Maximising Triathlon Performance: The Pitfalls of Data Dependency

You might have heard the call to ditch your data devices a dozen times already. Still, we feel no truly persuasive argument has been made yet to draw triathletes away from their beloved watches, bike computers, and perhaps worst of all, smart trainers.

Let us add to the discussion with hopefully some fresh views. We’ll set out our argument in two sections: Enjoyment and Performance.

Enjoyment

As any athlete juggling a million different responsibilities and a busy training schedule knows, burnout is a real possibility as you put in more and more hours over the season. Your workouts might not be all that interesting (something we at Sense actively strive to avoid by designing engaging sessions that focus on more than solely developing your aerobic capacity), and the thrill of the sport can wane when every session becomes a numbers game.

What sounds more fun to you? A 4-hour ride where you're instructed to stay between 200 to 220 watts or 110 to 120 beats per minute, or a ride where your coach asks you to go "Easy", whatever that means to you that day?

On this "Easy" ride, you might feel strong, give that hill a little kick, or push to pass a rider ahead, all while returning home feeling fresh and satisfied, confident that you’ve followed your coach's instructions. In contrast, with your eyes glued to your bike computer, you might avoid pushing yourself, holding back to stay within prescribed limits. Headwind? You’ll slow down to stay under the threshold. Tailwind? You'll miss the joy of speeding along at 50 km/h because you need to maintain a lower effort. You may even have difficulties reaching the lower limit!

We see how many athletes that start with us closely tie their satisfaction with a workout with the pace they’ve maintained or the distance they’ve covered, while they would be perfectly happy with the effort they put in had they simply been unaware of those figures. A good run is a good run, and you may run 10km in 40 minutes the one week while running it in 42 minutes the week after because your training week has been a lot tougher, or you had a poor night of sleep, or external circumstances beyond your control like heat or wind affected your pace.

Performance

Performance is closely tied to enjoyment. Allowing yourself to train with a greater degree of freedom and thus experience a much greater variety of stimuli is key to improving. No racecourse is perfectly flat, wind-free, or devoid of other athletes affecting your pace. An instruction to ride "Easy" aligns with how you feel that day. Feeling great? You might produce higher watts than last week while still feeling fresh. Feeling fatigued? Take it easy, recover, and be ready to hit the next session hard.

This applies to swimming and running as well. Doing a 5x800 in the pool at an easy effort? You’ll benefit from trying to keep up with the sprinter in the next lane for a lap before returning to your easy pace. It’s both fun and it’ll make you a better athlete.

ERG Mode

Related to all this is the use of smart trainers and their ERG mode. ERG mode removes the need to maintain watts yourself, setting a constant resistance, which can detach you from your actual capabilities on any given day. Overextending can sap the fun out of your ride while riding below your potential is neither enjoyable nor beneficial to your performance.

Yes, you can adjust the resistance with the plus or minus buttons, but this diverts your focus from what truly matters: enjoying your ride.

A failure to maintain the power set for the day can be mentally tough, leading you to get angry at yourself, the plan, or even your coach as clearly the power demanded of you was set wrong. Even though there are so many factors that affect your given capabilities on a day you may not even have realised yet, your plan (obviously) doesn’t take into account, and your coach wasn’t aware of. In ERG mode, even a tiny 5-watt difference may mean crushing your workout and walking away feeling great or grinding yourself empty.

Rather, trying to stick to the given watts yourself allows you to gauge your body and tells you immediately whether you could push harder or whether this is one of those days where you need to step back a bit. Your body isn’t able to tell the difference between pushing 295 watts or 300 watts in terms of training stimuli, as you’ll still benefit, but your mind certainly is.

Conclusion

Glancing at your data during a ride to track progress and determine whether this is in line with how you feel is fine but be cautious about letting numbers dictate your workout. Over-reliance on data can diminish performance benefits and gradually drain the enjoyment from your training.

Don’t overcomplicate matters, listen to your body, and you’ll likely find your performance soaring in ways numbers alone could never achieve.