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.