Last week I wrote about how I was getting tired and not feeling the “vibe”. For me, tiredness and motivation, or lack of, are my red flags when it comes to overtraining. I chilled out from Mon-Fri to recover and get some energy for the cross-country race on Saturday.
In search of a little morale boost, I bought the new version of the Stryd Running Power Meter (“next gen”), my 5th iteration since 2016. After a week of use, this one significantly increases accuracy. As someone who mostly runs off-road and on technical trails, I’ve always had to do a little conversion in my head when referencing my running power off-road.
Although it’s only been a week, I’ve run road, off-road, trail, and a cross-country race, and finally, I’ve seen consistency in my power readings.
Notably, during my cross-country (XC) race, I ran 9km @ 3:28min/km (5:35min/mi). If I were to run at the same pace on the road, I expect my running power to be around 370W. If I wore the previous version of Stryd (Wind) for the XC race, I would probably get an average power output of about 370W despite running on grass, around a twisty course with over 100m of elevation. The old Stryd wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up on slight alterations in pace and elevation. With the new Stryd, I averaged 399W for the XC race, like when I ran a 32 min 10km on the road. Within the new Stryd, they’ve upgraded the sensor and processor for higher sampling rates and onboard data filtering, which has massively improved the data quality.
In hindsight, I should have worn both Stryds during the race for a more accurate comparison. I will make sure to do that going forward.
I have a 15% discount (“coachoconnor”) if you want to buy a Stryd https://link.drwillo.com/stryd (I don’t get any affiliate bonuses for this)
North Island XC champs
Moving on to the North Island XC champs, I finished 21st overall. I felt solid during the race and was stoked to be back in the competitive mix. After only a month of training and almost no high-intensity running, I suffered every time I had to put in an effort on the climbs.
With four weeks until the national champs on the same course, I will now incorporate specific above-threshold intervals into my training. I plan to do a workout where I run at 400W (Zone 5) for 3 minutes on flat terrain and then push uphill at 450+W (Zone 7) for 30 seconds. This workout will target the unique aspects of the course and address my current weakness. Additionally, it aligns with my goal of improving my threshold (or Critical Power) and will prepare me for more intense threshold work during the upcoming road running season from August to September.
I want to mention that I'm grateful I had a relaxed week leading up to the race, even though I felt somewhat lazy because I "only" ran four times for a total of 42 km (26 mi) from Monday to Friday and didn’t do any Zwifting or Mountain biking.
I still ran 88km for the week, which is within 4km of what I’d run over the previous three weeks, but I trained 4 hrs less without the biking and had a significantly lower training stress score (TSS). This situation highlights why relying solely on weekly mileage to evaluate your training or fitness level can be misleading. As I said in last week's post, performance trumps all metrics.
If you're interested, I recommend checking out one of my most popular episodes titled “Why pro runners don’t care about their weekly mileage (and neither should you)”
📊6:49hrs total (TSS 452)
🏃6x Run = 6:49hrs (88km), 1308m 📈
Tues - Rest
Wed - Easy 30min (7km)
Thurs - Aerobic hour 15km
Fri - Easy hour (10km)
Sat - WU - XC Race - CD (18km)