Hi,
This was the product of a recent phone call that got me thinking about how I try to structure my client's seasons. I jammed it out pretty quickly in my forum so excuse any incomplete thoughts, etc. I'll likely clean it proper and add it to my site. But I like to blast out stream of consciousness stuff first. Anyway, enjoy:
Hi,
Yesterday Dan English emailed me with a training plan question and included a phone number. Not having spoken to anyone that day other than my two dogs, I gave him a ring and we chatted for about 15'. During the conversation I basically laid out what I feel to be the "perfect" half/Ironman season, constructed with a few things in mind:
1.Addresses limiters at the right time, with regards to mental, personal schedule, weather and daylight resources avaiable.
2. Keeps the athlete motivated with cool stuff across the season. In fact, I can't stress enough how important it is to give yourself something else to think about other than your A race. Especially if that A race is an Ironman and late in the season.
So, if I were to design a season from start to finish, here is what I'd do:
"Off-Season," Oct 15 thru...late February. End point is a quality half marathon in your area followed closely by a cool century or other organized ride. This, of course, is highly dependent on the weather. Keys:
Swim: attend 2-3 swim clinics, or at least find a quality coach and schedule a personal session every 3-5 weeks. Swimming then during this period is for recovery/skills development.
Bike: 1-2 weekly interval sessions, weekdays. Maybe organize a garage trainer session with your friends? Teach a spin class? HIGHLY recommend making these sessions a social experience, or at least building some accountability/competition with other atheltes. Weekend ride of 2-3hrs, closer to 2hr if on a trainer. High intensity, group riding recommended, or cool courses that you were too geeked out over your training to do during the season. Gather friends above and organize a monthly time trial (indoors or out) to be held one Saturday or Sunday per month. Again, accountability, competition, social, and fun. Notice a pattern?
Run: Your goal race is that half marathon in Feb or early March. I have four clients in NYC and these folks are LUCKY. NYC has a series of quality and affordable road races all winter. 5k, 10k, almost every week I believe. That is perfect. What you're looking for is a series of races and a half marathon at the end of it that encourages you to create a run schedule of 4-6 runs per week, as:
1 x long of 1:30-2hrs
1-2 x Tempo/fartlek/hills
1-2 x Strides/Form run
So you roll through the winter with the above schedule. Your goal races are that half marathon at the end and final time trial or whatever you put together with your friends. Locally we will likely do the Solvang Century in March and/or the San Dimas Stage Race, mid-March.
Your next goal race is a half-Ironman in May, preferably mid-late month. So you transition from this schedule above to half Ironman training. However, likely the only mental shift you'll need to make is towards more swimming. Conveniently, the local tri's start here in mid-April.
So, roll with that through your half in mid to late May. Then onto Ironman training. Personally, I think IMLP is the perfect race with regards to timing for athletes in NA. IMCDA is a little too early for northeastern athletes. In particular, I've seen SoCal athletes get hammered by the potentially hot race, as we typically don't see hot weather here until early June. Not much time to acclimiate. July and IMLP seems to give everyone time to train and acclimate to a hot day, if you have one. It's also in the middle of the season so you can finish the race, recover and still do a couple fun races before the season ends.
IMCA is another option but it begins to poke into "long season" territory for southern athletes (call this FL through Cali, south of KY). IMWI definitely makes for a long season for these folks but is usually about right for athletes in the northeast and upper midwest.
With regards to how to shift your training from these two periodized focuses above to Ironman training, I'm not sure there's really much to talk about You've been chipping away at a lot training strengths and weakness since October in a manner that should leave you mentally engaged, with a fun attitude. I strongly believe this one of the most important and often overlooked facets of training.
Whatever route you take to get there, I think it's important to put a date on the calendar where you will shift your head from addressing limiters, having fun, and training for shorter races to "It's On," I'm now training for an Ironman. Internally, those dates have historically been:
IMCDA: April 15
IMLP: May 15
IMCA: June 1
IMWI: July 4
So you pop off an IM in June, July or August. Time to transition into the fun stuff you've had to put on hold since about mid-May. Race in August, September, and then turn your focus to the off-season stuff above.
A few more broad points:
1. Your local weather decides when your goal race will be (colder = later season goal race. Duh). That decision determines the length of your season and THAT variable determines what limiters you are addressing when. The most important decision regarding HOW and in what order you will address those limiters is a function of your need to preserve your mental strength across the season and what resources do you have available to you to reduce the mental cost of training. The classic athlete suicide method I see by trainer-bound athletes is Death by Bike Endurance Training in the winter.
2. Take this guidance and build a schedule that you can do next year...and the year after...and the year after. As an Ironman athlete you can get by on the whizzbang of IM training and racing for about 2 seasons...3 max, maybe. After that you REALLY need to find training events or structures that are themselves motivating. And, oh by the way, they're also good training for your goal race. Bonus.
As I've said before, the path from JV to Varsity can take years of continuously chipping away at things, a little at time, season after season. If you don't have a plan that yeilds 8-9 months of fun, 2-3 months of training, and 1 month of do what you feel like, just don't get fat, then it's only a matter of time before you lose your passion for the sport . The most often overlooked opportunity is the first 2-4 months of that 8-9 months above, the period we're in now.
Why? Because people associate training with "training." They don't want to train so they don't. Instead they get slow and maybe put on a few pounds. When they wake up it's time to beginning training again, which by now means starting over practically from scratch.
Instead of training, have fun! Create events that put your head in a place where it is not training in those first 2-4 months. Instead, you're just doing cool sh!t with your friends which, oh by the way, just happens to be good training.
Life is too short to not do cool sh!t,
-----------------------
Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Ironman 2013 and 2014 World Champion TriClub, Div I
Create a FREE 7-day trial membership
This was the product of a recent phone call that got me thinking about how I try to structure my client's seasons. I jammed it out pretty quickly in my forum so excuse any incomplete thoughts, etc. I'll likely clean it proper and add it to my site. But I like to blast out stream of consciousness stuff first. Anyway, enjoy:
Hi,
Yesterday Dan English emailed me with a training plan question and included a phone number. Not having spoken to anyone that day other than my two dogs, I gave him a ring and we chatted for about 15'. During the conversation I basically laid out what I feel to be the "perfect" half/Ironman season, constructed with a few things in mind:
1.Addresses limiters at the right time, with regards to mental, personal schedule, weather and daylight resources avaiable.
2. Keeps the athlete motivated with cool stuff across the season. In fact, I can't stress enough how important it is to give yourself something else to think about other than your A race. Especially if that A race is an Ironman and late in the season.
So, if I were to design a season from start to finish, here is what I'd do:
"Off-Season," Oct 15 thru...late February. End point is a quality half marathon in your area followed closely by a cool century or other organized ride. This, of course, is highly dependent on the weather. Keys:
Swim: attend 2-3 swim clinics, or at least find a quality coach and schedule a personal session every 3-5 weeks. Swimming then during this period is for recovery/skills development.
Bike: 1-2 weekly interval sessions, weekdays. Maybe organize a garage trainer session with your friends? Teach a spin class? HIGHLY recommend making these sessions a social experience, or at least building some accountability/competition with other atheltes. Weekend ride of 2-3hrs, closer to 2hr if on a trainer. High intensity, group riding recommended, or cool courses that you were too geeked out over your training to do during the season. Gather friends above and organize a monthly time trial (indoors or out) to be held one Saturday or Sunday per month. Again, accountability, competition, social, and fun. Notice a pattern?
Run: Your goal race is that half marathon in Feb or early March. I have four clients in NYC and these folks are LUCKY. NYC has a series of quality and affordable road races all winter. 5k, 10k, almost every week I believe. That is perfect. What you're looking for is a series of races and a half marathon at the end of it that encourages you to create a run schedule of 4-6 runs per week, as:
1 x long of 1:30-2hrs
1-2 x Tempo/fartlek/hills
1-2 x Strides/Form run
So you roll through the winter with the above schedule. Your goal races are that half marathon at the end and final time trial or whatever you put together with your friends. Locally we will likely do the Solvang Century in March and/or the San Dimas Stage Race, mid-March.
Your next goal race is a half-Ironman in May, preferably mid-late month. So you transition from this schedule above to half Ironman training. However, likely the only mental shift you'll need to make is towards more swimming. Conveniently, the local tri's start here in mid-April.
So, roll with that through your half in mid to late May. Then onto Ironman training. Personally, I think IMLP is the perfect race with regards to timing for athletes in NA. IMCDA is a little too early for northeastern athletes. In particular, I've seen SoCal athletes get hammered by the potentially hot race, as we typically don't see hot weather here until early June. Not much time to acclimiate. July and IMLP seems to give everyone time to train and acclimate to a hot day, if you have one. It's also in the middle of the season so you can finish the race, recover and still do a couple fun races before the season ends.
IMCA is another option but it begins to poke into "long season" territory for southern athletes (call this FL through Cali, south of KY). IMWI definitely makes for a long season for these folks but is usually about right for athletes in the northeast and upper midwest.
With regards to how to shift your training from these two periodized focuses above to Ironman training, I'm not sure there's really much to talk about You've been chipping away at a lot training strengths and weakness since October in a manner that should leave you mentally engaged, with a fun attitude. I strongly believe this one of the most important and often overlooked facets of training.
Whatever route you take to get there, I think it's important to put a date on the calendar where you will shift your head from addressing limiters, having fun, and training for shorter races to "It's On," I'm now training for an Ironman. Internally, those dates have historically been:
IMCDA: April 15
IMLP: May 15
IMCA: June 1
IMWI: July 4
So you pop off an IM in June, July or August. Time to transition into the fun stuff you've had to put on hold since about mid-May. Race in August, September, and then turn your focus to the off-season stuff above.
A few more broad points:
1. Your local weather decides when your goal race will be (colder = later season goal race. Duh). That decision determines the length of your season and THAT variable determines what limiters you are addressing when. The most important decision regarding HOW and in what order you will address those limiters is a function of your need to preserve your mental strength across the season and what resources do you have available to you to reduce the mental cost of training. The classic athlete suicide method I see by trainer-bound athletes is Death by Bike Endurance Training in the winter.
2. Take this guidance and build a schedule that you can do next year...and the year after...and the year after. As an Ironman athlete you can get by on the whizzbang of IM training and racing for about 2 seasons...3 max, maybe. After that you REALLY need to find training events or structures that are themselves motivating. And, oh by the way, they're also good training for your goal race. Bonus.
As I've said before, the path from JV to Varsity can take years of continuously chipping away at things, a little at time, season after season. If you don't have a plan that yeilds 8-9 months of fun, 2-3 months of training, and 1 month of do what you feel like, just don't get fat, then it's only a matter of time before you lose your passion for the sport . The most often overlooked opportunity is the first 2-4 months of that 8-9 months above, the period we're in now.
Why? Because people associate training with "training." They don't want to train so they don't. Instead they get slow and maybe put on a few pounds. When they wake up it's time to beginning training again, which by now means starting over practically from scratch.
Instead of training, have fun! Create events that put your head in a place where it is not training in those first 2-4 months. Instead, you're just doing cool sh!t with your friends which, oh by the way, just happens to be good training.
Life is too short to not do cool sh!t,
-----------------------
Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation Ironman 2013 and 2014 World Champion TriClub, Div I
Create a FREE 7-day trial membership
Last edited by:
Rich Strauss: Oct 4, 06 8:02