The Albon Way

Strava Stats, Lessons Learnt and Training Update | Episode 11

In this episode, Henriette and Jon reflect on their experiences from the past year, discussing their training approaches, Strava stats, and lessons learnt. They share insights on managing expectations and setting realistic goals for the new year. The conversation also touches on their plans for 2025, including upcoming races and strategies for improvement.

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Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 04 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

[Music] Great, we are back 2025. Happy new year. Happy new year. Yes, we have said that to each other over the past couple of days, but we saw we'd say it to all of our listeners as well. We're recording this four days into 2025, 2025, so we're getting used to saying that. How's the new year treating you so far, John? It's pretty good. We've been home since the new year began, and it snowed like crazy, so it was a bit of a culture shock to go from running round in short in Spain to, I don't know, it must be like a meter and a half of snow that's come to have been home, so a lot of snow shoveling and also trying to get some running down on the icy snowy roads. But, uh, no, pretty good and happy. Saw a new year, got good plans in place, kind of psyched. Kind of psyched. Sounds good. How was your training camp in Spain? How long were you there for? How long were we there for? We were there for, I think, two weeks, um, started off with some running and a bit of filming work, and then headed off to El Chorro for some running and climbing, and then back to the coast for a bit more running. And, uh, yeah, it was actually a lot of fun. I think, um, it took a few days to get the legs into trail mode, especially the steeper downhills, and I think it was a really good dry run for what it's going to be like for when we go down to Gran Canaria, because we'll be there for two, three weeks before the race, and I'll have the same process of trying to sort of get the legs back into trail mode going from snelly roads to dry, hot trails, so it was a good dry run for that, and I feel like I got a lot of good fitness, uh, gains. Um, yeah, to be honest, like, I think it was, uh, successful, I think we're getting better and better at being away from home and still getting good rest and good training done, which is, uh, yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I mean, uh, we're both doing transparent canaria in less than seven weeks today, six weeks and six days, and so we're both sort of really ramping into the running now, but interestingly, we had two very different approaches while we were in Spain when it came to the running, uh, because I was wanting to essentially run almost every day, uh, whereas you did something really different, right? Yeah, I wanted to do, uh, less runs, but the runs I was going to do would be longer, and in order to not do too much, then I would have to take complete rest days, so I ended up being, uh, like, kind of, uh, couple of days running and then a complete rest day where I could go climbing, whereas you were kind of, like, taking smaller bites of the, the cookie by running a little bit every single day. Hmm, yeah. And I'm actually, like, my running impact numbers in Elbon app are higher than yours, so I'm actually doing more running than you at this point in time, but I think over the following weeks, we'll probably see you surpass me as you are very much easing into it and gradually growing your running impact numbers over time. Yeah, I don't know, like, uh, your impact fitness was higher than mine from the summer because I had the knee thing, so I couldn't run as much, so my fitness was low, so that means I've been sort of, like, gradually ramping it. I think I'm on 95 now, which is what I guess you were on, like, two months ago. I don't think I'll be getting up to your fitness level impact twice. By the time Grand Canary area, Trans Grand Canary area comes along, but I mean, it's going to allow me to continually build that fitness all the way through to the race, whereas I would have thought at some point, you're going to kind of, like, find a point where it's, uh, difficult to grow your fitness anymore because, uh, the higher your fitness is, the more training you need to do, just to maintain that fitness, that it's hard to grow it even, even further, so I think I'm going to be able to sort of grow all the way through, whereas at some point, you're going to have to make friends with the fact that you can't grow that fitness number anymore. You're going to have to rely more on quality and some good intervals and what not to try and get a stimulus in a different way. Yeah, so just to clarify for the listener here, why are my numbers higher than yours, but I'm not necessarily a better or faster runner than you? When we talk about fitness, in this way, we're talking about load fitness, so it's derived from how much training you're doing, the idea being that the more training you can manage long term, then the fitter you should be, but then it's all relative to your threshold speed, and my threshold speed is faster than yours, so I'm still going to be able to beat you in a race, even though my legs aren't as prepared for the distance, as yours are, for example. So what it looks like, it's going to be when we go into transgones and areas, your legs will be a little bit more prepared for running the duration of race, but I'm still going to be faster, which actually means I can get the race done quicker, so my legs don't have to be quite as well prepared as yours in a way, so obviously there's a lot of different moving parts to this, but it does give a really good sense as to whether you are prepared for running a certain duration of race, and it's something that I'm becoming more and more reliant on. Yeah, no, it's definitely a cool thing to track, and it's something we've been tracking avidly over the past couple of months, but less than jump from Albert App World into Strava World, because we've been avid users of Strava for, I mean, we're talking 10 to 15 years, and on New Year's Eve, when we were eating our Indian in the small town of Mihas in Spain, this was probably why it was sending the highlights of my evening, don't know about you. I think your passion is actually trading rather than racing, whereas I think I have a little bit better relationship with racing and training than you do, so your big competition of the year is to trade more than me, I think, so obviously this was your crowning moment. It was, it was. I'm the professional trainer in the family, John is the professional racer, I suppose. We all have our different skills, so let's do a quick recap then of my New Year's Eve highlight. I think the most interesting step for us as trail runners when it comes to the Strava end of year recap is total time. You think? Yeah. So if you didn't have running impact and base fitness, you would use time to manage your training load. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. That's good. I would. So my total time. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, there's a caveat here. You log strength training in this. I do, and that was 57 hours. So that's a lot. And I don't log strength training. Okay, so this is my card. Okay, so bear in mind, I did 57 hours of strength training within this total time number. So if you want to do some maths, you can then deduct that from total time. But my total total time, including weight training, was 947 hours, which I'm almost embarrassed to say because I should really be racing a lot better with that duration. I don't know. I don't know. It's not like completely relatable between like how much you train and how well you race. Sometimes it's. But okay, before you talk away the point here, what was your total total time? My total time without strength training was 813 hours. Okay, that's not done. Yeah. There's a bit injured in the summer, so that'd probably put a dent in it. But the majority of our training hours really are in the winter. And to be honest, in the winter, we had a lot less snow than usual when I was trying to run a bit more because Western was around the corner. So I didn't do the amount of hours I would usually have done in the winter, but I did a bit more running. But yeah, I don't know. 813 hours seems fine to me. Yeah, no, it's not bad. But let's jump into it. It was just funny-ish that I had so many more hours. To be fair, if you deduct this weight training, it's not that much of a difference. But I'm just amazed at the difference in running performance when it comes to me and you, just by me trying very, very hard to keep up. Yeah, I don't know. There's a lot of different things which give you better performances. There is. There is. But okay, let's jump to the perhaps more interesting stack than which is total time running in 2024. We not do total elevation gain because then I actually won one. Okay, well, let's do elevation gain first then. Yeah. So this is all sports, right? Sports, total elevation gain for 2024. John B. Henrietta, round two. Okay, I got 350,103 meters, which was down 1% from 2019. It isn't even 1,000 a day. It's not 1,000 a day. The crowd does not go wild. I had 452,000. So perhaps that's why I need to change. I need to do more of that. No, I don't think so. I was actually down 4% from there before. But again, that's mainly because of the skiing. Um, but yeah, lots of, lots of furt. Okay, but that's now jump into the running only stack. So my total time running was 534 hours. But interestingly, this was 79% up from 2023. And that goes to show how injured I was in 2023, I suppose. Yeah, but we also did try and run more generally. Last year, I think that's a theme that we've just been trying to run more. Ever since my foot thing, it's like we've been low mileage athletes, which I do think really worked. But at some point, if you want to be a proper ultra runner, you need to push the boat out a bit more with the load running specifically. So there has been a goal. But I was only 476 hours. How many kilometers did you cover? Because obviously I'm probably running a bit faster in one of my hours. I did 4,654 kilometers. I did 4,600 now. No, I went again. But now, okay. So what's... I had my knee thing for like a good six weeks though. Yeah, what's your total elevation? 240,000. Oh, you were way ahead of me there. I'm 194,000. Yeah. So again, I went on the elevation. Okay. King of the mountains. Anyway, that's enough stats then. I've got one from Alvin up. What's that? My 80/20 split. How much of my training I did easy and hard? And in 2025, I did... So easy and hard. It's like no one really defines what's easy and what's hard. But we take zone one and two as easy. Zone three, four and five as hard. And we put your lactate threshold at the bridge between zone three and four. So some of that easy is under threshold. But it's still kind of more into style training. And we have both heart rate and pace zones. So we can do both. And I had in my pace zones total last year, 90% of my training, easy and 10% hard. And in heart rate, I had 94% easy and 6% hard. Interesting. So my stats for last year was heart rate. 94% easy, 6% hard. That's the same as you. No. Oh yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, well, that's exactly the same split. My pace on the other hand was actually 86% easy, 14% hard. What was yours again then? 90/10. She had more on the harder side. But with that being said, I've been playing around a little bit with my threshold. I'm not exactly short. I can run. To be honest, the biggest difference would have been in the past two months. I have done one interval session. Right. That's true. You've been doing a lot more intervals in this winter period, because I've been doing a lot more easy just to try and again, get that running load up. So I've been doing a lot more just easy training and not very much intervals at all. So I can concentrate on building volume. Everyone talks about this 80/20 split, don't they? But that's a myth. Well, I don't know, it's like, I'm sure at some point in the year, for some people, training for some distance of race. 80/20 works. But I think for us, it continually changes depending on what race you're training for, what type of training you're doing like there. There's so much. I definitely don't think just sticking to 80/20 all the time is a golden rule to follow. But I think to be between like 80 to 95% easy is usually like a good rule of thumbs. You're keeping a little bit of intensity in there, but the majority is still easy. It has to be in order to do the amount of load that we require for the type of running we do. I also think, I mean, it comes back to how you're actually measuring the split between the 18 and the 20. And I think, originally, the 80/20 rule was sort of invented around this idea of 80% of your sessions during a week should be easy, the rest should be hard. Yeah, so if you did 10 sessions in a week, eight should be easy and two should be hard. But then with the stats we're quoting here, even the rest periods and the warm maps and the call-downs of a harder session are classified as easy. So yeah, it's really like a messy thing to try and quantify, but still interesting to follow along compared between the two of us. Yeah, anyway, that was a bit of a statistical wrap-up of 2024, let's say. But let's now dive into some more interesting aspects behind the year in sport that you had, John, especially, by looking at what went well, what could have gone better, what were some of the key lessons you learnt and what will you be changing going into 2025? Yeah, last year, I think generally I'm not dissatisfied, but not completely satisfied either. I don't think I've ever been completely satisfied with the year, to be honest though, because you always want more, don't you? But it started off well, I went to Saudi Arabia to do the obstacle race and won that, which was fun because I hadn't done an obstacle race for two years. I think I got a bit lucky, actually, because it was a lot cooler than it could have been, and I don't think I would have been prepared for the heat having trained in Norway during winter. I mean, this obstacle race, it was actually, what, 100k? It was eight hours as many laps as possible, it was a 10k lap. Yeah, so it was essentially an integral with obstacles. Yeah, we just forgot about that, right? But my legs got really stiff after that 20k, and looking back at the numbers, my impact fitness was atrociously bad, and yeah, it wasn't good. And it did show in the race that after that 20k, I felt like I was running like a duck. So it wasn't the best executed race, but I do seem to have a natural talent for obstacle racing, so it still went well. It was a good prize pot, so it set me up good for the year. And then it was about training in towards Western, but as a bit of a training race for Western, I had Translacania, but to be honest, I actually turned into one of the highlights of the year. The race went really well. I felt like I had good shape, good legs, a little bit of poor execution, definitely on the fuel in front. But yeah, certainly it was a good race, and then into Western, land in America got COVID, I don't think I did that well between landing, and obviously getting sick and then into the race. I think I could have handled that situation and lived a little bit better, but I certainly feel in previous years I would have handled it a lot worse. Yeah, I think given the circumstances, you were actually trying to be clever about it, not panic. Think about what could you manage, what could you do to set yourself up for ideally some level of success at Western. I remember one of the things you did end up doing was actually travel down from our accommodation at elevation. We were living at 2000 meters in a very pricey place. And you were like, "Oh no, I need to leave this place and book a hotel further." Because I'm not recovering up here, which was very true. You were tracking your stats using the ordering and your stats, which is not dropping to where they should be. Yeah, my accountant wife was horrified. Yeah, I was like, "Oh no, there's that money straight out the window." Not quite, but... But that's also why I went to Saudi to try and win the prize money, so I could relax a little bit about trying to win as much prize money from the other race in the year. So there's one funny story, and we're standing in this supermarket in Truckee, and Henrietta's got a bag of apples. And when it comes up on the teal, how much those apples cost, she went back to pick new apples because she was sure they must be cheap at apples. And then when she came back again, no, they were still too expensive. So she went again to get some different apples, at which point we realized that yes, six apples in America cost $15. And I kind of like put my foot down and said, "This is exactly why I went to Saudi Arabia in the middle of the winter to win the prize money." So we didn't have to continually change and choose which apples we were going to buy when... Apparently so. So yeah, that was the apples of the US trip. But after that, John said, "Don't worry about the money. I won the money. We're good." Yeah, I know. But yeah, so Western didn't go as well as I wanted to, obviously, but then it could have gone a lot worse. And I think, yeah, considering the situation, I handled it okay. And then after that, it was all about UTMB. And I made a lot of mistakes after Western getting back into running too soon, running through a bit of pain, which I don't think you should ever do really. But obviously I was like in this, I really want to either try and train how I want to train or just get injured and the injury happened. It's just what winding back a little bit there. Would you knowing what happened? Would you have entered Western and UTMB again, like you did? Yeah, sure. Like, well, to be honest, you entered me for UTMB. You said the entry was going to go out, so we should just get you in there, just so you have an option. Yeah, but that's what people do, right? They enter into UTMB. I don't do that. Like, when I say I'm going to do a race, I'm going to do that race unless I'm completely not in any fit state to do it. So it was kind of like, yeah, it was a backup option thing in case like Western went completely to hell. But to be honest, Western was the key focus. And yeah, so I tried for UTMB, it didn't go very well. I learned so much and all those lessons I'm really putting into training in 2025. But still, I wouldn't change so much if I could, but I definitely wouldn't have run even though I got started getting the knee pains. And I think I'm in a much better place now to know how to recover from a long race and train for another one. So yeah, but then I am actually quite proud with how then I did rally. I shook off the injury. I managed to get to Wall Street, but I'll have a lot of fun racing there. And then actually, Nice. Looking back at it was a much better race than I give myself credit for. I had to run quite well there in order to win. And yeah, it was a good race. And that kind of wrapped up year for me. So you mentioned that the hideout of your year was Transwell Karnia. Why do you think that went so well? I think normally we have the best shape coming out of the skiing season because we can train so much on the skis. And that kind of base fitness really powers us through. So it kind of like felt like my my shape peaked for Transwell Karnia. But my impact fitness for the leg still wasn't as good as it could be. So it's kind of like mistimed. And but by the time they got to Western, I was already kind of well, obviously the sickness played a big role, but I was already kind of like feeling like the shape was on the on the way down. So the plan for this year is to try and have a better ramp up with the impact fitness so it coincides with the ramp up of base fitness. So which generally means trying to run more during the winter. Yeah. So it's what about timing your fitness, I suppose. Yeah, or building up. I mean, when we're talking about fitness, we're looking like two key types of fitness. One, how prepared your legs are for the mechanical stresses or the impact of running. And then the other one, how prepared your engine is for actually sort of like pumping your heart and your lungs and keeping you going. So trying to better time the peak of those those two types of fitness. So they coincide on the actual day that I want to race my best in the in the whole year. And it always seems that the running impact is always lagging behind the the base fitness. So this year we have the race during the winter. So that's going to help a lot anyway, but definitely tracking that impact number and trying to get myself out doing some more wintery runs, whereas I'd usually just be skiing. And going back to the recent training camp that we had in Spain, you could afford to take some days off running because you only needed to do a little bit more than the previous weeks, right? Yeah, so keeping track of the numbers, I knew exactly what I had to do. And I knew that I couldn't do more than that. But I also didn't want to do less. And I kept a really good consistent C throughout sort of like the wintery training, leading up to the training camp. But then also once we arrived and it really showed that my legs could handle the amount of stress I was pushing into them. But they weren't sort of like caving under the pressure. So how my legs were feeling was really mirroring what the numbers were saying they should do. And I really feel like it was like another block in the in the wall. And then that's exactly what I have to do again now. Some more wintery running and then do that again in Gran Canary. Then hopefully my legs are as prepared as they can be as to whether they are fully prepared for 126 kilometers on the island. I don't know. But I think they're better prepared than they would have been if I didn't have that data at hand. So looking back at last year, then you sort of had your first year doing 100 miles. You're going to have another crack at UTMB this year as well as some other long races such as Transcrank and Area. What's another key thing you'd say that you learnt in 2024 that you'll be carrying into 2025? I think definitely the period after a big race is super important. And I think as someone that has like a slight addiction to training, I need to be able to train but not have to run. So trying to come up with ways that I can do that. So that means that especially this year we have the race in February. And then after that, I get to come home and I get to just ski. So that means that I'm not tempted to go out and run. Which is much less impact, much better for my body. And then having a longer period through into the next long run. Which will be UTMB. So then I can again let my impact fitness drop quite a lot. And then start gradually building it again and build and build and build all the way through to the to the race rather than having like a large impact fitness. And then feeling like I have to work really hard just to maintain it. I really like to let the fitness drop away and then sort of build it up again. So choosing races which allow me to do that or artificially creating scenarios where say for instance if I was going to do Western again, I wouldn't have to run in the in the weeks afterwards in order to train. Either go on some sort of cycling holiday or I was contemplating maybe going to the South America or the South America or the Southern Hemisphere at least to go skiing after Western for example. So this is all like things that I've been trying to think about. But just to clarify, you're not doing Western this. This year I'm going to do Transground Canary area and I'm going to do UTMB as my two long ones. And I'm going to do some smaller races in between hoping to go to Snowden for I think maybe the 50k. And then I'm not sure about other other races. But yeah, I'm going to really try and train in towards UTMB. I think it's about time that I tried my hand at running around Mont Blanc. So it's daunting but also exciting. And from living with you, I know there's one other thing that you've massively changed in the past couple of months especially when it comes to the intensity or speed of your running. Yeah, well this is like something we talk about all the time I guess and there's no magic answer because what training works for different people changes continually and what training works for that person changes from year to year as well. But generally with the realization that I need to build how much running load I'm doing, I'm having to run slower. So that's like a big change. And that means I've had to part ways a little bit following the plans we have in the app. But then we've been developing new plans to help accommodate how different people want to train or even change from week to week, changing as well. So we're putting that into the app and that means that I've been doing a lot of testing for the app in the past weeks and found I've had massive gains and it's been really sustainable. So I'm really excited about that. And we're going to head into phase two of testing. Hopefully next week and I'm excited to get some other people on it. Yes, I mean, you're sort of prioritizing volume of running over intensity. Yeah, so I mean, you can gain fitness in loads of different ways. And at the moment, I'm really concentrating on gaining fitness by doing a bit more volume than I have been in the previous week. So just generally just trying to add more and more volume and get fitter that way. And then at some point, I may feel that I can't gain any more fitness through volume. So then I'll start doing more intervals and more intensity and gain fitness that way. And I've really sort of like not mixed the two this year just to see what my limits are with how much fitness I can build generally through volume. So it's been really interesting and I'll be excited to see how it works for other people. But I definitely feel like for ultra running, it's like been a really cool experiment for me to do because yeah, interval training isn't a be or an end or getting fitter to do these races. So it's great to try and test other ways. Yeah, I mean, I think we both enjoy the sort of experimental side of being athletes. We never believe that we've found the perfect recipe. It's all about tweaking and changing bits and bobs here and there to sort of try and get some extra gains compared to where you're at today. For sure. And that's like driving us forwards to try and create systems to help other people as well. So it would be cool if you could say, oh, this week, I don't want to have an interval. I only want to gain fitness through loads. So you can choose a plan that would then tell you how to do that or how much load you require. And then the next week you could choose to do some intervals like one session a week, maybe or two sessions. And then the plan would reflect that and give you the training you require. So you could even, instead of months a month or year to year, actually choose week to week, which philosophy you kind of want to follow. Yeah, that'll be very exciting. We're both testing that and we have been for a while, a couple of months now, really. So hopefully we'll have something to share with the world in perhaps a month or two. We'll see. Yeah, hopefully. Actually, fingers crossed. Okay, then. So let's move on to the final chapter of today's episode, Our Words of Wisdom. What do you think of this, John? The weight of your own expectations is the enemy of your happiness. Yeah, I think I wrote that in the summer and I'm sure it's probably already a quote out there, but I thought it was quite original from me. But yeah, definitely I feel like it is certainly topical when it comes to running, like the bigger the expectations you have, then the harder it is to meet them. And then you're generally just not very happy. Whereas if you're happier, it becomes easier to meet expectations. So I think generally to have lower expectations, which are more manageable, is a good thing. And it's certainly something that I've had to do. I can't aim so high. I just need to aim high enough that I can reach. And then when I do reach it, I can aim a little bit higher and break it down. Yeah, I can definitely relate to setting high expectations and never reaching them and constantly just feeling like I'm performing below where I want to be. And that can really get you quite down. So I suppose this is all about redefining your expectations to be at least within reach, although they can still be a bit hairy. Yeah, I think we talk about flow a lot. And flow is when your performance is matching or exceeding your expectations. So having manageable expectations is really important to achieve flow state and flow state you can achieve during a run or just in life generally. And I think that's kind of what one of our main goals at day to day. We just want to be in flow state, just living flow. And yeah, definitely having manageable expectations is important for that. Yeah, and I think it's quite topical as well as we head into a new year and a lot of other people out there will probably be setting their expectations for the year ahead. Yeah, don't get too carried away, I suppose there's a suggestion. Yeah, set shorter term goals which are manageable rather than long term goals which seem completely out of reach or yeah, don't set short term goals that are out of reach either. Just be happy with what you can achieve. And then when you do achieve them, don't forget them to set new ones. You don't want to settle races, key training sessions, they're all runs in a ladder. And it might be that you don't even know where that ladder is going. But it's important to always see the next run. Yeah, exactly. Okay then, well, I think that she wraps up today's episode, a bit of a 2024 recap, but also a bit of what's ahead in 2025 from Bia? Any final thoughts, John? No, it's been an interest in 2024 and I'm looking forward to 2025. And we'll see what it has in store. Looking at the forecast, probably some more snow. Yeah, we've had a ridiculous amount of snow. But it's actually relatively soft to run on the road here, which is good. I'm currently alternating days outside with days on the treadmill in a desperate attempt to not get injured from studded shoe running. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. And my back is still somewhat functional, functioning after all the snow traveling. So we'll just keep it, keep it up. We'll have to check in in a week and see whether your back is still functioning. Maybe I have to start logging that strength training. So my 2025 Strava stats are higher than yours. You probably should. You've got a decent amount of hours to catch up. So you go through it. Anyway, that was all for today, guys. Thanks to everyone who tuned in to this episode of The Album Way. If you enjoyed it, be sure to share it with your friends and help us spread the word about the podcast. You can also check out Album Out for more trials, training advice and tips. And yeah, that will talk to you all in a week's time. Until then, be sure to go out there, enjoy the process, and set some good expectations for you in the coming months. And also, don't go too crazy. It's January. You don't have to set the world of light. Don't be burning out after three weeks. Just get back into it gradually and think long-term. So you want to be able to do the training you're doing in the next three weeks, the next three months. So make it manageable. Yeah, I would probably do a podcast that's been about that in itself. All right. Talk to you all next week, guys. Cheers, guys. Bye. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]

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