Athletes today are drowning in data. From sleep scores to heart rate variability, power metrics to pace zones, our devices serve up an endless stream of numbers. But which ones actually matter? I sat down with coach Mario Fraioli to find out how athletes can cut through the noise and focus on what counts.
The data firehose
Andy: Hey Mario, we live in a world where we have access to so much training data nowadays. My Garmin is sharing all sorts of insights after a training run and it can feel overwhelming at times. What's your take on how to handle it?
Mario: More so than ever before, we have a firehose of data coming at us at all times. Objectively, it's great to have more information because that allows us to make better decisions about our training and our recovery. But on the flip side, it can also become overwhelming to the point where it will paralyse people because they don't know what to make of the numbers, or they start to operate like a robot and they're not checking in with their body.
For me, I think it's important for each athlete to identify somewhere around five key data points that they're going to keep a close eye on and monitor trends over time.
For my marathoners, I typically have them focus on their total training time, the pace of their workouts, and we may look at heart rate after the fact as a secondary piece of data. But also I encourage them to check in with themselves and ask, "how did this feel?". I find that subjective feedback to be more revealing and instructive than just what a watch is spitting out.
Are there any metrics you're tracking now that weren't on your radar 10-15 years ago?
The first one that comes to mind is Heart Rate Variability (HRV). 10 to 15 years ago, I don't think it was even in our training lexicon. I've found that monitoring that value over a long period of time tends to show us how well we're absorbing training and recovering. But, since you're measuring it every day, I think you need to be careful not to look too deeply into one day if it's a lot higher than normal or a lot lower than normal. Instead, consider what it's telling us over time.
It's interesting to see if there's a correlation between my HRV and subjective feedback of how I'm feeling, how I'm recovering, and what my readiness is like. Often there is. When it's steady over 8, 10, 12 weeks, that often correlates with training being very consistent, but it's also about prioritising all the things around the workouts themselves that help you to absorb them and get the most out of them.
Finding Balance: Too Much vs Too Little Data
How do you handle athletes at opposite ends of the spectrum - the data obsessed versus those who track nothing?
With the folks who love the data, they're typically engineering types, executives, they love to just crunch the numbers. When I see that's paralysing them, I will often suggest that for some of their easy runs, just run without the watch. Find your loop that takes you around an hour at an easy effort and just go run it.
The nice thing about a lot of the watches now is you can customise them to make your main field look like just about anything. I've shown my athletes how to customise the main field of their watch so that it looks like an old Timex, where you're just getting total time and lap time, but it's not giving you your real-time pace, heart rate data, or power. We can look at it later. It's still recording all of that, but you're just looking at your total time and it takes them out of that obsessive state.
With my trail and ultra runners who prefer minimal data, I will encourage them to wear a watch. For me, after just seeing the GPX file and the elevation profile, understanding how much elevation change we're getting, I'm able to take that data and use it to program their training. It's just finding a balance of being able to make it work for you, but not obsess over it.
The Most Important Metric
If you could only track one piece of data, what would it be?
Easy. Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE), that's the biggest one. And your watch won't tell you that. That comes from you and knowing how hard you're pushing.
One of the most common things I say to my athletes is, "you're not a programmable robot". Even with all the data in the entire world, especially if you're training for a race, if we knew what the result of the race was going to be, it wouldn't even be worth going to run. You can't just hit six-minute pace on the watch and say 'go'. I think it's important to be able to tune in with your body, and that's why I think RPE is by far the most valuable data point.
A healthy relationship with data
How can you tell when an athlete has found the right balance with their numbers?
The main thing is in my conversations with them, they won't necessarily talk about the numbers. They'll just say, "that was a good session. I felt amazing. My energy was good. I've been recovering well". They're happy. They're enjoying the process.
When things are going well, we're not really talking all that much about that stuff. That's one of the biggest signals to me that we're in a good place. We're not obsessing over them. Data is as much of a tool as our shoes or any other piece of equipment, and it's how we use that tool that really is the ultimate arbiter of its effectiveness.
If we're just obsessing over it for the sake of obsessing over numbers, then we're just playing to the numbers. That's a trap that I really don't want my athletes to fall into, because then they lose sight of what it is they're trying to do.
When we're just having productive conversations and the numbers really aren't coming up all that much, that means the numbers are probably in a good place.
Brilliant, thanks for your time Mario. I'm off to change my watch screen...!
