The vast majority of endurance athletes measure everything by time and distance.
- I rode my bike for two hours.
- I ran 12 miles today.
- I swam 4.5 hours this week for a total of 10,000 meters.
Time and distance are easy to track. They add up quickly and make nice sexy numbers you can graph or toss around casually at work to impress your colleagues.
It’s almost our default setting. After all, we think of other important things in the same way.
- I worked 65 hours this week, or
- I haven’t missed a workout in 365 days, or
- My car has 57,000 miles on it.
Funny thing is, there’s nothing of substance to these macro level quantities. The devil is truly in the details.
- Your boss doesn’t care if you worked 65 hours, did you get the work done? Did you do it right? Can you do more? For less?
- Not missing a workout is impressive, but were they good workouts? Are you actually fitter for it?
- What kind of MPG did you get for those miles? Did you go cool places? Have you consistently taken it in for service?
It’s about the quality, not the quantity of what you did. You and I can both ride for 75 miles, but have very different rides. Thanks to powermeters and quantitative software, we compare how much work each of us actually did. By managing the quality of my ride, I can “get more done” in less time. My hard tempo ride of 2.5 hours is as much work as your 4.5 hour easy ride.
Of course, making this conversion from macro to micro, from quantity to quality, isn’t easy. There’s a little learning and lots of friction. But the pay off is huge.
By measuring and managing quality, I just saved myself two hours. I can’t think of a single person who wouldn’t benefit from having an extra two plus hours this week. That’s about 8hrs per month, or a savings of 40hrs over the course of 4-5 months of training. How much is 40hrs of NOT training worth to you?
Ready to rethink what you measure?
Read the Endurance Nation Long Course Training Manual
Attend our FREE five week “Rethinking the OutSeason” Virtual Seminar. We’ll cover these topics above in much greater detail while also teaching you the basics of training with power, pace, annual scheduling, and much more. During the seminar you’ll receive our OutSeason, Training with Power, and Training with Pace eBooks (3 total).
You’ll also automagically become an ENFan, receiving a FREE Four Keys DVD, 10% training plan discount, and an invitation to create a FREE 14-day trial membership to TeamEN, September 20 through October 4!
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