts/kg). This seems fairly consistent with my 250 watts (3.3 watts/kg) recovery pace output and gives me a fairly decent baseline power figure for future Lactate Threshold sessions and half marathon efforts.

Track Intervals Session

The second run that I did was a session on the track. The entire session is shown on the plot below with power in orange, heart rate in purple and pace in blue:

This was all recorded on my Ambit3 using a second HRM strap to capture the heart rate data (as dual power and heart rate from Stryd to Ambit3 doesn't currently work). The session was divided as follows:

• Minutes 0 to 5: 800m easy warm-up
• Minutes 7 to 13: drills (skips, high knees, heel flicks etc.)
• Minutes 13 to 22: short sprints (about 30m at 80% effort)
• Minutes 22 to 55: intervals – pyramid of 200-400-600-800-600-400-200m efforts with the same distance as the previous interval jogging recovery between each
• Minutes 55 to 60: 800m easy cool down

Zooming in on just the intervals pyramid, we get the following graph:

Overall

The one thing you can clearly see is how well power tracks pace and reacts almost instantaneously. Given these were all fairly short bursts, heart rate is also following along quite well, but you can clearly see the lag at the end of each interval as it slowly returns to the recovery level. You can also see how my max heart rate increases each interval, making it a less than ideal measure of intensity compared to power.

Intervals

Power levels look pretty consistent as I would expect. The power for the first 200 is higher than any other interval (the last 200 was slow as I had a sore calf muscle at this point). The 400's have a higher power than the 600's and the 800. Both of the 600's and the 800 have a raising power towards the end as I pushed a bit harder.

Interestingly most of the intervals have a power dip at some point around the middle, probably indicating that I'm going off too fast and then slowing down too much in compensation. This isn't really noticeable on the pace graph, so either the stryd is giving me a valuable insight (which I suspect is actually the case) or it's not got it's power measurement quite right. Certainly something to play around with on my next track session.

The average power figures for each interval are:

200	402 watts
400	388 watts
600	358 watts
800	369 watts
600	362 watts
400	388 watts
200	377 watts

It's good to see that each interval either side of the pyramid has roughly identical average power. Interesting also how the 800 interval has higher watts than the 600's. However, looking at the pace graphs, I started out the 800 a bit too fast, which probably accounts for this figure.

One other thing I learnt is that using this data I am able to work out an approximate 3 minute sustainable power of something around 370 watts (4.9 watts/kg).

Recoveries

Between each interval there was a recovery period of the same distance as the interval just completed. I'm running all of these pretty steady and consistently at a relaxed pace of about 5:40-5:50 per km. Both the pace and power seem quite steady.

What is interesting from these is that average power is around 250 watts, whereas a previous recovery run had me being able to maintain 250 watts off a much faster 5:10/km pace. My suspicion is that this clearly shows a drop in running form due to fatigue from a hard interval (although see the next section also for another idea). Clearly something to work on is focusing on the power during these recoveries and trying to keep it as low as possible by maintaining good running form even though fatigued.

Warm-up and Cool-down

One slightly strange observation from this session was during the warm-up and cool-down laps. Given that these were on the track and an average pace of about 5:30/km I would have expected much lower power readings than the 250 watts that I have seen during recovery runs at 5:10/km pace on undulating roads. Instead, my power was still averaging out at about 250 watts.

I have three hypothesis to play with here:

• I run less efficiently while warming up and when tired at the end of a hard session (quite likely, but easily tested)
• 250 watts is some magical minimum figure of the amount of power that I require to get me running and I can only go up from that point
• My optimum efficiency pace is about 5:10/km and trying to run slower than that actually requires me to compromise my running performance (e.g. slower cadence, shorter strides) and that's less efficient and needs more power

This is definitely another area to play around with a bit more. I'm doing some slow runs with my children at the weekend, so will see how the results of these compare.

Multi-Terrain Run

The final run that I did was a multi-terrain recovery run. This wasn't anything particularly special as it was pretty slow and in horrible wet weather. Basically I just ran round a field five times while my boy was football training on the pitch in the middle! However what is interesting is the power map generated by Stryd Power Centre:

This map is coloured by power, with a scale from green being the areas of lowest power on the run and red being the areas of highest power, with orange being the middle between the two. Pace was a steady 5:30/km for the entire run and the terrain is pretty much flat the whole way round (3m elevation change round the whole 1km loop).

What is very evident from this picture is the change of power with the change of running surface. The bottom right section is mostly green and corresponds with a tarmac footpath and car park. The right hand side is the highest power and this corresponds to the transition from tarmac to longer grass. The entire top is in longer grass, except for the very small section directly above the football pitch that was well manicured. The left hand side was short grass but slightly wetter, while the bottom left was another area of well manicured grass.

This looks like conclusive proof that Stryd is correctly calculating differences in power requirement for running at an identical pace on different running surfaces.

Newbury Triathlon 2015

This weekend saw me compete in my third ever triathlon - the Team Kennet Newbury Triathlon 2015. This was the same event that I did last year for my first triathlon. It's nice and local to me and has lots of people that I know competing.

This year as well as the event itself I had a little smack-down going with some local friends (Nick and Andy) as we are all at roughly the same performance level but have never raced against each other before. An added motivation to do well!

The race is a sprint triathlon format, based at Newbury's Northcroft Leisure Centre. It consists of a 300-yard pool swim, 22km bike ride and a 5km run. Last year I finished in 40th place (out of about 400 starters) in a time of 1:09:48. This year I'd trained harder and had more race experience, so I was hoping for a much better performance.

Preparation

When I did Newbury Tri last year I'd only been swimming for about eight months and cycling for about five. Since then I've been swimming every week and two or three times a week for the last 4 months. I've also put in a lot more cycling mileage, including a lot of triathlon specific bike training. I've also upgraded my bike, adding aero bars and adopting a much more aggressive riding position. I was therefore much more prepared both physically and technique wise to tackle this event.

In addition, I've also completed in another big triathlon event (Blenheim Palace Tri) and done a lot more transition practice, so I was a lot more confident mentally as well as physically. This was also a close friend's first triathlon event so I'd spent a fair bit of time helping him to prepare, practice transitions and so on. It's amazing how much extra clarity and confidence you get after having taken someone else through the whole event and procedures!

Pre-Race

The morning dawned clear and sunny with almost no wind, but pretty cold. Once the sun got going it started to warm up nicely. Perfect racing conditions. Met up with my friend and we took a nice leisurely cycle for the four miles from our homes to Northcroft Leisure Centre. This made a nice little leg spin to get the muscles moving.

Arriving at the venue we headed into registration. Numbers collected; race timing chip round the ankle; hands graffiti'ed with maker-pen numbers; technical t-shirt grabbed. As with last year the registration process was well organised and effortless. We took our bikes into transition and I helped my friend set up as his start time was 90 minutes before mine. Also met up with Nick and Andy to discuss the prospects for the day and drool over Nick's slippery bike!

Next it was off to pool-side to meet up with both mine and my friend's families and cheer him on through the first stage of the race. Interestingly, I was far more nervous for him that I was about my own looming race. He had a great swim and was soon on his way on the bike.

Now it was time to focus on my race. I returned to transition and set up all my kit. Bike shoes attached to cleats and held level with elastic bands. Running shoes with a bit of talc and some vaseline, so that I could bike and run without needing socks – something I've been practising over the summer and a great speed up in T1. Number belt, bike helmet and sunglasses. Nice and simple.

The Swim

Newbury Triathlon takes place in Newbury's amazing 75 yard (72m) long outdoor heated Lido pool. The original Lido dates back to 1870 with its current form being from the 1930s. It's a lovely place to swim and I've been using it each week for training since it opened at the beginning of summer. Sadly the poor August weather this year meant it didn't get used as much as it should have. Hopefully this won't effect any decisions about opening it next year!

The swim is four lengths of the pool, for a total distance of 300 yards. Competitors are set off in pairs at 30 second intervals. You swim up one lane, move across a bit swim down the next, under the centre rope and up the third lane, and finally across a bit more to the final lane for the last length. Up the steps in the corner and out through a little gate into the car park transition area.

Swimming is by far my weakest discipline, despite all the effort I've put in to improving it. However, the first two lengths I started strong, maintaining a good bilateral breathing pattern. By the end of the second length I was overtaking one of the swimmers who started 30 seconds before me. Lengths three and four I had to switch to breathing every two strokes in order to keep my pace high. Overtook the other person from the pair ahead of me. Out of the water and through the gate in 5:47 – 30 seconds quicker than last year.

Excluding the pool exit part, pace for the swim was about 1:44/100m, which is well above the pace I usually sustain, so very pleased even if there is still a long way to go in my swimming journey.

T1

The first transition from swim to bike is usually the most tricky. Balance is effected from just having moved from a horizontal to vertical position. There's also a few bits to do: sunglasses, helmet and number belt. This year I opted to cycle and run without socks, so that was a lot less faffing than my previous triathlons. My official T1 time was 35 seconds, which was the second fastest of the day and 9 seconds faster than last year. Except...

After crossing the mount line it all went a bit pear shaped: I crossed the line and climbed on the bike and as I did this I managed to steer the bike off the path onto the grass. Failed to slip my right foot into the shoe and while sorting this out my left foot fell off the pedal. The left shoe then dragged the floor and separated from the cleat. Got the right foot in and the bike back on the path but left my other shoe behind on the floor! Had to stop the bike, get off and go retrieve the shoe before finally sorting everything out and getting going again.

Amazingly, the GPS trace shows this only costing me 20 seconds, but that was still two places lost in the final standings. I really need to spend a lot more time practising the bike mount before my next event in October!

The Bike

After a disastrous start, I was determined to push hard on the bike. I knew Andy was starting only a minute and a half behind me, was a similar speed swimmer and a much faster rider so I wanted to stay ahead of him for as long as possible.

Got down on to my aero bars as quickly as possible and was soon overtaking other riders. Powered through the course as hard as possible, overtaking all the way. Heart-rate averaging about 170bpm all the way, which for me is pretty much on my lactate threshold effort. Looking as some estimated power readings (I don't have a power meter), they show a mean estimated power of 199w, normalised at 248w. This is the highest estimated power I've achieved over a sustained effort, so very pleased with this.

The first part of the course is a gently undulating country road. Nice and easy to ride, but requiring care when overtaking other riders as oncoming cars are often not quite as far over their side of the road as they should be. Next comes the gentle climb from Welford to Wickham. It's not very steep, but goes on for quite a long time, with the route's steepest hill at the end. I was buoyed going up this hill as the rider I was overtaking shouted out “you're going pretty fast!”. Thanks, it gave me a boost. The final section back to Newbury is a busier road, but it's pretty much flat or slightly downhill the whole way. Perfect for getting really aero, selecting a big gear and laying down some speed!

Unfortunately there was a bit of bad luck involved and I got slowed significantly by cars at three roundabouts and at a set of temporary traffic lights that had appeared two days before the event. Looking at GPS data, I estimate that these probably cost me another 20-30 seconds over having a clear run through. This equates to another one or two places in the final results.

Overall I've got to be very pleased with my bike leg time of 39:53, which is 2:31 faster than last year even with all the slowness. Nick thrashed me on the bike by just over two minutes (more about this in the summary) and unfortunately Andy had a puncture and had to retire.

T2

My dismount into T2 was pretty much perfect: feet out of the shoes nice and early on the straight before, off the bike with a running dismount and into transition. A quick 26 seconds to rack the bike, slip on the running shoes, remove the helmet and off again. Fifth fastest T2 of the day, 15 seconds quicker than last year.

The Run

The run didn't go as well as I had hoped. Having given it my all on the bike I was unable to sustain the running pace that I am capable of over a 5k distance. Started well with the first half a km at 4:10/km pace while I got into my running. Then got a massive stitch and rather than speeding up to my usual 5k pace, had to drop down to 4:30/km for the next 3.5k while it went away. Finally it cleared and I was able to complete the remainder of the run at 3:47/km pace.

The run course is a mix of footpath, narrow trail and canal tow-path. It's a nice route to run although the trail bit makes it pretty hard to overtake slower runners. I caught a couple up during this section of the run, which I think didn't help my pace particularly either.

Finished the run in 20:21, which was 36 seconds slower than last year and well off the 18 minutes I should have been capable of at my normal 5k pace (the run is slightly short at 4.6k). A solid reminder that triathlon is all about balancing the three disciplines.

Results

My overall time for the event was 1:07:03, which was 2 minutes and 45 seconds quicker than last year. A great result, but a long way from the 1:05:00 I was targeting. Finished in 24th place overall from 343 starters, and 12th in my age group.
My swim was 55th fastest, bike 32nd and run 36th. It's easy to see how bad a run I had as that's by far my best discipline and I'd normally be looking for a top-10 run in an event like this.

Full results available here.

Summary

Overall I'm pleased with my improvement, especially the big strides I've made in the swim and bike sections of the race. Removing a stupid bike mount mistake and some bad luck with the traffic I would have been a few places higher and significantly closer to my target time. I've also got a very clear focus on what to practice for my next event: bike mount, bike mount, bike mount!

I also had a good reminder that triathlon is about three events, not just one. No point pushing hard on the bike to gain a couple of minutes then loosing more that that on my strongest discipline! I think the prospect of our little smack-down and wanting to keep ahead of Andy for as long as possible on the bike may have forced some bad pacing choices. Lesson learnt for the future.

As to the smack-down, Nick comprehensively smashed me with a finish time of 1:03:05 for 7th place. I pipped him slightly on the swim and transitions, but he took over two minutes out of me on both the bike and run legs. Given our similar fitness and running performance levels I can draw a few interesting conclusions:

• Having a really good aero TT bike is definitely worth a couple of kph average speed (mine was 33.5kph, Nick's was 35.9kph over the main Strava segment covering most of the of the course).
• It also looks highly likely that a good TT bike means that this extra speed can be gained from a fractionally lower level of exertion. This result being that you can come off the bike with more energy to invest in the run.
• Nick has also had a professional bike fit on his bike which also looks to have contributed not only to his bike performance but also left him in a much better physical shape to nail the run leg.

Investing in a good TT specific bike looks like a really good option for my future triathlon ambitions. Better get saving!

I thoroughly enjoyed the event. Team Kennet did a fantastic job of organising it and the marshals were excellent. Hope to be back next year, although I may be helping to organise given that I've recently joined up with Team Kennet.

What I Want From an Online Training and Activity Tracking Tool

Someone in our local Facebook running group recently asked members to complete a survey on how they track, record and share their running. This got me thinking about what sites and service I currently use and what features would be required for me to swap them all for a single unifying solution.

Primary Tools and Services

First off, it's worth looking at what I currently use and what features are good and lacking in each service. My current activity tracking and training platform consists of four fairly disjointed websites and services:

Movescount

I use a Suunto Ambit3 multi-sport watch to track all my activities. It's a superb watch (I'll add a separate review later) and it synchronises to Suunto's proprietary Movescount site and app. Movescount is essential in the mix as you need it to get data off the watch, configure activities and update the settings on the watch. Additionally it has a pretty neat app designer for building your own watch apps (as a software engineer this is something I'm using quite a lot).

Also, it has a reasonable training planner feature that syncs with the Ambit3 so you can always find out what your workouts for the day should be without needing to be near a computer or mobile. Unfortunately this planner isn't the easiest to use for actually building a plan and it doesn't work particularly well as a training diary, so I also have to maintain this data elsewhere as well and keep the two in sync manually.

Analysis of activity data is fairly rudimentary, probably just the minimum subset of features you can get away with. There's fairly good data about individual activities, but there's no way to track trends across multiple activities or periods. Fortunately the Movescount site can be configured to automatically export to Strava and TrainingPeaks, and you can also download .fit or .gpx files for manual import into other sites.

The community aspects of Movescount are quite limited, mainly because it's comprised only of Suunto owners.

Strava

I switched over from Runkeeper to Strava about 18 months ago. It's one of the two sites that I actually pay to use the premium services. Most of my individual activity analysis is done on Strava and this is also the place that I use to track shoe usage figures and to plan routes. I like the features that they have for analysing running and bike data. However, as a triathlete, I wish they did a better job on swim analysis.

The recent expansion to start tracking trends across similar runs/rides is nice, but this functionality is still very lacking in it's scope. You can't use it for any serious performance over time analysis as it appears to be only based on following the same identical routes each time, which gets rather boring.

I like the Strava training log and calendar feature, but not being able to use it as a training planner is a real weakness in my mind. Also, Strava doesn't really function that well as a training diary as you can only attach limited information to individual activities and there's no real publishing/sharing mechanism.

However, the biggest value I get from Strava, beyond the activity tracking, is the community aspect. Being able to join clubs, link to races and follow other athletes is great. I've been able to meet some great people and share in experiences and discussions. Being able to send and receive kudos and comment on activities just makes at all a bit more special. After doing a particularly awesome but tough session or race, getting some virtual high-fives is a really nice feeling.

TrainingPeaks

I've been looking for a good training planner/diary tool for a long, long time. I even started writing my own at one point (but work got in the way of finishing it!). First I came across XHale (see below) but it's limited feature set and manual event import weren't working for me. Then I decided to experiment with TrainingPeaks and I've been using it happily for a few weeks. This is the other tool that I now actually pay for the Premium Edition.

The main feature that I use within TrainingPeaks is the Calendar functionality. I use it as an additional activity tracker (in addition to Strava), with activities being automatically synchronised from Movescount. I also use the Calendar functionality to build my future training plans. It's a great plan builder and has good support for libraries of workouts and moving activities around. The ability to expose the Calendar as an iCal feed and also work with it in the dedicated TrainingPeaks iOS app are really useful as well.

In addition to using the Calendar to plan and record workouts, it also acts are a reasonably good training diary. You can record pre and post-activity notes and details of how the session went. There's also pretty good support for adding metrics like sleep, weight, mood, motivation, steps and so on into the Calendar.

Probably the only major features that seem to be missing from the Calendar are the ability to record notes and goals against weeks or training meso-cycles as opposed to individual activities (I think the classic view supports this to some extent, but it's not yet present on the new view) and the ability to publish a summary of my training diary to a blog. It would also be really nice if the TrainingPeaks app was HealthKit integrated so that it could automatically populate metrics into the calendar from the other apps that I use to capture this info already (SleepCycle, Nudge, MyFitnessPal, manually entered weight etc.)

The other parts of TrainingPeaks that I make good use of are its ability to define Annual Training Plans (which help with training plan building) and the Dashboard. On the Dashboard, the Performance Manager is by far the best component in terms of assessing ongoing levels of training load and stress in order to get the right balance between training enough to get improvements versus over-training. Being able to add custom charts and graphs to the visiualisation on the Dashboard is also a great feature.

Blogger

I maintain two blogs, one about software development and another about running and triathlon (this one in fact!). I do these via the free Blogger platform, mainly because I can't be bothered with the hassle of administering anything myself! My blog entries tend to be just observations, thoughts or reviews.

I don't record a training diary on my blog mainly because, again, I can't be bothered with all the pain of exporting and duplicating the information from Strava/TrainingPeaks into yet another location. I make do with the minimalist Strava activity summary and activity feed blog widgets.

Other Tools and Services

There are some other tools and services that complete my platform or that I found useful but stopped using for one reason or another.

Facebook

Unfortunately I can't avoid Facebook as most of my friends and family are on there. I usually share major runs or important races from Strava on to Facebook so that all my non-running contacts can see what I've achieved.

Twitter

I don't normally tweet all my runs as I find that frustrating when other people clog up my feed with that level of noise. I do tend to announce any new blog posts that I write via a Twitter post as I know a good proportion of my followers will find them of interest.

XHale

A few months ago I started using Xhale as my training planner and diary. It's pretty good for a free tool. Unfortunately it has very minimal ability for analysis, limited import functionality (I was exporting .fit files from Movescount and manually uploading them) and it also doesn't provide any way to export or expose the training diary. These are the main reasons I swapped to TrainingPeaks. It also doesn't provide any way to publish the training diary to a blog. It does what it does well, but it's yet another location to visit rather than a unifying point for my data.

Smashrun

I only came across this new site a few days ago. I've uploaded a few runs and so far it looks promising. What I do like so far is that their focus seems to be on detailed analysis of individual runs plus also trends over time. If they get the trend analysis right then they will have a real differentiator in the market.

Downsides seem to be at the moment that they only track runs (not other activity types like bike or swim), they have limited sync capabilities (so data import is manual TCX files for me), and there is no training planner / diary support. Still early days, but I will continue to watch this one, although not actively use it for the time being.

Swim.com

I was using swim.com with my Pebble watch to track and analyse my swimming sessions. I found their service very useful and the analysis features were nicely optimised for swimming. Unfortunately they don't support or plan sync for Suunto devices and they only seem to be able to handle Garmin specific FIT files.

I therefore don't use their site any more and I haven't yet found anything as good for analysis of swimming data.

iSmoothRun

Before I got my Ambit 3, my main activity tracking was via the iSmoothRun app on my iPhone. This is by far the best app on the market and has a huge amount of configuration and export options. It also has great support for audio cues, interval sessions and so forth. Having a dedicated GPS watch is much nicer, but I do miss many of the iSmoothRun features.

What I'm Looking For

Basically, I want it all! However, at the minimum, I'm after something that:

1. Allows me to upload, comment on, tag and analyse (in detail) individual activities (must support: run, bike and swim, plus multi-sport events like duathlons and triathlons)
2. Identifies and presents me with performance, fitness and training load trends over time for different types of activities, sessions and metrics
3. Provides a training planner tool that easily allows me to build and modify my plan
4. Provides a diary so that I can review sessions, comment on how sessions went, link activities to sessions, comment on weekly and other training cycles, define and track goals, and track usage of shoes and bikes
5. Support for capturing and analysing other metrics (e.g. sleep, body measurements, food intake, hydration, mood, motivation, injury etc.)
6. Route planning and sharing
7. Allow me to write blog entries and then publish my training diary, activities and blog entries to a single common page
8. Allow me to share content via Facebook and Twitter
9. Have a community element where I can join clubs and events, follow other user's activity feeds, diary and blogs, give them a virtual high-five and comment on their content

Secondary features that I would like to see include:

1. The ability to sync activities directly with Movescount so that they are automatically added just by syncing my watch (but I guess this is Suunto dependent)
2. The ability to sync my training plan with Movescount so that upcoming activities are always available on my watch (again, probably Suunto dependent)
3. The ability to customise and extend the data and trend analysis platform so that I can define my own additional metrics to track and which activities to include, display custom graphs of and so forth
4. Support for a wider range of activities that can be tracked (e.g. mountaing biking, hiking, yoga, pilates, strength, stretching, spin, skiiing, football etc.)
5. The ability to expose my training calendar using standard calendar exchange formats so that I can view my training plan from the Calendar application on my phone/laptop
6. An iOS app so that I can see, update and publish my training calendar and diary on the move
7. HealthKit integration on iOS so that metrics that I capture from other apps are automatically synced into my training diary
8. An open API, so that I (or other devs) can write our own tools, apps and site integrations on top of an open service/data platform
9. The ability to have a coach account so that (when I can finally afford a coach) they can build training plans for me, review my session stats and diary entries, add their own comments and track the long-term trends associated with my performance, so that they can continually improve my training plan

That's a lot to ask of a platform and its a very crowded market place to be entering. However, I'm currently playing for two services, each of which does part of what I'm after, but even together not the whole. I would certainly pay for a platform that meets even just my primary requirements (provide it's not too expensive – ideally less than £120 per year [5% of my training, kit and race entry budget]). I would hope that there is a significantly large body of athletes with similar requirements to me in order to make it viable.