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Gauging Training Levels Years Later from Prior Year Training Records
Related: body fat, caloric, Everest Challenge, foam roller, hard core, health, heart rate, metabolism, nutrition, power to weight, recovery, training
When resuming a serious training program, old records can be useful for a reality check on what one actually did when younger, as a means to gauging current efforts. As I am now about six years older than when I tracked this data, it will prove interesting to see if I can match the same level of training. But also it shows a clear progression which could be helpful as input into how quickly training can be ramped-up.
The graph tells me that when in excellent condition, I was able to sustain a training load of 7000-9000 calories per week (kilocalories), useful perspective on my current efforts. The outliers (up to 13500 calories) include long distance events or rides.
Applying a 3rd-order polynomial trendline (curved gray line) shows a steady increase in training load clearly, and thus gives some idea of how quickly my body could tolerate a ramp-up in training load.
I also went back and looked at my weight rate of weight loss while training. In 2006, I dropped 1.3 pounds per week from January through the 3rd week of April. Weight gain after than was muscle, as I focused on strength training.
When I compare the rate of weight loss until the “stall” around March 15, I observe a 1.0 pound per week rate of weight loss, dropping to 0.75 pounds per week through March 25th (the weather has been very uncooperative, so I hope this is the main reason!). Since caloric expenditure in 2011 has averaged 5700 calories per week versus 6500 calories per week for early 2006, I should have been dropping 1.1 pounds per week. Which is just slightly more than what is observed through March 15— very strong correlation. Except that the calories from 2006 were from my Polar HR monitor, and are 4% higher than kilojoules. So I guess I'm still eating too much— dang.
