Listener questions – managing injury, using power/pace curves, how to use session feedback and more

Paul Warloski (00:08.93)

Hello, and welcome to a special edition of the Athletes Compass, the podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. You know, we launched this podcast a few weeks ago and asked you for listener questions, thinking that it was a great chance to ask directly to Dr. Paul Larson, experienced coaches Marjaana and myself, to help guide you in your training. We had so many questions come up that we wanted to answer them.

Paul (00:09.268)

Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Athletes Compass, the podcast where we navigate training, fitness, and health for everyday athletes. You know, we launched this podcast a few weeks ago.

questions thinking that it was a great chance to ask directly to Dr. Paul Larson, experienced coaches Marjaana and myself, to help guide you in your training. We had so many questions come up that we wanted to answer them quickly on the next podcast. So keep them coming. And I'm going to start off with one from Joseph Bassani who asks this question.

Paul Warloski (00:38.222)

quickly on the next podcast. So keep them coming. And we want to start off with one from Joseph Basani, who asks this question. Your AI coach says that you're, I'm killing it, but I'm getting warnings that my fitness is too low for the plan I am on and I should consider switching to a lower-volume plan. I have the same question for one of one of one of my athletes. Which is it? So here we go. Which one, which one are we dealing with here?

Paul (00:49.8)

Your AI code says that I'm killing it, but I'm getting warnings that my fitness is too low for the plan I am on, and I should consider switching to a lower volume plan. I have the same question with one of my athletes. Which is it? So here we go. Which one are we dealing with here? Yeah, it's a great question, Paul. And we totally appreciate the frustration that a lot of users have on this one.

And we've debated with our development team at length, whether we leave these in or not. I will say right from the start, you don't have to listen to these warning signs, nor do you even have to see these warning signs in your profile settings. You can turn them off and many, many do. But what this really relates to...

you know, in terms of this one, we're throwing this in right now because it's Christmas time and it's user questions, but basically we've dealt with this at other times. It has to do with your performance profile and it's having a look at, you know, what we've put in front of you relative to what it sees in the past. It's having a look at your fitness and it can remember the old adage, giga or a gigo, garbage in, garbage out, right?

If all the AI can see is what's on your watch in terms of what it thinks your fitness is, that's really all we can ask it to do. So we have to be a little bit forgiving to the AI in that regards. It can only do its best with the data that it has. And all that warning is, is just a sign that it's looking at your data and saying, based on what I have.

I'm not necessarily recommending that you move forward, that you potentially, you know, you might, so you might want to switch to that lower volume plan, or it's sometimes, it says we can't adapt you enough and we need to switch you to a higher volume plan. So that happens as well, right? And you really just need to start to become comfortable with these warnings if you're leaving them on.

Paul (03:12.052)

and be really ready to just throw them away and just say, no, that's wrong. That's interesting. Thanks, Athletica AI coach for that. But I'm confident that I feel just fine. So that's a really important one. It's probably our number one question. If I'm looking at the lay of the land from the forum, from the questions that are coming in on our email.

So, you know, thank you, thank you, Joseph, and for voicing that. And, you know, Marjaana and Paul, I know you guys both see this a lot. So, anything further on that from you.

Paul Warloski (03:51.854)

I think it's a great opportunity, Marjaana I'm sorry to jump in, but I think it's a great opportunity to have, if you have a coach on Athletica, to discuss this with the coach and say, hey, are you in the right place? And go from there. Marjaana, what do you think?

Paul (04:05.842)

Absolutely.

Marjaana Rakai (04:07.238)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I get this message too on my training plan. And I just wanted to highlight the context. I haven't been swimming a lot. So my Athletica coach is saying your swim fitness is not optimal for this plan. Maybe you should consider moving on to this lower volume plan. But it's because I haven't been swimming and that has been a conscious.

choice for me to not be swimming lately. So also like if you've been injured for example, can't run, you're gonna eventually see this design as your running fitness gets lower.

Paul (04:49.268)

Yeah, totally. And like, I mean, if you have a historical back, you know, back history of being a swimmer or being a runner or being a cyclist, you know, there's no way that the data is really going to kind of support what what's probably possible within your body and your, you know, your speed of adaptation is going to be so much greater. It might eventually in the future, but it we're just we're just not there yet. Right. Remember that AI.

and these automated programs have just come onto the scene. So the best, to me the best advice is two, one, grab a coach like Paul and Marjaana or two, be confident in your own ability and trust your own feel. That's really what you should be, all our athletes should be working towards is developing your own feel on what feels right.

and be really always ready to override whatever Athletica says, whether it's do more or do less. Listen to the advice, but you should be very confident in agreeing or disagreeing with it.

Marjaana Rakai (06:03.907)

follow-up question. When would you move on to higher volume plan?

Paul (06:09.964)

I would, two reasons, one, if I didn't have a time constraint in my life, right? And two, if I really wanted to, you know, I'm gunning towards a longer distance event like an Ironman or like a, you know, like a Grand Fondo or something like that, and I've got some time available.

Athletica is recommending that I would yeah, I'd give it a go and I'd see how it feels jumping up to the next rank

Paul (06:49.36)

Yeah, because remember like duration, you know, we've spoken about this before, but exercise duration is a key fundamental adaptation signal, right? You're going to be increasing your durability, you're going to be increasing your fat oxidation ability. So if you can do the training to up that adaptation, then you have the time, then you should go for it.

Marjaana Rakai (07:18.59)

So for example, if someone has extra time available during Christmas time, you would not necessarily jump on the high plan for one week. You would just add in more workouts or would you actually go and adjust the settings in Athletica?

Paul (07:36.956)

If it's not going to be a long-term thing, I would just up your own time of training during the Christmas week and see how that feels. Kind of have it as a bit of a tester. I certainly wouldn't go to the trouble of rejigging the whole entire plan. There's freedom to move within the Athletica program. It's going to be taking account of everything that you do there.

Marjaana Rakai (07:44.579)

Mm-hmm.

Paul (08:03.536)

uh... and doing a little bit more is going to tell Athletica uh... tell all those algorithms that you know you can handle a little bit more fitness uh... over in the in the long term and it's also going to uh... you know be mindful of your the fatigue that you'll have added to that as well and it might take the recommendations down the following week which could be good after you know post christmas and all that with uh... you know when you're back to the stress of everything

Marjaana Rakai (08:31.971)

Mm-hmm.

Paul (08:32.856)

I would, no problem for me, you know, letting the leash out a little bit, as the saying goes.

Marjaana Rakai (08:39.833)

That's awesome. Okay, let's move on to the next listener question, which is from Jesse Whyte He asks, when we're injured, how do we communicate this with Athletica? Do we adjust the training distribution in the settings? Do we just skip workouts until we can resume training? Here's my real world example. I've got a grade one calf strain that will eliminate running for at least a week and require a progressive return.

in two or three weeks. I can bike however. How do I adjust the next few days or a week? Let's talk about Jess's question first.

Paul (09:19.3)

Yeah, it's a super question. It happens to all of us, right? We all, despite our best intentions, we succumb to these injuries for various different reasons. And I guess the, you know, Athletica is a unique system that, and I don't believe there's anything else out there that's like it, in that we have through the workout wizard, remember that's the green tab on all of your sessions that are upcoming.

You can actually click on that and you can click on your injury tab, which provides a number of different alternate options for your situation. So, you know, when we have a calf injury, the last thing you want to do is jump on that, right? Which is what running is. Running is a series of jumps, which causes these eccentric or muscle lengthening...

contractions that stretch ultimately the fascia, the connective tissue around the muscle. So if you've got a damaged muscle or fascia or tendon or ligament in there, you're going to know about it. So you really want to be doing alternate work. That depends on the degree of the calf strain of course as well. With a third degree sprain, you're probably not even going to want to have a, you know, do a

do a cycling in there. So it will really sort of depend. You only know your context, so you've got to really look at those alternate suggestions. And they can be as simple as meditation, right, which we know is not going to have any damage. It shouldn't. But cycling could in a really, you know, a very extreme sort of situation.

Follow the workout wizards, definitely switch it up, don't be running, and then work back towards walk runs. We don't have a system yet where we can put back a progressive return to play or return to running program. This would be, but I would definitely recommend you do a run walk program first before you

Paul (11:39.644)

before you get back. Actually, it's interesting. I'm coaching this, I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm coaching this 14-year-old phenom, one of the best runners at a for her age in the area that I'm in. And she just had this same issue. And what she did is, this was with, I'm very fortunate, I have an Olympic trainer that...

that worked through everything first. So she did everything like strength and conditioning first to return to running. And what she did was basically just, a stretching and strengthening type work and moved up until she could actually hop on that one leg that was injured. Jesse, so I would recommend the same thing. If you can't hop and jump on that,

on that injured calf limb without pain and it feels almost exactly the same as the other, then when you can do that, then you're back ready to go. But if you can't, ultimately I wouldn't recommend going back running just yet. So make sure you've done that single leg hops, almost kind of like a skip. If you can do skipping, you're ready to go because that's ultimately what you'll have to do back out there when you're running again.

And if you violate that, you're just going to have to go straight back. You know, you're going to be right back to the drawing board. So do that, do that first, make sure that's fully healed and then start back with some walk runs. So that would be like, um, you know, see if you can run a kilometer, for example, and then walk for a minute and repeat that for maybe, you know, 10 to 15 minutes for your first one back. If that feels great, you know,

progress that up, progress a walk run to 30 minutes. And if you're still all clear after that, you know, and there's a day break between that, still all clear, you're back, you're pretty much good to go and you're back to, you know, starting progressively back to what Athletica's got you at with, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 minute running kind of thing, progressively.

Marjaana Rakai (13:53.718)

So you wouldn't necessarily adjust in the training. Like you wouldn't mess up with ramp rates or go in a low volume plan while you're coming back from injury.

Paul (14:08.32)

That's another great option for sure. So you could move down to the low volume plan as well. It really depends on the context, Marjaana, as we always know, right? And again, here's where it's so advantageous to have a coach that can kind of help you along with these different decisions depending on your context. And yeah, that's what I would, that's certainly an option. Just down.

Marjaana Rakai (14:27.918)

Mm-hmm.

Paul (14:36.732)

down regulate that training load or the training volume. But remember that the ramp rate is really, you know, it's an advanced set setting in, in Athletica. You could control that. Your coach could help you control that. And, but otherwise, Athletica is on a standard. It will start to ramp you back up to build that fitness again.

Marjaana Rakai (15:02.474)

If you use the ramp rate, then you would also adjust swim and bike workouts. Isn't that right? Yeah. Okay. So you might not want to go in there anyways.

Paul (15:11.352)

it would if you're on the triathlon program that's right. Yeah so this is why not again this is so contextual right so it's like I wouldn't I would continue to be swimming I would continue to be holding my fitness up there if I can cycle still then I then I would do that if it's not too bad because you know that's um you know Paul you're a real expert with cycling I would ask you as well um how much do calf strains per se limit

limit cycling. It tends to be not too bad. If you compare it to running movement.

Paul Warloski (15:46.123)

Mm-mm.

Paul Warloski (15:49.95)

Yeah, it's way easier obviously than running. And it depends, like you're saying, it's the context, whether if it's a serious sprain, then it's gonna be painful to push down on the pedal. But otherwise, it's a pretty low impact sport.

Paul (16:04.756)

Exactly. So yeah, I guess to that question, Marjaana, I would definitely try to have the .. keep the swimming, cycling, and most the gym work as well, minus the obvious ones. You never want to do anything that's going to cause pain, but otherwise, keep ticking over, right? Keep the mental health up there and the fitness up there.

Paul Warloski (16:07.314)

Thanks for watching!

Paul Warloski (16:17.388)

Mm-hmm.

Marjaana Rakai (16:34.71)

Right, talk about cycling. We have another question here from Phil Becker. And he asked, I injured my hamstring in a bike crash this morning, and I will have to take some time off. How best should I manage a recovery week or weeks with Athletica? I'll rest tomorrow, Monday, instead of a recovery ride, and try out some zone two starting Tuesday. But I will back off from intensity for the week, depending on how it feels.

Any feedback on how Athletica will respond to the reduced load this week, since I have a recovery week scheduled for the following week?

Paul (17:12.68)

For sure. So, you know, there's similar elements in this one. Now we're in the cycling context with injury. We've got a hamstring injury. And, you know, the injury now all of a sudden, in either of these cases, the injury takes precedence. So you've got to back right off. You really don't worry too much about the whole, you know, where your recovery week is sitting and all that sort of stuff. I know the race is important to you, Phil, but it's like you've got to...

you've got to get better first. So I really wouldn't worry about, you know, where those weeks and stuff are situated. That is a feature actually we are working on because it's been requested. And that's just the ability to move around your recovery weeks and insert them when you like. But even for now, like the key thing is to use that, leverage the workout wizard, miss, delete,

whatever session you need to get yourself back and get that hamstring healthy and recovered again. And yeah, and then remember that whatever you do or don't do, Athletica takes note of that, especially the longer you've been on board, the, you know, that fitness will be there and it will, you know, the level will hold. And then the...

next subsequent session will be prescribed in accordance with the data that's being seen. I think that pretty much covers it. I'm not sure if you have anything further to add, Marjaana or Paul.

Paul Warloski (18:50.946)

Mm-hmm.

Marjaana Rakai (18:57.654)

I noticed last year when I lived in Dubai and struggled with my health, I would have to do alternative training a lot and miss some of the load that was planned by Athletica. And then when I was coming back, I noticed Athletica was trying to get me back on track with a little bit added load to my trainings. So if people are worried about...

Paul Warloski (18:59.287)

Thank you.

Marjaana Rakai (19:26.714)

um their performance journey. Um, Athletica knows. Athletica is always calculating in the background.

Paul (19:36.862)

Nice.

Paul Warloski (19:39.574)

All right, Kellan Erdman asks a running question. I'm struggling to get the pacing right on my profile. My zone two runs are seemingly slow compared to my 5K times. I trained in Florida with really high temperatures, but to stay under 144, I'm assuming that's beats per minute. My pacing is around 11 minute miles, but my 5K PB is 21:52, which is a 7:02 minute mile.

Any suggestions going forward? Also on my profile, the level two paces seem pretty fast for my heart rate zones. Thanks again.

So there's a lot going on in this question about, you know, my zone two runs being one thing and then the 5k personal best. So I'm thinking that there's some question about what the zone two heart rate actually should be.

Paul (20:19.315)

Yeah.

Paul (20:33.832)

Sure, sure. Yeah, it's a super question. It's a real common one, so thanks for asking it, Kellen. And, you know, this is, it kind of relates a little bit to, you know, your, the MAF theory. So MAF is the maximal aerobic fitness, or maximal aerobic function, sorry, that's been really pioneered by Dr. Phil Maffetone.

And it really relates to when you're looking at your heart rate, you're looking at what we refer to as an internal training load or stress marker. And the cool thing about using that internal, internal meaning within you marker of your stress is that it should pick up all the stresses that are around you and all the stresses that are in your life.

um... you know your life in these in hot florida so you've got a thermal stress but the same could be if we were speaking to an individual that lived you know in colorado at altitude the altitude would be picking up that as well Marjaana was living in Dubai and the heat would be picked up as a stress when she would train outdoors as well right so

Yes, you have this very impressive 5k PB, but you really when you're doing your zone two training, you're doing it at an easier pace for a reason. And that's because you don't want to be overly stressed. And this is why we have on Athletica our Smart Coach. We call it our Smart Coach

Paul (22:29.384)

prescribes the power or speed at the, yeah, sorry, the smart coach prescribes intense sessions like HIIT or threshold workouts. It prescribes those at pace and power, whilst all of the lower intensity recovery and L2, zone 2 training sessions, it prescribes those with heart rate, with that internal marker.

So it really doesn't matter that you're going slow. Yes, the prescriptions may be off and we're working on our ability to refine those using some of our AI and mathematical, I guess, strengths with our amazing development team. But yeah, for now, you really kind of can't go away from just that smart coach prescription.

um... in my opinion is just so continue to do your easy sessions easy and use and just follow the heart rate don't worry about it uh... spoken about this before where you know there is this great story with Frank Shorter who's a uh... you know if famous runner living in colorado i'd believe where and he was just notorious where he would

easy trots and it literally was just like a little you know an easy running trot and people would go flying by him in colorado and stuff and it's like why is that guy running so slow when he's he could be so fast um so he would you know just he that's the way he would train he would just do his easy runs so easy and then he would rip the legs off them on the track so this was the classic you know steven siler polarized training model

We all know the Norwegians use a version of this, or at least they did. The Norwegian model might be a little bit different now, but you get the idea, right? Do your easy sessions easy and do your hard sessions so you can do your hard sessions really hard.

Paul Warloski (24:38.118)

I just want to clarify one thing. I'm sorry, Marjaana. You were saying that the smart coach prescription pushes the intensity ones by pace and power, but the lower intensity by heart rate. Is that correct? OK.

Paul (24:51.092)

That's right. Yeah. So if you've got a Garmin Modern, Garmin Watch, and using Garmin Connect, you just use actually like a setting on your profile and you'll just go there and click Smart Coach option for Garmin Push and you should get your sessions prescribed to your watch that way. At least I do.

Paul Warloski (25:09.738)

Alright. Go ahead, Marjaana

Marjaana Rakai (25:13.434)

Yeah, I would ask a couple of questions. As always, context matters. So is the 5K personal best a current one or is it like several years back? And then the other one is what is measuring your heart rate too? Is it an optical heart rate measure?

it can fluctuate a lot or it's not as accurate than the chest strap. And then maybe my suggestion would be to calibrate your feel, so understand rate of perceived effort. Like your zone two should feel like you can go all day and it should feel like maybe two max four out of ten scale. So it should feel easy.

Paul (26:12.04)

Yeah, those are great. Yep.

Marjaana Rakai (26:14.69)

But yeah, when I lived in Dubai, my heart rate would be a lot higher with the slower pace than it is here when it's cooler climate. So definitely the heat can be an impact.

Marjaana Rakai (26:31.666)

Okay, then we have the next question and it's from Mick. He asks, how do we use and implement power and pace curves as well as the athlete profiling? And I think he's talking about muscle fiber types, one and two, and how to use it. In other words, we have this tool in Athletica, but how do we use it?

Paul (26:56.408)

Yeah, it's such a great question and it's very, the answer is really futuristic. I would say

Paul (27:07.196)

This is what we're working on right now as we speak with our amazing development team, Bence and Andrea. This is best practice. If you really want to geek out, you can go to the Peter Leo podcast on the Training Science podcast and you can see who's actually created this. This is his. He and other authors have created this curve, which is...

tends to be considered best practice. He uses this in all of the pro teams and pro cyclists in the world that he navigates and that he coaches. And basically this is, you can see on this curve the same marker that you have in your Athletica setting profile, your VT2. Currently it's called VT2.

But we're slowly switching this over to be called your critical power or your critical velocity. And really it's your sustainable exercise intensity for about an hour as a general layperson's description of this. And this is what all of your data on your watch or your wearable is getting for Athletica. It's seeing what that, it's making an estimate, even though you won't do a one hour time trial, it's making an estimate.

on what that would be. And we can see that what that curve is from your mix of high intensity training movements to your more sustained training movements and power outputs. And that's what, you know, it goes really, if you're trying to describe this to just the listener, if you're on audio only, but you know, it's...

It's very high in terms of the powers or the running speeds that you can attain in the short duration windows. And of course, it quickly falls down and then levels out for the longer duration ones. And you probably know this, you know this intuitively as an athlete. And this was actually found by one of the pioneers of exercise and sports science, A.V. Hill.

Paul (29:23.268)

and he discovered this one, basically he plotted the world records for swimming and running way back in, I think it was 1925, that was the first time. He took all the world record times for all, and right across the gamut of distances, and you could see that the times formed this hyperbola type of a curve.

they quickly fell down and then leveled up. And that's indicative of a lot of the term we call anaerobic exercise often, or that sprint exercise, and the aerobic, sustainable sort of intensities. So I think that describes the curve pretty well. How do you use it? Well, you can see your strengths and weaknesses. You can see if you are potentially a, what we like to call a twitchy athlete. So you may have these...

abilities to be very sprint-like and be able to perform these very high power outputs in the short durations or very fast running speed sprinting efforts in the running context or swimming context. And then you can also see if you're potentially more hybrid, you might have a mix of these or what we like to call a diesel engine, like you can go and go and go all day. And these

Paul (30:47.956)

that these are the different types of animals that we have out there in our human animal kingdom, right? Like there's, we're just all wired a little bit differently. And Phil Bellinger is one of the scientists that's leading the charge on characterizing some of the different ways that we are made up in terms of your fast versus slow twitch fibers. Remember the fast twitch fibers, these are very, they tend to be white in color.

and the slow twitch fibers tend to be more red, filled with blood and myoglobin and the ability to uptake oxygen. And we're all a little bit different, right? We know this, coaches like Paul and Marjaana, you'll see these athletes come across in front of you, right? And you'll just know, oh, you'll just be able to characterize them right away almost with athletes, with coaches eye in terms of knowing whether they are a,

a twitchy cheetah or a diesel camel or horse. You know what I mean? So yeah, so I think that's, so that's coming, more is coming on this in Athletica to automate the, the work we're doing right now where we will automate your critical power, critical speed. In other words, you won't really, if you don't want to, you won't even have to perform the tests in the week. We'll just slow, we'll just continually update those as we see more sessions.

We call this invisible training. So in other words, you are sorry, invisible monitoring. So in other words, you don't even have to perform a test, but you're actually, it's tricky because we are, even though when you do a HIIT session, if you're doing it honestly, and you're getting into it on those high intensity days, we're in the background having a look at what that means for your critical power and critical velocity curves.

and those will change. And then you'll get notifications to update those. So that's, you know, lots of discussions going on with Andrea and Bence on this one right now, that I'm really enjoying lots of challenges, which is fun.

Marjaana Rakai (32:59.33)

So, and that's when your thresholds get updated, right? And with that, your training intensity zones get updated.

Paul (33:08.18)

That's right, Marjaana. Absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, and that's, and again, almost back to Kellen's question too, right? With the heart rate one. So we are also having a look at whether we, you know, we can individualize the zone two power and running pace. So that will be coming to, these are very, these are not easy things to do, but we're having a look.

Paul Warloski (33:34.61)

No.

Paul (33:36.456)

having a look at them just because yeah we're all so unique and what not and there's you know we can be wrong sometimes i want to be too wrong too often or uh... but yeah these are we're working on these

Marjaana Rakai (33:48.138)

Yeah. And I, and I, what makes it so challenging is sometimes as a coach is to have an athlete that has, for example, a really high heart rate, like maximal heart rate over 200. Um, and maybe their zones have not been updated. They've been on a more static training plan that they've never done a 5k.

time trial. So they have no idea. They've just followed a static plan with the heart rate zones that are totally general and not individualized. And then you need to like get them to do the test with a heart rate strap so that you get the correct data or at least at that time point. We have to always remember that these are like point in time.

sometimes they are hard to replicate like 5k last week 5k this week might be totally different depending what else is on the go so I

Paul (34:51.06)

Exactly. Or what if you have a piece of equipment, like a heart rate monitor, a power meter, or GPS that's off? And then what do you do with that data all of a sudden?

Marjaana Rakai (35:03.639)

Yeah, that happened to me this morning. My heart rate strapped. I just changed the battery and it's just, I think Santa needs to bring me a new one. But now I forgot where I was going with this.

Paul (35:21.444)

Oh wow, there's just so many potential errors ultimately that can happen in these calculations. So when we're changing, making too many of these changes that are supposed to be making these changes to make it better, you can actually go and make the whole system worse. So there's always lots to consider for all of us.

Marjaana Rakai (35:25.654)

Yeah.

Marjaana Rakai (35:38.987)

Yeah.

Marjaana Rakai (35:43.666)

Yeah, and I guess I wanted to mention that the whole point of doing the tests and having their intensity zones somewhat close to optimal is that your training load will be calculated based on these. So don't skip the test.

Paul (36:06.748)

Yes, well, so again, we have a no for sure, for sure. But this is, again, to Mick's question, well, we have this tool, but how can we use it? And load, to your point, Marjaana, it is different depending on your intensity, right? So does a TSS that's generated or a training load marker that's generated in hour one, is that

training load that's generated in hour two of a two-hour session? Well, probably not, but that's currently how it's calculated. So, and what if there's added intensities in that whole segment as well? Where do those sort of sit? So we're actually, and again, this is from Filip's work. He's actually working on a new method to actually quantify the training load.

Paul Warloski (36:42.766)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Warloski (37:03.304)

Hmm.

Paul (37:03.456)

based on this. These are very difficult questions and no one's done these things yet, right? But we're trying to pioneer in these sorts of things. But again, maybe just a real simple thing you could do, Mick. I would just take my own data and I'm thinking, again, how do I use this tool in Athletica? Well, I can see if I look at any power profile on me,

Paul (37:32.624)

exercise training distances or durations. I know where my capacity lies in those based on that profile. In the case where I'm going to do say an Ironman, if I don't have my duration profile out to five or six hours at least on that

you know that cycling power profile, well then I'm probably not going to do too well for my, you know, from the bike phase and who knows how that's going to affect me in the run, probably not so well. So you know, it's, there's just some, there's some real common sense things. It should really help, it should help me from a pacing standpoint as well too. You can see that there's two, two lines on the power profile as well. There's the, there's not just the, um, the threshold.

or your critical power, but there's also a predicted ventilatory threshold one. And that's really the line that you should more or less be targeting if you're going to be doing a prolonged duration event like an Ironman, right? So that really represents sustainable or homeostatic exercise intensity, power output, or pace. So that VT1 tends to be around the area that you will perform.

well at for your prolonged ultra endurance activity. And we have a classic example, this is illustrated perfectly with Cindy Maloney's data on in her recent Kona experience where she was, I believe she was 25th in her age category, just incredible performance. And she did like a, I forget what her time was, but it was just over 11 hours.

and uh... in kona for you know it is yes so she did amazing but she just did a textbook performance and she all the data is there so if you haven't seen that already i would go check that out you can really see how you can leverage the data both the training like her whole pro com her whole performance management system right into the race as well as her pacing profile using all of those using that curve uh... was textbook and you know

Paul (39:54.36)

and she was ecstatic with the result accordingly too.

Paul Warloski (40:01.098)

Next question, Primal Swede asks, that's a great username by the way, asks, I'm very curious about the prompts asking about how I felt after a session. I'm asked to write a few comments about my subjective feelings, but how does atheletica.ai take this into account when building future sessions? It says it does, but how does this work? Is there anything in particular I should put there? This makes my former English teacher

happy when he's asking for writing prompts, but is there a certain way of writing these things? Is there a certain prompt that our users should be using to help Athletica best understand how the ride went or how the run went or how the swim went?

Paul (40:53.5)

I'll start here, Marjaana, but I'm really curious to... I know you're a great commenter and whatnot, and I'm really keen to hear your thoughts on this one. But I'll just very briefly mention that there's two different ways that Athletica is analyzing these comments.

Paul (41:19.748)

the training load subsequently. So Google semantic analysis can read mood. So based on what you actually write, Athletica is taking, it's reading your mood in the comments. And there's a minor, I will say minor, it's not as large as the actual loads itself in terms of the weighting factor for changing subsequent training, but there's a minor adjustment in the mood that it reads.

That's different than the integration with ChatGPT that is currently monitoring that same comment. And that's where you, as a user, are prompting our AI coach, leveraging ChatGPT, to assess the session. So that's how it is. And it's coming up with some.

for the most part brilliant responses. Most people are pretty blown away with the response by AI coach in terms of how, I don't know, intuitive, deep and that it can kind of be. So the feedback has been overwhelmingly remarkable. Not perfect, I will say, but I would say it's up to 95% positive now. And we monitor those of course with the little.

thumbs up or the thumbs down and it's you know it's starting to trend closer and closer to a hundred percent so it's really it's crazy and we are continuing to make refinements based on your ranking so thank you users all of you that are that are using that feature and please keep them coming Marjaana your thoughts

Marjaana Rakai (43:08.178)

I hope I'm not going to go too big of a tangent here, but I love the AI coach and it sometimes seems so empathetic to you. And honestly, sometimes it's like my coach is replying to me. But yeah, I love AI coach. I think you're referring to the, was it last week I commented?

Paul Warloski (43:19.094)

It does.

Marjaana Rakai (43:36.766)

lost some weight and I need to go shopping for a new training gear because I was on a run and I had to keep pulling my pants up. And I commented it, I think I said something like I had to keep pulling my pants up for not getting arrested for flashing and it picked it up and it's like...

Paul Warloski (43:47.861)

Hahaha

Paul Warloski (44:03.035)

Ew.

Paul (44:03.4)

Ha ha ha!

Marjaana Rakai (44:04.282)

enjoy shopping. It was really funny. But yeah, so I try to for my comments, I try to think, okay, what went well on this session? What did not go as well? And what can I improve? I don't know, coach, am I, am I always so systematic? I don't think so. But that's what I try to teach to my

Marjaana Rakai (44:34.306)

you know, didn't go well, what went well, and what could be improved. So three things, but yeah, I don't know if I follow my own advice.

Paul Warloski (44:46.51)

Those are good prompts.

Paul (44:49.236)

Fantastic prompts. Yeah, so thanks to everyone again for the great feedback that are coming back on that. And yeah, and thank you PrimalSweed for that question. I hope that answers that one there.

Paul Warloski (45:07.402)

I hope so too. Those are good prompts to have. What went well, what didn't go well, and what could be improved. Those three questions are great prompts. And that's all for the, that's OK.

Paul (45:15.952)

I would say Paul, just the very last point I would say is being honest as well. The more honest you can be with those comments, like Marjaana was just kind of saying, the better output you're going to get from both the Google semantic analysis and the mood change to probably the empathy or anything that you might be getting back from the AI coach.

Paul Warloski (45:32.662)

Hmm.

Paul Warloski (45:46.098)

Interesting. Yeah, because it's been, it's been, because I use it myself. And it's been interesting to see the responses that it gets. It hasn't told me to keep my pants up yet or go, but, but who knows what's coming next? That's all for this week. And let's keep those questions coming. You know, keep, put them in the comments. DM one of us or email us. Thank you for listening and join us next time when we dig into Thresholds.

that help us set our training zones. They are critical for getting our training right. From Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Larson, I'm Paul Werlowski, and this has been the Athletes Compass.

Paul (46:26.416)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Marjaana Rakai (46:27.786)

Merry Christmas!

Paul Warloski (46:27.926)

Merry Christmas.