Stuart Featherstone

Occupation: Graphic Designer
Primary Sports: Road Racing, mountain bike endurance racing

Cycling has been a hobby and pastime for many years, however I have only been racing competitively for about 2 years.

In the past I have tried to continue to train when really my body needed to rest and recover. Invariably the result was that I became ill or injured and ended up having to take much longer breaks from exercise. I had always based my rest and recovery on elevated heart rate alone. Looking back I can see this was inefficient training and time wasted.

Having heard about HRV before I had written off the idea as mechanisms for measurement were all too expensive. Then I read about ithlete in a cycling magazine and was impressed with the great review it received. As I was looking for a way to improve my training efficiency and overall performance I decided to give ithlete a try.

I have been using ithlete for almost a year now, and can honestly say I haven’t looked back. I have always  loved using ithlete and am impressed with range of benefits it has helped me realise. Using ithlete has;

• helped me gain my 3rd cat licence
• ensured I rest when my body needs it
• improved my training programme efficiency, I am actually training more but not losing any time to inefficient workouts
• predict when colds are brewing
• maximise recovery periods

I don’t use any other methods or tools to inform my workout, ithlete manages everything for me, it takes the guess work out and from the colour coded graph I can actually see my fitness improving!