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 ....