kdw wrote:
"No more races for me this year. Not sure yet what I will be doing next year, but I’d like to h e a productive offseason." I guess it depends what you mean by productive but I wouldn't expect to get much faster with what you described. You shouldn't be trying to fit in bike and especially run workouts, those should be the framework and if you have time for the other stuff then great.
I made some big gains by significantly increasing my run volume from ~20 mpw in year 1 to 40 mpw in year 2 and 55 mpw in year 3 (took 5k time from 23 mins to 18 mins over that stretch) and by using a power meter to structure my bike workouts and making them much harder than they had been.
As far as swimming, the technique work and underwater camera can be great if someone who knows what they are doing is looking at it and giving you stroke corrections, but you still need to swim a lot. Finding a good group to swim with can help a lot.
I can’t go full throttle SBR 12 months a year. That would burn me out and I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’m looking for some down-time, but also staying active and building a base so when I ramp up for training, I will have a better foundation to draw from.
I have always been told that yoga is something i should be doing. I have the flexibility of a log. So I would tend to agree. And being more flexible/mobility/core strength would be a benefit.
I’m not a swim coach but I watch a lot of effortless swimming breakdowns of videos to know what are some key things to look for in a stroke analysis. When training gets in full swing, I can work on pushing intervals and getting faster. But spending the winter months trying to ingrain GOOD habits isn’t a bad thing, and would help me be faster.
Strength training in and of itself doesn’t necessarily make me faster, but when I start heavy bike and run training next year, it sure would be nice to do so Roth more strength and explosiveness in my legs from a couple months of dedicated and targeted weight training.
And I will bike and run on weekends for fun and to keep those disciplines still active, even if they are not the focus.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what a plan would look like and I’m really happy with this setup. If I just go full throttle from now until April when races start, I’ll be a burned out broken man before the first race of the year. I like the direction this plan takes me.