The Best- Laid Plans ....

Here we are at Thanksgiving and the run- focused plan has gone to hell in a hand- basket.

There are three main reasons for this:

1. I'm not really in the mood ... I've got a lot of things going on outside of triathlon which are more important, I haven't got any racing planned in the near term and next season is still over six months away.
2. Winter has come a bit early. For the last three weeks, the daytime high has struggled to reach 40F and most of my running has been done in the high 20s. I'm struggling to run at anything faster than 7 minute miles for intervals and my 'long' runs are topping out at about 9 miles as I don't want to be outside any longer.
3. ...... and last Sunday, I pulled my hamstring playing soccer. Well, actually I pulled my hamstring warming-up for my game!

With respect to item #3, I've managed to start running again yesterday and today but, I'll probably miss tonight's game as I can't sprint or really stretch yet.

This is probably my "favorite" injury .... I pull my left hamstring every six months or so and it generally screws things up for two or three weeks ...... I'm going to build more flexibility work into the next phase of training.

October Through December Plan

I'll start with telling you a bit more about me. I started doing triathlons in 1989 at the age of 24 and I got to the "pretty reasonable" stage i.e. I'd place in the top 10 or so at age group races and I could race men's elite without being completely embarrassed. My typical Olympic Distance results would be a 21 minutes swim, a hour to an hour five on the bike (depending on the course) and 37 - 38 minutes for the run..... so round about two hours overall. I was probably better, relatively speaking, at longer events. In those days, in the UK we had a lot of over distance events where, for example, you'd have a mile swim, followed by a forty mile bike and a ten mile run. Being a strong biker and runner, I loved these events. The half Ironman was about as far as I could go and remain competitive ... I just wasn't able to put in the miles to compete at the full distance.

After the '93 season, I took thirteen years off. I had a "big" job, a young family and I couldn't spare the time. However, once our kids started to be a bit more independent and began swimming competitively, my wife and I began competing again too. (She's a runner) I did one race in 2006, two in 2007 and six this year. Next year, I will be in my third season back in the sport so, if you go back to this post, you'll see that I'm looking to improve about 7.5% this year.

For me, this means improving from around 2:32 to around 2:20 or 12 minutes. If I look at this year's race results, I'm typically finishing 4th or 5th in my age group. My swimming is a little worse (8th -10th), my biking is "par" (4th -5th) and my running is "par" or a little better (3rd - 5th).

This means that I really need an across- the- board improvement. I'm not going to find 12 minutes in any one discipline, I need to improve all three by a similar amount.

If I look at times, my swim is about 30 minutes, my bike about 1:11 and my run is 46-ish. T1 is typically 3:30 and T2 1:30 to give 2:32 overall.

My plan is to get my swim down to around 27 minutes, my bike to 1:08 and my run to 41 minutes. If I can then shave a minute from transition, I'll make my 2:20 goal.

As I said in the previous post, my initial focus will be on running. With this in mind, I did a 5k on Saturday after a month or so of training as and when I feel like it. I finished in 21:12 which was OK. However, a) I'm a fair way off of my early September peak and b) I started way too fast. I think that if I'd prepared properly, I'd have finished around the 20:45 mark or around 6:40 pace.

If you go to the Daniel's website, you can see that this pace equates to a 43 minute 10k. Based on my personal experience, I reckon to add 1:30 -2:00 minutes on to my usual 10k time to give a "triathlon equivalent"

Therefore, in order to hit next season's goal of a 41 minute triathlon 10k, I need to be able to run a 39 - 39:30 10k in the spring of 2009 and to do this comfortably, I need to run a sub- 19 minute 5k early in the year.

My October- December plan will be based around 5 runs per week. One of these runs will be a soccer match (which is really good training!) and the other runs will be ....

1. Long run (10-14 miles) @ 8:00 - 8:45 min/mile pace
2. Steady run (6-8 miles) @ 7:00 - 7:30 min/mile pace
3. Long Pace Intervals, working towards (4 * 1 mile) @ 6:30 min/mile pace. I could also do these on the road.
   
4. VO2max Intervals, working towards (8 * 1000m) @ 6:00 min/mile pace

On my rest week, I will run a timed 5k in order to monitor progress.

Periodization ..... Linear vs. Non Linear

Linear Periodization is the way most people prepare. Their macro cycles go something like base->build->peak->race->off.
Base period is characterized by a steady increase in volume at low intensity. In the build period, more intense training is introduced at the expense of volume. In the peak period, volume is decreased even more and there are more workouts at intensities well above lactate threshold. These highly stressful workouts are replaced by races during the race period and, finally, at the end of the season, you can sit around and drink beer for a month or so until the cycle begins again.
One of the problems with this is that you lose a lot of the fitness you gained during the preceding season and the second problem is that the transition from long, steady workouts to shorter, faster ones is often difficult, particularly as you get older.
With non-linear periodization, the speedwork never stops: you do less of it and it's less event specific. I like to think of the minimum fitness level you go down to is about 8 weeks of training from peak condition i.e. your base fitness should be roughly where you would normally be four weeks from the end of your build phase.

So how should you periodize your year?

As a Michigan based athlete, my season is begins a week after Memorial Day and ends a week after Labor Day and I'll compete in 6-8 triathlons during this period. The first three will be in the first three weeks of June, I'll do a couple of "training races" in July and I'll aim to peak again in late August/early September. I may also do a few fall and spring running races 5ks, 10ks and maybe a half- marathon.

My periodized year is therefore ....

Second week of September through 1st week of October .... train when I feel like it, usually 3-4 times a week.

October through December ... run focused training raising weekly mileage from 15-20 at start up to 35-40 by Christmas, strength training, mostly drills in swimming, Sunday bike ride (40 miles) until weather gets too bad and one spin class.

January through mid-end of March .... keep running mileage around 35 miles per week but, up the intensity (there will be a lot of treadmill miles so non-specific speedwork makes them go quicker!). Switching to a swim focus, less drills, long, steady sets and short, sharp sets concentrating on form! Bike work will be one spin class and two sessions on Computrainer. Two strength workouts per week. ..... At the end of this phase, my running will probably be about as fast as I'll get for the year.

End of March through end of May ..... Bike focus. Running mileage will drop to 20-25 miles per week: Long run 10-12 miles, Threshold runs 5-6 miles, VO2max intervals 5-6 miles. As phase progresses, threshold runs will get faster and intervals will become longer and slower until I can run 5 x 2k with 30s recoveries at my goal 10k pace. Swims will be maintenance mode ... lots of threshold work with some drills and long swims on other days. Start riding outdoors again, 3-4 times a week: long ride 40-60 miles; steady ride 25-30 miles; two lots of assorted speedwork.

Race season .... in my early season block of three races, I tend to eliminate my long ride ('cos most races are on Sundays which is when I do my long ride) and I cut back my long runs from 10-12 miles to 8-10. I'll also eliminate the threshold work as racing is threshold work! In July, I'll be doing a similar week to a May week, although I'll hopefully be going faster for the same effort.As August goes on, I'll be drastically reducing volume and doing some fast training races with a view to doing well at the State Championships the week after Labor Day.

I'll start to detail my training plan in the next post.

A New Training Plan ..... Basic Principles

I'm not a great believer in lots and lots of low intensity training particularly for age-group athletes for a couple of reasons.
The first reason is that age-groupers don't really have the time ..... if you're a pro putting in 30+ hours a week, it's a different story. The bulk of a pro's training will be long, steady miles a) because they've got the time and b) because they need to stay out of hospital..
The second reason is that, in my experience, it's the transition times when you get hurt i.e. you've put in a load of long, steady miles over the winter and you go out on your first track session and pull a hamstring.
The third reason is that this is called adaptive training which incorporates non-linear periodization and that there is a growing body of coaches and athletes who believe that this is the best way to train.

More next time ....

Training Progression

Unless you're very fortunate, the maximum amount of time you have available for training is likely to be limited by something other than your capacity. That is, you have husband, wife or significant other; you have kids who expect you to take them to their activities and you have a job that you'll lose if you fall asleep too often.

That's the reason for the popularity of the Sprint and Olympic distance events: you can 'get round' on 6-8 hours a week and you can be pretty competitive at 10-12 hours per week. For most of us age-groupers anything over 12 hours a week or so is just too difficult to fit in around our other commitments.

So if you are time and therefore volume limited, how do you progress?

The answer is intensity .... which should be measured in terms of power output but, in swimming and running anyway, we use the proxy measurement of speed or pace. Basically, over time, the average pace at which we swim, bike and run, should rise and, therefore, the distance that we cover in any training session increases, although the time we spend remains constant.

An poor runner may only cover six miles in an hour at 'easy' pace, whereas an excellent runner may cover ten miles in an hour at the same relative effort level.

I'll cover how to put this into your training plan in a practical manner in the next post.

Better or worse than average?

It's probably easiest to focus on people who don't seem to improve as much as others.

In my experience, there are three reasons why this happens:

1. Inconsistent training. They train 14 hours one week, 3 hours the next, and not at all on the following week, before trying another 14 hour week on week 4. This isn't necessarily their fault: perhaps they are not in a position to make training as much of a priority as others. As well as never getting fit, they're always getting injured ..... as the old saying goes, they live in three states: injured, about to get injured and coming back from injury.
2. Fundamentally they're not designed to be endurance athletes .... they might be great football players or powerlifters and there's no reason they can't participate in and enjoy triathlon but, they're never going to be as good as those of us who were designed for endurance sports.
3. Not enough variety and progression in their training. They do all of their training at more or less the same pace and their volume and balance remains the same from year to year ... I'll talk about this some more in the next post.

The exact opposite reasons are the reasons that other people make faster than average progress i.e.

1. They are very consistent and maintain workload over time i.e. their week to week volume rarely changes much and therefore they rarely get injured.
2. They are naturally talented in at least one of the disciplines
3. They push themselves in training .... even if their training volume doesn't increase from year to year, the pace that they train at does.
   

Realistic Season to Season Improvement

I'll start by qualifying what follows:
Firstly, I'm going to assume that the triathlete in the illustration that follows is in the 30-45 age group i.e. your absolute maximal potential capacity is declining because of your age.
Secondly, I'm going to assume that this theoretical triathlete is starting from a base of reasonable activity e.g. does some running/jogging; maybe mountain bikes a little and can swim, although not necessarily a regular swimmer.
Finally, I'm going to assume that the athlete can follow a structured training program such that they can average around 10-12 hours per week from their second year of training onward.

So here goes ....

In the first year, we'll assume that the athlete targets an Olympic distance race four months or so in the future and gets to the point when they're confident they can finish .... the question is how fast!
Typically, this reasonably well prepared athlete will finish in 3:00 hrs. Maybe a little more if a couple of things go wrong, maybe a little less if they're starting from a competitive base in one of the three disciplines.

If the triathlon bug bites, and triathlon becomes their sporting focus, I'd normally expect to see round about a 15% improvement in their second season. The 3:00 hour race of the previous year is down to around 2:33 or so. To do this, I would expect them to have done 400-500 hours of triathlon specific training.

After this second year, improvement becomes increasingly hard to come by and, in my experience, (and in that of the majority of people that I've coached) your percentage improvement tends to be around half of what it was the previous year.

In other words, in the third year, I would expect the committed athlete to improve 7.5%, so that the Olympic distance time is down to 2:21. In the fourth year, I'd be looking for a 3.75% improvement (time down to 2:16) and so on i.e. 5th year 1.9% (2:13), 6th year 1% (2:12) and 7th year (2:11)

After this time (and quite a lot of literature supports this as well) I wouldn't expect further improvement: the athlete is probably close to their personal maximum.

OK .... so what about athletes that are significantly better or worse than this?

I'll talk about that in the next post ...

Qualifying for Worlds

As an example, in the men’s 45-49, you’ll probably need to go sub- 2:05 to win and sub- 2:14 in the women’s event and you’ll need to be within 5 or 6 minutes of that time to qualify. Men will need to be a 21-23 minute swimmer for 1500m (i.e. as fast as a reasonably quick 10 year old), 1 hr – 1:04 on the bike and a 35-39 minute 10k runner. Women can add two minutes in the swim, five or so on the bike and four on the run to those times. If you’re currently a 2:30 man or a 2:40 woman, you need to improve by 20% .... and, that's a pretty big task.

In the next post, I'll talk about realistic, season-to-season improvement percentages.

Qualifying for Hawaii

These days, if you’re a male between the ages of 35 and 50, you’ve got to go sub – 10:30 (and probably sub- 10:15 to be on the safe side) if you want to qualify.

This means …. Around an hour for the swim (you can swim comfortably at 1:35 per 100 pace), six hours for the bike (18.7 mph), and a 3:15 marathon (7’26” per mile). In practice, Ironman transitions tend to be longer and you’ll probably need the odd comfort break, so your bike split will probably need to be nearer 5:45 which means you’ll need to average 19.5 mph. Unless you can currently comfortably finish an Olympic distance event in less than 2:26, you’re unlikely to make the Hawaii qualifying standard next year!

However, if you can finish an Olympic distance event in 2:30 at the moment, there’s every chance that you can qualify for Hawaii in 2011.

Why do I say that?

With a decent training program, there's every chance that you can knock off 5-10 minutes from your Olympic distance time in 2009 and another 5 minutes in 2010 when you could also step up to the half- ironman distance. If you can go sub 5:00 for a half-ironman by the end of the 2010 season, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to get a Kona slot in 2011.

The three most common questions I've been asked as a Triathlon Coach

1. Can I get to the Olympics?
2. Can I qualify for the Hawaii Ironman?
3. Can I qualify for the Age- group Worlds?

Here are the answers.

1. It depends.
2. It depends.
3. It depends.

So what does it depend on?

I'll answer the first question in this post. Qualifying for the Olympic team is going to come down to five things.

1. How old you are now
2. How naturally talented you are
3. How hard you can work while staying out of hospital
4. Where your current baseline is
5. How good a racer you are

So if you want to go to London in 2012, you need to be ......

• Under 26 and preferably under 20
• Have been successful in a competitive swimming program as a teenager .... you've probably have competed at Sectional or Junior National level
• A good medium distance runner. Generally, a 4:30 miler will do better than an 18 minute 5k runner.
• Be capable of training 30 - 40 hours a week for the next four years
• Adapt well to the training regime
• Injury free
• Capable of making the right decisions in races

Notice I haven't said anything about cycling.

To be honest, four years is long enough to become a decent 40k time triallist/ one-hour road racer even if you've never been on a racing bike before. Unfortunately, the same isn't true of swimming and, to some extent, running.