Engineered Endurance

Biting off more than I can chew ..... pt 4

2010-08-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

By Saturday evening my legs were toast.

I put on my compression socks, my compression tights ..... and then went to the pub. What the heck .... I wasn't going to win. Four pints and a carry-out six pack later, I fell asleep.

Only to wake up every hour as the blood pooled in my legs.

I finally got up just before five in the morning, packed my stuff up, checked out and headed off to the race site.

The difference between Friday evening and Sunday morning is amazing! On Friday, everyone is there an hour or more before the race begins, getting their stuff together and warming up. On Sunday, people are still arriving fifteen minutes before the start and the warm up is putting on the wetsuit!

As usual, the start is in pairs, and in time trial format. However, on Sunday, race number order has been forgotten about and you just start with whoever you happen to be standing next to at the time.

So began my leisurely half Ironman.

My new buddy, Hayes, and I strolled into the water as with the enthusiasm of people going before a firing squad and started swimming. The water was considerably warmer than Friday and I decided to make the most of the swim as it would delay the time when I had to get on the bike.

Despite my best efforts, I came out of the water in 33 minutes and wandered into transition. Five minutes or so later, having put on socks and waited for Hayes to catch up, I began the bike ride.

I'd have to say that the following 3 hours, 43 minutes and 47 seconds were extremely painful and followed this pattern......

On the flat bits, Hayes and I would ride side by side generally shooting the shit. On the climbs, I'd ride "tempo" in my granny gear and Hayes would crank up, sometimes on the big ring, usually getting to the top twenty or thirty seconds before me. On the downhills, I'd tuck into the most aero position possible and go flying past Hayes and all the others who'd overtaken me on the climb ..... bike handling on wet descents being the nearest I have to a cycling talent! Once on the flat again, I'd soft pedal and let Hayes catch up.

The only time this went a bit wrong was when I foolishly let Hayes lead on a descent and he hit a bump that ejected one of his water bottles from its cage which missed my front wheel by about two inches ..... thereafter, I went first.

On the last hill, five miles or so from the end, Hayes cracked Ulrich-style and despite me not trying any harder, I took three minutes out of him at the end of the bike.

After another leisurely transition, I started the run ...... well, not really.

It took me about two steps to realize that today wasn't going to be a running day. Particularly, if the road was going to be anything other than dead flat and preferably, downhill.

There seems to be two schools of thought in middle-to-back of the pack Ironman running. School 1 is what I'll call the Hayes method, which is to keep running at a constant albeit very slow pace, say 11 mins/mile. School 2, the Charles method, involves running at more or less normal pace when you can i.e. downhill and walking as quickly as you can when you can't run i.e. uphill.

In Hayes' particular implementation of his method, it proved superior by about seven minutes but, I did manage to beat a few other devotees.

Two hours and thirty one minutes later, I strolled over the finish line for a total time of 6:56:07 .... my slowest half-Ironman by about an hour and three quarters.
Although, to be fair, it's the only half that I've done after a half-Ironman warm up the day before and it's the longest race I've done for seventeen years.

With a total time of 13:24:31, I finished 39th in the men's masters and 184th overall...... and mighty glad to be finished.

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew Pt. 3

2010-06-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

After the morning race, I went back to the hotel and slept for an hour and a half or so and woke up feeling surprisingly good.

Race #3 is exactly the same as race #2 except that you do it in the order of Bike-Swim-Run. By this time, the temperature was pushing 80 and I was starting to wish that I’d brought my training helmet with the vents.

My legs felt OK and having some idea of what to expect, I made up my mind to try harder in the third race.

Big Mistake!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got to halfway six minutes quicker than in the morning but, I died on the big climb on the way back. The second climb finished me off: my quads were trashed by the time I got back into transition and my bike split ended up being 13 seconds slower than the morning’s effort.

Trying to get into my wetsuit ….. (even though I’d decided to use my sleeveless Xterra Vector Pro …. Thanks again Sponsors!) had me rolling around on the ground for five minutes before one of the volunteers gave me plastic bags to put over my feet and did the zipper up.

The water hadn’t warmed up much and caused my much-overheated quads to cramp during the second lap. Despite this I had a decent swim: only two seconds slower than in the morning.

I tried on the run but, I was noticeably slower all the way. Hills that I’d hardly noticed in the morning slowed me to a gentle jog and I resorted to walking the two steepest sections: a quarter mile section between miles 1 and 2 and a half- mile long section just after the turn. This cost me six and a half minutes and my run split of 60:28 gave me an overall race #3 time of 3:04:50

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew Pt. 2

2010-06-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

I dragged myself out of bed at 5:00AM on Saturday morning to find that it must have rained continuously overnight. I hadn’t heard a thing!

Arriving at the race site, I immediately noticed that the water level in the lake was significantly higher than the previous day which usually means the water’s going to be colder. I was right: the water temperature was down to the low 60’s and I was glad that I’d packed my Xterra Vendetta fullsuit. (Thank you, Sponsors!)

Race #2 is loosely speaking an Olympic distance event with a slightly over-distance run and, if anything, a slightly under-distance swim.

Late news was that the organizers had had to change the bike course as a result of the storm. Basically we were going to do the race #3 route for race #2 as well. The good news about this was that we were going to miss out on the 18% climb on the original route …. The bad news is that this route is just as hilly although it would give me an opportunity to learn the route.

They started chivvying us into line just before 7:30AM and, a few minutes later, Deb and I were off. The swim course was a two-lap job where you more or less had to exit the water at the end of the first lap as the water was only a couple of feet deep. Other than the water was a bit on the chilly side, it was fairly pleasant swim and I was pleased to swim consistently: I finished the first lap in 13:30 and the second in 13:27.

I jogged into transition and set off on the bike making a mental note to take it easy.

The bike course is as follows: the first mile is fairly flat and you then climb for the next two and half miles; fairly gently at first but, it gets steeper as you get to the top of the first hill. You then lose all of this height over the next mile and then you start climbing again … only this second hill is shorter and steeper: you climb about 260 feet in less than a mile. You then have a couple of relatively flat miles followed by a steep descent where you lose 500 feet in a mile and a quarter. It’s then about three and half miles to the turn, slightly uphill all the way.

All you really need to know about the way back is that it takes significantly longer to climb 500 feet in a mile and a quarter than it did to come down ….. by about a factor of five!

None the less, I was reasonably pleased with my bike ride: 44 minutes each way without trying too hard. It’s difficult to compare these hills to any in Michigan …. Maybe the hill at the end of the Big Fish triathlon is the nearest although it’s probably only half as long and half as steep. These are more like mini Tour De France type climbs and I was starting to wish that I’d brought my road bike rather than the P3.

The run route is out and back along Lamp Black Trail. Most years, the run is entirely cross country but, because of all the rain, this year the first half mile or so was on asphalt. Good news in that it kept our shoes cleaner and drier; bad news in that it stuck another couple of hundred yards on the run.

On the whole, I’d say that this run is comparable with that of the Ann Arbor Tri. It’s a mile and a half longer but, the really steep bits are much shorter and most of the downhills are steep enough to make you run faster but not so steep that it trashes your quads.

Once again, I didn’t push it and was pleased to finish the run in 54 minutes for a total time of 2:53:46.

Not too bad ….

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew ... Part 1

2010-05-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

In this case .... The American Triple-T held last weekend in Portsmouth, OH.

For the uninitiated this is four triathlons held over three days: a "super sprint" prologue on Friday evening; an Olympic distance race on Saturday morning with a second Olympic distance race in the afternoon; followed by a half-Ironman on Sunday. The organizer describes the hills on the bike course and on the run as "challenging" ...... and he's not kidding!

When I entered the race last November on the back of a decent triathlon season, this seemed like a great idea and a fantastic opportunity to get in a final big week of base training before starting my build phase.

By the end of April, it didn't seem like such a good idea! I'd broken a toe and my longest run had only been 12 miles. Furthermore, my longest bike ride was still only around 40 miles and there had been a few too many "weekends off" for one reason or another.

Still, I'd paid my money and it was time now to pay in other ways. I'd made the decision to taper by doing close to nothing the week before the race and Friday morning saw me throw my kit in the car and drive six hours in the pouring rain down to Portsmouth. About an hour south of Columbus, the terrain started to get hilly and I started to get nervous.

I arrived at the race site around 90 minutes before the race and, having checked in, decided to ride the bike course as a warm up. This isn't particularly heroic ... the prologue is only a 250m swim, a 5 mile bike ride and a 1 mile run. As I got the bike out of the car, it finally stopped raining and I decided that this was a good omen.

The bike course is in the form of a 'T.' You exit transition, turn right, ride half a mile to the park entrance, turn around ride a couple of miles to the top of the hill, turn around and return to transition.

Dead easy ...... apart from the bit "ride a couple of miles to the top of the hill," which involves about three hundred feet of climbing. Imagine the hill in Franklin from the Post Office up to the cemetery. It's a quarter mile long and you climb about fifty feet. Now imagine it's six times as long ..... and that's about the easiest hill you climb the entire weekend.

Once in transition, I started to feel a little bit left out as I seemed to be the only person without an "M Dot" tattoo or any other piece of Ironman regalia. It occurred to me that it was, in fact, 17 years since I completed my last Ironman and that my longest race since then was last year's Battle of Waterloo which took me a grand total of 4:30. I started chatting to the lady next to me in transition who'd done the race three times before and gleefully informed me that the race was "much harder than an Ironman."

That'll teach me to talk to strangers.

The races are all run in a time trial format: you line up in pairs, in race number order and each pair starts five seconds or so behind the pair in front.

Having had a quick paddle in the lake, I decided not to bother with a wetsuit. Yes, the water was cold but, it wasn't unbearable and I'd only be in it for three or four minutes.

After standing around on the beach for a bit, the organizers chivvied us into order and eventually my new friend, Deb, and I were off ..... which was the last I saw of her until the next morning as she finished about five minutes in front of me.

Basically, I did the race at a conversational pace: swam easy, jogged through transition; rode up the hill at just under my anaerobic threshold; rode down without falling off; put on running shoes; jogged across waterlogged field getting shoes really muddy; jogged back; job done.

I then put my stuff in the car and drove back to the hotel ..... via the pub. Or, more precisely, the Portsmouth Brewing Company. (The pilsner wasn't that great but the Vulcan was pretty decent ... so I had four more of them)

Back in the hotel, I cleaned all the crap off my running shoes and then hit the hay to be ready for Saturday.

An Experiment ...

2009-11-30T07:30:00.000-08:00

One of the things that I like to do as a coach is test out little theories I have on myself before I inflict them on my athletes. So, this fall I conducted a little experiment and the results confirmed those from the last time I conducted a similar test back in '94.

First a little background .... at the end of the '93 season, I decided to stop racing in the men's elite division as 1) I wasn't happy with my performances 2) I was getting burned out 3) I'd stopped enjoying racing 4) I was finding it difficult to dedicate the time to the sport .... and so on.

So, I made the decision that in 1994 I would focus on running with a goal to bring my marathon time below 2:40. This shouldn't have been beyond the realm of possibility: I was running sub-7s on my long runs; my easy runs were at 6:30 pace and my hard runs started getting hard when I went faster than about 5:40. I'd been introduced to Dave Moorcroft (the former 5,000m world record holder) and he'd given me a "oh-my-God-I'm-gonna-die-if-I do-another-rep" interval set of 4 x 1 mile in 5 minutes with 1 mile "jog" recoveries in 7:30 ..... don't try this with a full stomach! Looking back at my training log for 1993, I was averaging 12-15,000 meters a week in the pool, 100-120 miles on the bike and about 30 miles of running. I'd typically run 3 or 4 times per week. Mondays were the hard day: intervals like the 4 x 1 mile set or a 6-7 mile hard run with guys who were a lot faster than me. On Wednesday I ran long: 11-15 miles and on Saturday I did a tempo (or sustained run as we used to call it then) which was another 6 miler. I'd also throw in a fourth run of 8-10 miles at a steady pace if one of my bike sessions got rained off (a not infrequent occurrence in Britain!)

So in 1994, I more or less gave up swimming and biking and increased my running mileage dramatically: a 50+ mile week became the norm and I managed to log a few 70 mile weeks in the Spring of 1994.

So what were the results?

Firstly, I got injured. Particularly, when I did high mileage weeks. Nothing serious but, I was always getting little aches and pains and twinges that would force me into additional rest days.

Secondly, and most importantly, I didn't really improve as a runner. I tested myself at the Rutland mini-marathon which is a 16.5 mile event and I only improved my time by 4 minutes over the previous year. Now, OK, this is 15 seconds a mile quicker which is nothing to be ashamed of but, and it's a big but, the previous year was the first time that I'd run the event and I wasn't familiar with the course. All I knew was that the course was hilly and that there were a couple of long nasty hills. This meant that the first year I ran pretty conservatively, I knew that the last big hill was at 12 miles so I didn't really start to pour on the effort until the last four miles. In 1994, I knew the course and was able to ration my effort a lot better .... my feeling is that 3 minutes or my 4 minute improvement came from pacing the race better, rather than being a better runner!

This fall I decided to repeat the experiment with a view to competing at the cross- country Nationals and having come off of decent triathlon season. In the tri- season, I'd run around 20 mpw increasing to around 27 mpw for a six-week block before the State Championships. In doing so, I'd also increased my average running pace from just over 9's to around 8:20 by increasing the amount of speed work and running four days a week rather than 3.

Two weeks after the end of the season, I won my AG at the Witch's Hat 5k with a time of 20:29.

I then gave up swimming and cut down biking to my Sunday ride only while ramping up my running mileage to an average of 50 miles per week which, included 6-7 runs rather than the 3-4 that I managed during the tri season.

So what happened?

Well, firstly, I got injured! Again, it's nothing that actually stops me running: I've got a swollen "runner's knee", but I need to ice it and it's quite painful on occasion.

Secondly, once again, I didn't get much faster. I've improved my 5k time to 20:11.

So what's the takeaway from all this? My view is that I've confirmed the findings of the Firman Institute and I'd recommend reading "Run Less, Run Faster". They've done a lot of research that shows that 3 high quality runs per week PLUS cycling and swimming as cross training is better that 6-7 runs per week for most age-group athletes. (NB .... age groupers refers to everyone who a) isn't in the National team or b) doesn't get paid to compete i.e. more or less everybody).

Why is this? The research indicates that most of us don't do enough quality runs because we're too tired to do them properly i.e. our fast days are too slow and our slow days are too fast.

Having now done the experiment twice and got the same result both times, I think I'm ready to incorporate the Firman principles into my own triathlon training plans.

I'm the State Champion is my Age-Group!!!!

2009-11-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Under normal circumstances I'd be pretty pleased with this. It was my 'A' race for the season and I achieved my goal. Unfortunately, the race wasn't well supported and many of the guys who could have probably beaten me didn't show up.

I think that there are four reasons for this lack of support ....

3 Disciplines might declare the race to be the State Championships but, so what? It's no more of a qualifier for Nationals than any other USAT- sanctioned event. There are accredited events at regional level but there are no "official" State Championships in any State.
The event seems to be cursed weather-wise. In 2007, it was 38 degrees on race morning; in 2008 it rained heavily and this year it was 50 degrees and blowing a gale.
The day of the event was poorly chosen. It clashed with the Chicago Triathlon and with IM Kentucky!
If we set point #1 aside and we agree that it is desirable to have a State Championship event, shouldn't the race organization treat it as such and make it a bit special? For example, at the prize giving Eric Fernando, Kraig Schmottlach and I were all sitting at the same table. Eric won the race overall, Kraig won the men's masters and I won the men's 45-49. Our prizes were picture frames with a kind of hand-made certificate inside them .... let's say with an intrinsic value of fifty cents. Now some of the prizes in the raffle on the other hand were worth having .... heart monitors, kit bags, Hammer Nutrition products etc.. I don't think any of us really race for prizes but, it would be kinda nice if the award you got for winning was better than the one for getting lucky in the raffle!

The pity of it all is that it's actually a pretty good course for a championship event. The bike course has 3 U-turns and the run course has two, so (provided you can count) it's pretty easy to see exactly what position you're in.

I realized by the start of the run that there was nobody in my age-group in front of me. Also, although he was only a couple of minutes in front of me at the start of the run, I know Kraig is a much better runner, so there wasn't a chance of winning the master's category overall. I ended up just about running hard enough so that I didn't get overtaken and finished in 13th place overall.

It's a funny feeling when you achieve your goal in your 'A' race but feel disappointed because there was nobody else there to make a race of it.

Maybe, I'll try to peak for Ann Arbor in 2010 as that race seems to attract a higher level of competition although I'm not really a June racer. ..... might do Chicago instead, although it's a lot more expensive and I'd really rather spend the money in-State..

Mid-race Crises

2009-11-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

One of the things that I do better as a Masters athlete than I did when I was racing Men's Elite is handle things going wrong. Part of this is that I no longer have any expectation of winning a race overall and I'm generally happy to be on the podium in my age-group. So I don't really get nervous before races any more and, when stuff happens, I'm more willing to accept that it just wasn't my day and look forward to the next race.

A good example this season was the Battle of Waterloo: a new event, by a new organizer EST events. As I mentioned before, I really like events that are a bit different and this certainly fits the bill. It's a ten stage run-bike-swim-run-swim-run-swim-run-bike-run. Most of the running is cross- country and the only things that I'd have liked more is to have had a few thousand feet of vertical climbing on both the bike and the run ..... although, I do accept that finding big hills in Michigan is kinda hard.

One of the challenges in this race is the fact that you have to take your running shoes with you on the swim so you basically have two choices. You can leave your shoes on or push them down the back of your trisuit in which case you get wet shoes ..... or, you can use a dry bag and come up with some means of attaching it to yourself.

I chose the latter. I have two pairs of racing shoes so my plan was to put one pair in a dry bag and attach it to my bike. I'd then run the first leg of the race in my other pair and that way I wouldn't be fooling around in T1 trying to get my shoes in a bag and so on.

Great plan ... and it worked perfectly. I was in 15th place after the first run and I had the fifth-fastest T1 so I could look forward to my strongest discipline: the bike. The first ten miles were great, I overtook six or seven people and nobody came past me so I was comfortably in the top ten overall.

However ....

Un-noticed by me, the strap that was holding my shoes to my saddle had loosened and, the next thing I knew, my shoe bag slipped and went into my rear wheel. Fortunately, I didn't fall off but I had to stop and sort it out .... wasting about four minutes. Two miles further down the road, it started to happen again so I stopped again and ended up with the shoe bag strapped round my waist. By this time, I'd lost 20 places.

I arrived at T2 and ran down to the beach to start the first swim. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that my dry-bag now had a hole in it which meant that with ten seconds, it was a very, very wet bag. I don't know if any of you have ever done the "bucket" drill in swimming where you tie a empty bucket to you and it acts like a sea-anchor or the mother of all drag suits so you have to work much, much harder such that 100 yards seems a really, really long way. My wet bag had the same effect, turning a 14 minute swim into a 23 minute swim!

Not only did it make me swim slower, it also made me work much harder and I really struggled on the next run leg too.

While I eventually started to get my act together and ended up winning my age group and finishing 26th overall, I probably lost 20-25 minutes one way or another which would have moved me up into the top 10.

If this race had been an "A" race, I'd have been pretty annoyed with myself. As it was, I just had to treat it as a learning experience and as the last hard workout before the State Championships ....which were also disappointing but for an entirely different reason. More next time.....

Second Half of the Season

2009-11-03T14:10:00.000-08:00

.... was OK too .... although the kids all wished that there were more races for them! The sprint distance is too far for the under-13s.

The adults didn't do so well ...... Andy sprained his ankle before the State Championships and Karen got a stress fracture in her foot at the Detroit Half Marathon.

My racing went OK ... I won my age-group at the Battle of Waterloo and at the State Championships and I'll talk a little bit about the things that went right and the things that didn't in my next post.

First Half of the '09 Season

2009-07-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

.... has gone very well for my junior athletes.

All three won their respective age-groups at the Motor City Superkids event and my 13- year old stepped up to the Sprint distance at the Triceratops race last month. I was a little concerned about entering her in this race as she's still got two years to go before she reaches the USAT recommended minimum age of 15 for this distance. I was doubly concerned as it was 97 degrees the day of the race and we had to adapt our strategy to cope with the hot weather.

In the event, she had the third fastest swim overall, put together a decent bike ride averaging over 17.5 mph and managed a 33 minute 5k on a day that was never going to see fast run times.

It's not going too badly for the elderly either ... we've had an athlete qualify for the Boston marathon and even I've managed to get four top-three age group finishes in the five races I've completed so far.

The Best- Laid Plans ....

2008-11-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

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:

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.
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.
...... 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

2008-10-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

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 ....

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

2008-10-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-05T11:21:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-09-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

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:

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.
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.
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.

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.
They are naturally talented in at least one of the disciplines
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

2008-09-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

Can I get to the Olympics?
Can I qualify for the Hawaii Ironman?
Can I qualify for the Age- group Worlds?

Here are the answers.

It depends.
It depends.
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.

How old you are now
How naturally talented you are
How hard you can work while staying out of hospital
Where your current baseline is
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.