Training Software

by Christopher Drozd
Jan/Feb, '01 (www.slowtwitch.com)

Christopher Drozd is a triathlete, trainer, and coach living in Los Angeles. He has a very elegant website he maintains called sportfit.com, and has graciously agreed to kick the tires of some popular training software out there, and report back to us.

We're all anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive tri-geeks, aren't we? While planning my 2001 training schedule late last year, I began filling cells in a bare-bones spreadsheet program snagged from the web. Automating the process of tallying multisport training hours and distances per day, week, month and year was a snap, but the end product was underwhelming. How, I wondered, could the variables of a training year, including phase intensity and hundreds of heart rate files, be compiled on this spreadsheet to relate meaningfully to my training efforts? See what I mean? I know I'm not the only one. Better question: Should I be doing this at all?

From Ask Jeeves I discovered a few sites with some interesting takes on endurance training software. I emailed Slowtwitch and asked whether its readers might want to know what's out there. The reply: Send us the goods as you get 'em. So here’s installment number one...

TRILOG
THE TRAINING DIARY
PC COACH ELITE
POLAR'S TRAINING ADVISOR
TRIATHLOG
THE ATHLETE'S DIARY
YPI TRAINING PLANNER

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The first was a spreadsheet routine, Trilog, for use with MS Excel that wouldn't work on my machine because I didn't have Excel. Doh! But I'm hanging onto this application just in case I buy the MS product. It's based on Rob Sleamaker's and Ray Browning's "SERIOUS Training for Endurance Athletes," an excellent book and training perspective, in my humble opinion. Many of you use Excel and may benefit immediately from this if it's organized anything like the book's data and planning forms.

LATE NOTE (3.20.01): Regarding Trilog, Douglas Hilbert, whom I met at the USAT Level 1 Coaching program at the OTC in February, sent me this on 3.1.01:

"I have been using the trilog for time and it is pretty good, I like the option of putting in your training time goals each week to see what percentage of it you get done. It is motivational too because I want to see 100% done, not the 66% I got last week, but I claim progress not perfection...

At first I was just putting times into the version I downloaded which was designed for distances. Then I figured they probably made one for times. So I went back to the site, and imagine that, they did. So I downloaded that, and it works much better for me."

Then I came across The Training Diary from Science Sportsware and was immediately blown away by its comprehensive approach to multisport planning and training. Just what I was after! Problem was it was a slow-running dog on my Mac (G3-300 with Virtual PC 2.0 and Windows 95). I could live with that, though, given all of the features—program planning vs. actual workouts, graphs in 3-D for pretty much any component of planning-training-racing, a diary, daily motivational quotes, a pace calculator, heart-rate file readability (and not just from Polar monitors), definable intensity zones and a reasonably attractive, though somewhat cramped interface, for starters. Oh, and I loved this—the programmer included a section where I could enter the money spent on tri gear, races and travel. Cool, eh? Almost. The demo version is limited to just 40 files, and although I didn't have nearly that many files in the program, it stopped me from continuing numerous times. It took a while to figure out what was up in part because many of the dialogue boxes appeared in Danish. I emailed Science Sportsware. They said a new version is forthcoming and will include a calendar, run a bit faster, but will not yet address the multilingual conundrum. Perhaps they'll also remove the pair of eyes that follow the cursor as it moves across the screen—cute, but only for about 30 seconds. I wholeheartedly hope that "The Training Diary" is fully usable by next season.

Science Sportsware does have several freeware apps that can be downloaded and might be useful to you: a gear-speed calculator (way cool!), a body fat calculator, and a couple of pace calculators. Plus it has a Heart Rate Analyzer, a larger program that, in a cursory investigation, didn't seem any more capable than Polar's Training Advisor and Pro Diet, both of which can be bundled with The Training Diary.

Fortuitously, I received via mail an ad from PC Coach offering Polar's newest and most advanced HR monitors bundled with their software. The prices were pretty good, by the way, but the products won't be available until the spring and summer of 2001. Polar is third in line behind PC makers and cell phone companies for a particular chip needed to run their devices. I'd always steered clear of PC Coach because of its (to my eye) cheesy interface and because I'm not that interested in being trained by my computer, even with the help of Mike Pigg and Phil Maffetone. Too restrictive. Too generic. Nonetheless, since PC Coach doesn't offer demoware, and since my last demo version was a bust, I purchased their product with the Mike Pigg Triathlon add-on. I was jazzed because after reading a bit more about PC Coach and speaking to their customer service rep, it sounded better than I'd originally thought. The CD arrived within a week—in a cardboard mailer that allowed the jewel case to be smashed by the USPS and with no documentation, save for online help.

Starting up, you participate in an interview with the controversial Phil Maffetone who, based on your age and activity level, decides at which level you'll be training. Your routine unfolds in three-week segments based on your answers to questions in a second interview and possibly your progress, based on the MAF (Maffetone's Maximum Aerobic Function) test, although the software didn't seem to take that into account. You can bypass this and write your own regimen, sort of. There are quite a few different workouts available to choose, but wait...where's weight lifting? Oops.

The program is fairly intuitive until you get into the fine-tuning of measurable training parameters. For example, in the Workout Editor the graphic interface gives way to spreadsheet functions, text entry and lists of workouts or events. If you're not satisfied with the training data that's displayed by default, and don't mind tinkering a bit, you should be able to extract, view and analyze pretty much anything your heart rate monitor will record.

PC Coach works with Polar's Sonic Link monitors as well as other Polar models that use serial port interfaces (i.e., Interface Plus and Accurex Plus) to capture heart rate, lap times, etc. in just a few steps. Viewing the data, though, leaves a lot to be desired, aesthetically and functionally, as compared to Polar's Training Advisor or The Training Diary.

Their calendar is good for planning and is simple to operate, even though I want to see my entire training year at once, instead of the six-month view offered. Place your races where they fall, then place your anticipated workouts around them—you choose workouts from their list, including some of the Pigg sessions—and you're set. Each day thereafter, a planned workout appears and allows actual training data to be recorded as accomplished. Each training day includes a Health Log (which includes chartable recovery indicators such as morning heart rate, body weight, and mood), and a swim, bike or run workout, progress test or race. All can be edited and, perhaps best of all, are color-coded relative to intensity so that, at a glance, you know when you're due to hammer.

I found the Graphs and Reports to be difficult to configure, not really enlightening, and ugly to boot. While I'm on the subject, the programmers or designers could have come up with a more professional and attractive interface. This one tries to be friendly and intuitive but succeeds mostly in appearing cheesy.

PC Coach comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee and despite (for me) its serious shortcomings, I'm planning to hang on to it—if only to lift a few of Pigg's individual workouts.

This software comes with the Interface Plus and is a useful tool for analyzing heart rate data, training intensity and time, and the aforementioned indicators of recovery: body weight, morning pulse and mood. It also provides a diary that's easy to use, a clean interface and very quick performance, even on my Virtual PC Windows system. The charts and graphs, although much more appealing and malleable than PC Coach, took a little time to get comfortable with, mostly 'cause I'm a Mac guy, I guess. In the next installment I'll detail this software further, as it's remarkably useful. But I'd think those of you who have been viewing your heart rate files on your PCs might know all about this program already.

Finally, I've been hoping to find a comprehensive software solution that surpasses a table-sized year-at-a-glance calendar and Polar's Training Advisor in mapping out my race season and the training periods that lead up to and through it—but so far, nothing. There are, however, a few other contenders that look promising. I'll keep you posted.

After fiddling with a few different offerings from multisport training software sellers I developed a new appreciation for Polar's Training Advisor application, which ships with its Interface Plus data transfer unit.

IN THE BAUHAUS TRADITION

The interface itself is clean and crisp which to me is a big plus--I'm a confirmed minimalist. Just ask anyone who's seen my bike setup or my apartment – lean. No – stark – pretty much sums it up. Anyway, just as there is more depth to the design pieces in my house (my friends style it as "cold"), there's much about this software worth pointing out. So, first thing I did was nix the toolbar.

HEART RATE ZONES

After entering the requisite info within your personal profile--some of you might know and enter your actual maximum HR and anaerobic threshold, or allow the program to make its best guess--procede to "Options: HR Zones" to fine tune your training range and add corresponding exertion factors. You're met by the application's default "HR Zones": moderate activity, aerobic conditioning, steady state, anaerobic conditioning and maximal training; the relative exertion levels of 1, 1.2, 1.5, 2.10 and 4; plus, maximum heartrate with an exertion factor of 9. Of course some might prefer Joe Friel's seven training zones--recovery, extensive endurance, intensive endurance, sub and super threshold, anaerobic endurance and power--or, maybe the SERIOUS program's five zones, or your own MaxVO2 test score. Whatever. It's your call. You have four separate, namable "HR Zones" to work with. There's documentation online and in a printed booklet for the slow, or Mac users. [publisher’s note: I resemble that remark—being a Mac user. Is the author drawing a parallel between "slow" and "Mac"?]. I read the booklet.

EXERTION FACTORS

Polar's "Exertion Factors" simply employ subjective numbers to gauge overall effort during (and ultimately anticipate recovery from) any workout or training cycle. A weekend of multisport training is near impossible to quantify unless there is some common denominator between disciplines. Here, you dial it all in, in a snap.

ASSIGNING HEART RATE ZONE

From "Option: Sports" the next step is to specify a unique training range for each of your primary activities. Pretty useful because for many of us AT may be reached at 156bpm on the bike versus 164bpm, running. You'll probably use three and base each individual HR zone on your AT for each sport. Name them something cryptic like swim, bike and run.

SPORT SPECIFIC FACTOR

And, it gets better. Most would agree that an hour on the bike at 150bpm certainly feels different than that same hour running at 150bpm, and immensely different than an hour of swimming at the same level, 150bpm. So, again you're defining a common denominator by which to evaluate your workouts and effort.

This is what makes this program valuable. It adapts very easily to the user.

THE DIARY

I'm a bit claustrophobic, and when confined by a computer program's limitations, go ballistic. And, in spite of this software not having a scrolling option for designating a nighttime workout, no monitors or CPUs were tossed from my office window. I did hurl a few expletives toward the screen, when forced to label evening training a cloudy day.

Pull down "Options: Diary Defaults" to quickly personalize training category, sport, recovery and sleeping pattern. This information finds its way into various reports and graphs and is gold when it comes to characterizing your training day.

From "Tools: Diary" you'll log the typical training details. Once downloaded from "Tools: Memory Transfer" your heartrate files are automatically attached to their proper days. Click "HR Data" to view. Ba-da-boom: specified zones, percentage of workout in each zone and percentage of exertion, too. Speed, cadence, altitude, ascent and odometer count are displayed if you're using the spiffy monitors that record those details. (I'm not. Yet.) You can also give a name to your exercise sessions, which I've found helpful in sorting through HR files. For instance: "long, boring run for a small, tacky medal at the end" is my Culver City Marathon tag. Then, open and view details of your HR file from the same window...uh, oh, you'll have to close the "HR Data" and "Diary" windows first to get to the "Curve" which pops up behind both windows.

HEART RATE CURVE

Feedback is helpful. When your girlfriend (or boyfriend, too, I suppose) clams up and is obviously irritated with you, you don't know what the score is until she (he) tells you clearly whasssup. Well, training can be similar.

An example: what not long ago was a reasonably taxing workout, just yesterday turned out to be a grueling death ride. You're due for a quality masters' swim but cannot fathom where you'll draw the energy for that this morning and for your scheduled threshold run tonight. Intuitively, you know to back off, but where's the problem? Looking back at your HR files you realize that your distance runs have all been closer to 80 percent versus the 65 to 75 percent you'd planned. At the time you felt OK, and pushed a little. Your charts reveal that your ego got the better of you over the last couple of weeks--you'd raced the hills, not trained them. Casual glances at your monitor while training indicated that you might've been off, but not by much and, anyway, you always recovered quickly. The "HR Curve" displays the naked truth:

That squiggly line (heartrate) running the length of your last ten workouts, departing the "green" zone and heading north into the "red"--24% in zone, 76% above--tells the story. Whoa. Just like your girlfriend (alright, just like mine) your body, via your training log is telling you precisely where you went astray.

Heed the warning and you're training (relationship) improves. Ignore it and you crash and burn. Remember: "Knowledge is good." -- Faber.

MORE KNOWLEDGE

Lap times are accessible by dragging your cursor over the number at the bottom of the graph. Total time, lap time and heartrate appear instantly and you can even add notes to each lap. Plus you can add lap times if, say, you miss a mile marker and want to insert your estimated time or a particular comment there--"missed mile marker 19 'cuz I was jabbering with another runner."

Here's something rather cool: We've all had times where our monitors didn't record properly until we were well into our training session, right? The monitor shows 205bpm during your easy-paced warmup due to an obviously poor transmitter / body connection. Simple to fix. While viewing "HR Curve", pulldown "Edit: Edit HR Data". Prior HR files tell you your warmup for that course is a gradual increase in beats that stabilizes around 125. Type that into the boxes at either 5, 15 or 60 second intervals and your file is immediately more in line with reality. At least your warmup doesn't add to your power training volume.

The "Curve" is color coded (as to your preferences) to deliver a bright graphical representation of your training session or session against a time / heartrate scale. Click anywhere on the scale to see time and heartrate at that point. Click-hold, drag and release to select an area to zoom into for closer analysis. Double click on the "Curve" and add your training zone limits, thresholds, average heartrate, a real-time time axis, splits and other "extra data", as you see fit. Shift-click to adjust "HR Limits", "Curve Options", add or view splits and zoom out. View a number of files together by selecting "View: Overlap Curves". This is ideal for comparing time trials over the same course or races from year to year, for instance.

REPORTS

Want more? Training cycles, shown via "Reports: Time and Exertion" identify each separate training zone by different colored vertical bars, and cover a single day or span years of periodized training. "Reports: Daily Details" provides a window into your recovery via morning pulse, bodyweight and hours of sleep, among other variables. "Reports: Conditions" keeps you abreast of trends in mood, your subjective readiness to train and ambient temperature. Also, "Reports: Training Details" provides, for instance, your weekly training frequency and average heartrate per session.

All reports graphs are modifiable just as is the "Curve", and moreso.

TEST EXERCISES

You can easily add test exercises to the list if you want more variety than the Cooper test or a 10K run test, and have them graphed, along with a projected goal at the end of, say, three months. As you complete each test you'll see if you're on track as there has been a progress line placed on that graph indicating the anticipated, gradual improvements in fitness over the selected time period.

UNIT CONVERTERS

Sport tables, including run, swim and cycling speed. Wind chill and time zones. Certainly useful.

¿HABLA ESPANOL? NO PROBLEMA

Select from eleven different languages and your software interface immediately transforms to accommodate your native or preferred tongue.

TRAINING ADVISOR

The software, itself recommends that if you're more than a rank beginner you'll want to ignore this planning feature.

SUMMARY

Polar's Training Advisor's simplicity and ease of use, customizable training zones, responsiveness (even while running on Virtual PC) make this an excellent choice for the serious endurance athlete. Better, it comes free (always a plus!) with their Interface and suits my Spartan aesthetic sensibilities, too. But, as I'm still relegated to a 2 foot by 3 foot, laminated year-at-a-glance desk calendar and dry erase markers, I do have several issues with the Polar product.

First and foremost, THERE'S NO #%@&ING PLANNING CALENDAR! C'mon Polar, this is a no-brainer.

Second, a running tally of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly hours viewable, not graphically but as text somewhere in the Diary window would be helpful.

Third, a week at a glance, which might not be missed until you've used a program that has it--PC Coach, The Athlete's Diary, for instance--would also be welcomed.

Fourth--and a planning calendar would likely include this and the previous two points, too--a training-route memory wouldn't hurt, either.

And, finally, as in Joe Friel's Training Bible, specific goals for the year are best included in or near the Diary window to maintain purpose and focus. Adding them to the "Annotations" text box in the Diary window is at best cumbersome.

No sooner than I finished the last installment for Slowtwitch with my wish list for the Polar software, than I noticed a compressed file on my desktop, named "trilog". Thinking it an application I'd previously used, I dragged it to the trash, but somehow double-clicked--too much coffee, I suppose--and ba-da-bing, Triathlog installed itself on my hard drive.

It took no time at all to get the hang of this one as it's a plain vanilla training log. The View menu option or Toolbar serves up six main windows choices. Screen redraws were especially slow on my Virtual PC system.

THE MEAT AND POTATOES

1. From the "Health Log" enter daily personal details like weight, resting heartrate, body composition goal and progress, and heartrate zones. A handy list forms in its own box, bottom left allowing instant comparison. Bodyfat, weight and heartrate all have their own graph view.

2. The Day Runner-style week-at-a-glance "Training Plan," which allows for the whole of your anticipated workouts to be typed in might be useful to some, and is certainly better than Polar's planning capabilities. Better, though would be to offer users 3, 4, and 5 week "cycles" where intended volume and intensity can be precisely laid out. Afterall, this is a computer program! (Look for my next Slowtwitch installment to detail a pair of more forward reaching programs.) Plus, as with PC Coach, some graphics offend my aesthetic (maybe ascetic) sensibilities--I dig mid-century modern: Bertoia, Eames, Nelson, but abhor "kitsch." The ringed, faux leather binder metaphor, and––while I'm at it––the cheesy selection icons in the main data entry window and on the Toolbar are on par with pink formica, flying saucer lamps and Dave Clark Five figurines.

3. "Reports", where all training/racing data can be quickly reviewed for a specific training period is the application's secretary. It sorts, filters and files. Choose a date range and one of seven navigation buttons and up pop your exercise results. "Triathlog" provides date, event, category, distance, time, route or race and your remarks in list fashion for viewing, printing or for export to, perhaps, a spreadsheet. In this same text format you can call up total "Distance" for all training and / or events. Ditto for exercise "Time", "Races" and your "Health Log". The "Training Plan" provides a quick overview of your anticipated workouts / races during a specified period and the "Week View" shows completed workouts and events.

4. For the visually oriented, three-dimensional, color-coded graphs of distance, time and workouts summarize training volume, pace, events and categories, resting heartrate and bodyweight based on daily, weekly or monthly parameters. These graphs, unfortunately do not update in real-time as the Polar software does.

5. The "Week View" is essential to any good training software and Triathlog presents cumulative training info quite nicely. Daily totals and details are visible in seven boxes, with the current day highlighted. Weekly mileage and hours are displayed--middle-right--in this window, and year to date totals are placed immediately below. Jump from week to week by clicking large arrows, bottom right. Problem: the harsh contrast of the bright white and blue day boxes, delineated by heavy black outlining against the subtle, embossed gray, characteristic of Windows apps, makes for uncomfortable viewing.

6. Finally, the main data entry window is quick and simple to use. Radio button workout options, though not customizable, include ten "Categories": base, speed, interval and hill work, among others. A pulldown menu--"Route / Race"--asks for course descriptions, and remembers them once entered. Text boxes "Remarks", "Distance" and "Time" receive the obvious. Then, by clicking "New" your data is stored, and listed right below for fast review or edits. The sport-selection buttons, mentioned earlier, are semi-professional, unappealing and cheapen the look of the program...but they work at least.

A LITTLE SPICE

The "Tools" menu option provides calculations for calories burned, exercise pace, Max VO2––based on a two mile run time––and estimated bodyfat.

Each time the software is started an inspirational quote from a historical personality--Winston Churchill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hubert Humphrey--appears within the splash screen. I looked for motivation and insights from Alfred E. Newman, Dan Quayle and "Dubyah", but so far no dice.

SUMMARY

If you want a bare-bones computer program to automate reviewing your training-log entries you might like this. I didn't. Triathlog is downloadable for free, but only runs for 30 days. After that, it's $39.95.

This Macintosh training log, one of the first products I found online is about as bare-bones as they come, and ugly to boot. But, it's simple and intuitive to use and immediately responsive. You'll also find a few clever features that make it , if not a contender, at least useable enough if you own a Mac.

Pulldown the "Special" menu and you have three options: heartrate, race calculator and equipment use.

HEARTRATE

Enter your age, your resting pulse and this program will calculate your HR Max and associated percentages down to 55%. Men, you have the choices of using the now out of favor, 220 minus your age, 205 minus 1/2 of your age (which when calculated with resting heartrate tends to be pretty accurate), and 214 minus 80% of your age. Women have the same choices with slight modifications: 226 minus age; 211 minus half of age or 209 minus 70% of age. If you know your actual maximum heartrate simply enter that and your training percentages become even more precise. No more pencil and paper!

RACE CALCULATOR

Despite transitions being omitted this calculator gives a sense of possible race results if you know your average pace per mile.

EQUIPMENT USAGE

I suspect this window is for keeping running tabs on miles ridden on new tires tires or run in new training shoes or racing flats, for instance--but, I never got it to work. Nonetheless, a cool idea.

THE MEAT AND POTATOES

Under the Windows menu:

DATA ENTRY

This, along with a small, vertical toolbar is planted at the top left of the screen, and seems to be non-removeable. For me, that means "in the way". Quickly enter from pulldown lists sport, category (just type "c" for cycling; type "i" for intervals), route or workout and comments. The program will memorize your favorite routes if you'd like. Also record distance, time and pace is automatically calculated. All training info is entered here.

LOG

All of the above is transferred to single or double line entries, much like you might find in an accountant's ledger. Each week's data is separated from the next by alternating white and gray backgrounds. As in Triathlog this is painfully "retro" but makes for immediate comparisons of workout / race times. Click on any one of the workouts and the "Daily Journal" pops into view.

TOTALS

Toggle between weelky or monthly totals of all or individual sports in the same ledger view as the "Log." Year-to-date is always displayed and highlighted.

GRAPH

Whatever you've logged can be charted with lines and bars. This secretary is certainly not a looker but she's efficient. Instantly view periods from 13 weeks to 48 weeks, weekly or cumulative totals for each sport or for all . Compare number of workouts from week to week, overall training time, running pace and/or swimming distance from a list at the bottom of the graph.

DAILY JOURNAL

The sequential journal pages allow day by day training review and quick editing of workouts. Editing is done by shuttling you to the "Data Entry" window and back, once changes are made.

WEEK AT A GLANCE

Toggles to Month at a Glance. Weekly, average weekly and year-to-date training totals are itemized and displayed. Use the scroll bars to shuffle between weeks of your training year. I was rather hard on the Triathlog's graphical offerings, and The Athlete's Diary's metaphors aren't any slicker--they're nothing more than a suggestion of a day planner. That subtlety, to me, is more appealing.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Choose specific aspects of your workouts--all "Data Entry" parameters--to highlight within the "Log". Narrow your search: Since August 11th, of last year how often did I climb Latigo Canyon when the sun was shining? Depending on what you logged, workouts containing these parameters are either displayed by themselves or distinguished by a yellow background amidst your other sessions. Might this prove useful when hundreds of training days are stacked one atop the next and you're looking for common threads in your training?

PREFERENCES

The requisite defaults for setting up, well, your application-wide preferences. You know: date format, week starting days, save on exit, etc.

SPORTS

Select from a pulldown list or add your own sports and measurement parameters.

From the "File" menu the "Merge" feature is disabled. Whatever "Merge" does, I don't know. Exports data, maybe?

SUMMARY

In the demo version you're limited to only 25 entries, which does provide ample usage to know whether the program is a keeper or not. Despite it's interface looking like something from the early days of desktop computing I kinda like this program and would consider buying it, though not at the $59.95 + $5.00 shipping + California tax Stevens Creek Software is asking. The Athlete's Diary is available for the Macintosh, Windows and DOS.

PART ONE

So after spending the last quarter-year kicking the tires of a gaggle of multisport training software packages, I've concluded two things: none are perfect, and I need a life. So, until I get a life I'll keep searching for the perfect training software. And, right now, I'm close...software wise.

Despite still being a work in progress, the YPI Training Planner does well for the detail oriented athlete by quickly and easily laying out a periodized training program. It goes something like this:

Load the program and open it. You're presented with the YPI window. Pull down Athlete, select Add new athlete, and up pops the port to a database that holds general info--name, rank, serial number, etc.. Click New and sign on. Click Custom Parameters and you can input your resting and maximum heartrates. If you're so inclined you can prescribe for yourself or your clients specific percentages by which to load, unload and hold training volumes during different phases of a season. If you have experience writing especially detailed, individualized training routines you'll know how and why to adjust these, but the default values are likely to be just fine. The Diary won't cooperate with you until after you've created a plan, so ignore the Record Training button and go directly to Plan >> Design New.

From the Year Summary window you'll click New and select either a full year plan, with a single peak; a single race plan, with one peak; a general fitness plan, with no specific outcome targeted; and, a fully customizable plan option which allows multiple peaks. I opted for the single race / single peak format, twice in succession to target 1/2 Vineman in July, and Ironman Florida in November. The thing to remember is, once selected, total weeks and total hours for your plan are fixed. That means if you want to add volume or reduce it, after you've gotten underway you'll need to start a new plan. There is ample flexibility with the various phases, so adjustments are possible.

Your training week starts on a Monday, and there's nothing you can do about it. So choose your Monday, your peak race and your total training hours and the program begins its work. It tells me that I've 16 weeks to get ready for 1/2 Vineman, with an average of 12.5 hours of training per week. Click OK to return to the Year Summary.

Click Events to add interim races, if you want or click Phases to start actual planning.

From the Phase Dates and Volumes window, you'll see a bar chart outlining the weeks leading to your chosen event, and below specific phases, weeks, starting dates and ending dates. You can add New phases if you want, and call them by different names--Pre-Competition can be replaced by Build Two, or Really Tough Month, for example. Click Volumes and the bar chart profile resembles what you'd expect, weekly increases in time. Reflected beneath are total hours, maximum weekly hours, per phase and the percentage of maximum, overall.

From there hit Intensity and enter into the fields of each phase the percentage of physical, technical, psychological and tactical training you intend to complete. Also, select the training zones (1 to 5, plus strength, which is zone 6) you'll be emphasizing for each period of your program. All of this can be displayed graphically, as workload or emphasis against time, volume against time or both. Trimp (a measure of intensity-induced fatigue) and the percentage of intensity (% Int.) relative to the phase of maximum loading are calculated based on all of the field entries. If there are any questions as to whether or not you're working hard, they're answered right here.

Now that all of that's done, go back to the Year Summary window and select a macrocycle, say, Pre-Competition, and then click on the icons near the bottom of the window to calculate training minutes per week. Your options are two, three, four and five week periods plus a custom selection that allows complete control over such variables as loading slope, number of weeks, training hours, etc. The default macrocycles are intricate and flexible enough to accommodate most of us, so I go with the icons provided. Once selected you're sometimes given a choice: a five week cycle can be one long, four week build with one week recovery at the end, or it can be comprised of two, shorter--three and two week--cycles, for instance. After choosing macrocycles, select microcycles the same way to calculate minutes per day.

Again, from the pulldown, select your phase...how about, Pre-Competition and click on MicroCycles. The next window displays, along with details about this phase, eight icons similar to the macrocycle icons you just used. Click the one that appears to fit your weekly training format. None fit? Click one anyway. Numbers fill the empty fields for the week selected, and ninth icon joins the others. It's a C, for custom. This one you'll want to use. Highlight a week and tinker away. When finished, click OK and do the same for the remaining phases. Or, not. You can plan week to week if you want.

You're almost home. But now, like getting off the bike and onto your feet the real work begins.

PART TWO

Automating a Hand-On Process

YPI saves us from the tedium of calculating the individual minutes of our training weeks and days, and that's good, for me anyway, Œcuz I dont speak math. Nonetheless, when it comes time to figure individual workouts, you must scroll through a long list of sports and activities which is, damn it all...tedious. Add to that the 640x480 window where all of this information resides, and well you might start feeling a little claustrophobic. A number of times I was itching to pull out my large desk calendar, jot down my plan overview with a dry erase marker and be done with it, but triathletes are known for perseverence, right? Since single day planning is pretty repetitious, Alan Ball, the programmer has seen fit for specific workouts to be copied from one week to the next, or for all microcycles within a macrocycle. Most of us use calendar weeks to format our training and create routines--Monday is a recovery swim day; Tuesday is a Spinning® class (hills) and strength training; Wednesday is a morning run and an evening master's swim; da-Da, da-Da, da-Da. This software allows scheduling the same weekly regimen just by copying the workouts to subsequent weeks with a three quick clicks. Best, the appropriate volume increases / decreases are included.

Print Reports

Once completed you may print each macrocycle as a sort of training menu. Training du jour includes calculated (target) minutes, the planned time of day of the workouts, their duration, target training zone and a description of the specific activities. Target hours / minutes for the week are listed, too, to keep you abreast of the bigger picture. You have the options of printing the actual workouts accomplished for any given period--to screen view or to hard copy--a comparison between planned and actual training, a fatigue (Trimp) graph based on % aerobic, anaerobic and strength per period, competitions and events including your overall ranking, weekly and yearly training summaries, your personal data, and an activities list with descriptions.

Activities

Within the YPI database are numerous workout possibilites, some of which may spark new training ideas or jog your memory of routines youve wanted to try out. For those who weight lift--or want to-- your options are Core (Trunk), General, Specific, In-season and Off-season, Circuit, Plyometric and Yoga (Hatha) strength training. Some have short descriptives added for clarity--Plyometric Bounding: Low number of reps (3 - 6). Very snappy. Pause between each set to recover heartrate to low Zone 1. See sub activities for exercises. These choices make it easier to include variation--pronounced: purposeful change--in your gym time. Most of us train with something akin to a bodybuilders / general fitness program that has little relevance to multisport. We would benefit greatly by the direction suggested here. But, as this is still a work in progress the Sub Activities button is not yet active. Sub activities would allow for the details of a strength session to be outlined and edited. You can, however, create new activities and new sports pretty easily, such as bike to run bricks, as well as edit out the clutter of activities and sports that may not fit into your training plan. Ultimate Frisbee. Rugby. Badminton.

Other Sources

Id like to add that this is where programs like PC Coach or Joe Friels TrainingBible.com outshine many of the others, they have many excellent training sessions detailed within and are worth their price by that aspect alone! Joe Friel is a proponent of weight training for triathlon and his Triathletes Training Bible presents a fine perspective of periodization in the gym. If you dont yet own this multisport tome youre doing yourself a diservice. And, Joes website TrainingBible.com offers literally hundreds of workouts for new and experienced triathletes, alike, plus an online version of his heavily field tested planning / training program from his book. But, I digress.

Telling the Whole Story

Still within the Diary window are several boxes--youll only see two at a time--that present your target emphases vs. your planned training routine. Target and planned seem redundant? Not really. Remember the Intensity window, where you assigned time values to things like physical, mental, tactical and technical conditioning, along with time in particular effort zones? Sometimes when scheduling workouts we default to 100% physical training, for instance, neglecting the mental game until raceday, when its too late. If present, the discrepency--in minutes--is shown within these boxes. Target zones are color coded, too for quick recognition. Then, when entering actual training data the boxes captions change to planned vs. actual, and may show how your 4 hour base training group ride morphed into more of an anaerobic endurance ego session.

All in All

YPI Training Planner is quite a good effort, a Thumbs Up and once finished should be outstanding. By finished I mean inserting the code behind the buttons that arent yet working, perhaps adding to the database of exercise options--maybe making one version more tri-specific, and importantly, adding a heartrate component to the recording of the daily tasks. Alan Ball indicated to me that heartrate files can provide too much detail for many athletes, and so left them out of this software version. I disagree. Heartrate--though not the only, but arguably the most useful variable of fitness biofeedback--is essential with regard to staying within specified zones, comparing time trial results and fitness improvements, cycle-to-cycle or year-to-year and in preventing overtraining will, and should be an integral part of software as well thought out as YPI.

Finally, YPI runs slowly on my Mac with Windows emulation, which is no big surprise. My P3/866 Windoze '98 machine is much quicker, though not as crisp and snappy as you might think.

(Famous?) Last Words

Personally, I plan to use YPI Training Planner to lay out my training season, Polar's Training Advisor to track the details of my workouts and a large, Year-at-a-glance desk calendar to provide a quick overview. I hope I don't sound too didactic here, but...no matter what you use to plan and record your training, you put yourself in the driver's seat and will, likely, achieve your multisport goals without injury or overtraining. Train smart (and kick ass)!