What kind of runner will you be a year from now?
A runner's secret weapon is long term thinking.
Long term thinking is necessary because running fitness is built about as slow and as gradual as any kind of fitness you can build up.
While it may take a long time to build up fitness, that can be viewed as a good thing.
A single fast race performance is a testament to how much dedication you have put into methodically building up your skill set.
A sub-20 minute 5K or a sub-3 hour Marathon can represent years of work in less than a few hours of running.
If you want to go a lot faster than that and your goal is to become a world-level champion, at your age-group or otherwise, a decade of training will get you pretty close to that level.
But, a decade of training is not necessary if you just want to improve.
With just a year of effort, you can turn in great performances that would be unrecognizable to you today.
Consider this non-exhaustive list of things that dictate your running fitness:
- running frequency
- running intensity at short, medium, and long efforts
- running duration
- how frequently you are climbing hills
- recovery
- the ability to mix all of the above in the right doses to extract the right adaptations from your time spent training
- plus, a lot more
If you can optimize just some of these variables, your fitness will quickly progress.
The big question is: what kind of runner will you be a year from now?
Will you look back and be doing the same things that you are doing now?
or, will you be radically experimenting with each of these variables that influence your fitness to aggressively improve?
The choice is yours, but we want to make the process of experimenting with your training a lot easier for you.
That is why we added time comparison features to the new PowerCenter.
You can find time comparison options in both the "My Training" chart and "Power Duration" chart.
The "My Training" chart gives insight into frequency, duration, volume of hill climbing, and recovery.
The "Power Duration" chart gives insight into intensity and variety.
This combination of tools gives you insight into how many of the important "ingredients" into your fitness are progressing.
Here is our challenge for you:
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- If you have years' worth of Stryd data already in your PowerCenter...
We want you to compare this year's data vs last year's data.
Are you making changes to your training? How are those changes reflected in your data?
And, if you are making changes, are you improving as much as you expected from those changes?
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- If you only have a few months' worth of Stryd data in your PowerCenter...
We want you to ask yourself how your data will change as your fitness progresses.
Will you be doing more high intensity work?
Will you be building your stress load week-after-week?
What will you be changing?
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Load up the new PowerCenter on your web browser and enjoy the time comparison features.
Instructions on how to access the new PowerCenter
- If you would like to access the new PowerCenter, please visit https://www.stryd.com/powercenter/ in your web browser. (The new PowerCenter even works on your mobile phone as compliment to the Stryd mobile app!)
- If you have a question about how to use the data, please access our knowledge base here: https://help.stryd.com/en/articles/6879351-power-duration-curve
- If your data looks wrong or if you cannot access the new PowerCenter, please email us at support@stryd.com and we will help!