Current temps are 8 degrees. Lots of snow still to melt so race day temps likely to be 10 so if you haven't started dipping to acclimatise now is the time. First few dont need to be long just getting the head round how the cold feels and how it impacts you. It's a bit like boiling a frog..get in get used to it and race day has no surprises

Dog walk musings. Today there are a plethora of races and formats to play with. Back in the early 90s there were much fewer opportunities to have organised fun. The race brochure for the first M dot race in the UK profiled all 5 IM races on the go. Yes 5. No Challenge, No PT100..no social media nada. So what's your favourite race format?

All the rage at the Stirling Triathlon Performance centre. There may be a reason for it. Dorian works with Arild Tveiten and is using INSYCD software to provide 360 metabolic profiling. We have completed 3 of these in the last 2 weeks and the insights are super beneficial. It allows us to be super accurate in doing the training that impacts each physiological marker. No doubt we will see more of this as time moves on.

Training peaks is the most commonly used and mis used software in the endurance world. It has amazing functionality and making use of it more fully will help you maximise training outcomes. Time is a major constraint for many and there is always lots of chat about how best to use the time. The subject can be confusing and in depth and the 'answers' are not the same for everyone. This post will tackle the 'big picture' using data from athletes that we coach. This may spark some interesting chat! Lets take a look at CTL ( Chronic Training Load) as a marker or an estimate of 'fitness'. I would say that its more a measure of consisteny mainly driven by volume - hours spent vs intesnity. So you can drive a huge CTL with copious volume and be vey consistent but that doesn't always mean you are fitter than someone with a lower CTL. CTL will of course move at different times of the year but the guys that built the idea have attributed labels to the levels : Beginners <40 Recreational 40- 80 Competitive 80-120 Elite 120 -150+ Ironman (sic) 145 -185 ( with Kona Qualifiers regularly 175+) This is fairly one dimensional so rather than using this as a rigid blueprint it can be a useful guide and it is multifactorial if we consider race distances, level of a race and of course age of the competitor. When I first came across this number the Ironman one kinda disturbed me - 175 CTL would be the equivilant of 17.5 hours at threshold intentsity which is a tad nuts so looking at it another way 25 hours of zone 2 work. Still pretty hefty. So unless you are a professional or have the time to train like one then you aren't doing that. I took a look at our stable of athletes and split it into broad categories in a mix of runners, cyclists and triathletes and looked to see where the CURRENT CTL values are overlayed with where it would be in peak season from historical seasons. March Peak Juniors - Older juniors 100-124 130 Effectively elite athletes Youths 65 - 75 90 All still at school 14 - 17

So I recently had a bike fit and found that the optimum position for me was a long way from what I had been using. The result is my Trek Emonda has been sold (turn out I had a frame size too small). Now caught in a quandary about do I get another road bike I can adapt to fit me then still use later on the road, or get a time trial bike that is dialed into to my fit? I do have a Specialized Diverge that I train on during winter that is actually a great fit for me, and can flip it between gravel and road set up, so not sure I really need a second road bike. Anyway would appreciate thought from those that have TT bikes, I should say that doing my first Ironman distance in July but likely to drop back to Standard and Sprint in coming years. Cheers Tom