Yet another 2015 review post—sports and activities in numbers, figures, photographs, and videos :)
2015 in Infographics
2015 in Videos
Strava has done a nice job visualising the cycling data I fed my account with:
And some running data visualisation:
2015 in Photographs
January
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
November
December
2015 in Strava Challenges
The good, the bad, and the ugly: 2015 had me discovering not only Strava but Strava challenges. To me, all of them were challenging—sometimes too much of a challenge. But all of them reminded me of an important part of why I started sports in the first place: fun! Here is my year in Strava challenges:
2015 in Numbers & Figures
In total, 2015 saw me training and working out as much as never before. However, these numbers also include more recreational activities such as hiking, trekking bike touring, and even stuff like saunas :) The following diagram shows training intensity by duration from 2009 to 2015. Blue is recreational stuff, and generally the colour scheme is green for normal intensity stuff (zone 1) and the more orange or red the more intense (up to zones 5-7). Race intensity is typically sub-threshold at zone 4 (orange). The grey zones are technique and strength training, on which I really began focussing sometime in 2014, much of it thanks to joining Tri Team Chaos and our trainer’s strong technique and core stability focus. The diagram also shows how I really began training in 2012 and my “year of weakness” in 2014 with me often being sick.
2015 was also the year of trekking bike activities with Anne:
In fact, I logged exactly 21 workouts for each, road biking and recreational cycling tours. I spent more than twice the time on my trekking bike (not counting in daily commutes) and rode not much less further on it compared to my road bike:
I conclude this as: lots of base and recreational riding on a trekking bike and quite a few intense workouts on my road bike (thus the greater distance as my average travelling/training speed was a lot faster on my road bike). Did it do me good? Yes, definitely! I achieved a new personal best at Austria Triathlon in Podersdorf, a few weeks after our long trekking bike holiday :)
Another big change was strength training. Together with Anne I am now doing lots of bodyweight and core stability training, much more than in the years before (65 h compared to 15 h in 2014 and 14 h in 2013). It includes lots of Yoga, Functional Training, and similar stuff. Heck, it can be even fun trying to work our way through training systems:
During the year all of this saw me changing my training philosophy, which is now much of a back-to-the-roots concept similar to how I trained in 2011, 2012, and much of 2013:
Get out there and have fun!
I will continue having fun in 2016 :)