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Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance
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Thanks to COVID my usual summer goals have been upended. It appears my summer goal race will end up being a local Olympic race I've done many times, always as a training / warm up race for an Ironman. I've never specifically trained for an Olympic.

I'm coming into the training cycle with pretty strong fitness (by my standards). Just successfully concluded the 100/100 and rode about 5,000 miles in the past year. Long history of low intensity endurance training. My swim is good, bike is fine and run is slow.

I looked at several off-the-shelf Olympic-distance training plans. Frankly they all start from a base that is well below my current fitness. So I'm starting to design my own. The problem is I'm not sure what it should look like. Wondering if folks have thoughts on:

1) How much overall training per week? Over the past year I averaged about 9 hours and, courtesy of no racing, really didn't stray too far from that. Min and Max of probably 6 and 12.

2) How much intensity? Should I be doing lots of speed work on the run?

3) Any other plan-building strategies I should be aware of regarding this distance?

I plan to create about a 16 week plan with some periodization. Any thoughts or ideas greatly appreciated. It's an interesting new challenge for me to have such a focus on speed instead of endurance.

Thanks!
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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1. How much time do you have? If you have more time than 9 I'd start near 11 and re-evaluate after the first cycle then go up to 120% of the last cycle.

2. What are you good at? Running fast VO2 stuff or running longer threshold stuff? With either I'd be looking at 20% of Sessions being faster. At Oly distance you'll be near threshold for a long time.

3. Since adaptations take 5 to 6 weeks I'd go 18 weeks plus a taper week instead of 16.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [jaretj] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks, JaretJ. That's exactly the kind of info / questions I had in mind.

Time is not too much of an issue - My family is used to me being away 12-18 hours each week for IM training so anything less than that will feel like a bonus. I've never trained for this short of a distance so surely I'm not going 120% of 12-18 hours, right?

Definitely better at long threshold runs. Very little VO2 max stuff in my history.

18 weeks makes sense, good thought.

Much appreciate your response.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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1) Use the time available to reduce volume and add more time into therapy, mobility and stability work. You have a base under you, so this block will be focused on speed skills, muscular force and anaerobic endurance, especially for the run. Find your flaws, imperfections in form, and spend time fixing them. Speed will come from it, since thats the focus

2) Shorter workouts with intensity are favorable. These are your 1k-2k repeats and hill repeats. Youll need good time in your high end engine since thats the engine youll be using at this distance. 5-8 x 1k at race pace or above with 1-3min walking recovery is one i like. Then just lower the recovery time as weeks go on so you can hold the pace in a race. If youre quite slow, you can start with a 5k plan then extrapolate it later on when youre more comfortable with the time in higher paces

3) Make sure hard is hard and easy is easy. You really want to make sure you recover well and arent overdoing volume in the high end stuff, especially if your not used to it. Just think about the time each part of the race would take, so 60-90min bike, 40-50min run and base your workouts around that. A long bike would be just 2 hours and a long run 1 hour for example, with a high end bike workout having 15-30min total hard work (more if its sst)

Strava
Last edited by: RossJ: Feb 24, 21 7:22
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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You've proven you can do 9 hours a week with past training that is why I suggested 11 hours as a starting point. It's ~120% of 9 hours.

It would be unrealistic to have you do much more than what you have already proven you can do. I find it amusing when people that have been training 8-10 hours a week for a sprint/oly move to IM and think they can magically do 18-20 hours a week. It lasts about 3 weeks then they are down to ~12 hours which is normally right in line with what they are capable of.

When you have proven you can do more, it may indicate you can handle more training stress. After 6-8 weeks, you can try to increase and evaluate the results.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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In my best Olympic races I included 2-3 workouts doing some rounds of bike-run. Something like 20min bike + 2km run repeat 3-4 times increasing intensity in each set.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [jaretj] [ In reply to ]
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Ah - that makes sense, Jaretj. I think I misinterpreted your post. Thanks for the clarification.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [Jonny89] [ In reply to ]
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Jonny89 wrote:
In my best Olympic races I included 2-3 workouts doing some rounds of bike-run. Something like 20min bike + 2km run repeat 3-4 times increasing intensity in each set.

Wow - after years of IM training, almost exclusively low intensity / high volume, that workout sounds... really, really intense! Thanks for the suggestion.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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SJK wrote:
Jonny89 wrote:
In my best Olympic races I included 2-3 workouts doing some rounds of bike-run. Something like 20min bike + 2km run repeat 3-4 times increasing intensity in each set.


Wow - after years of IM training, almost exclusively low intensity / high volume, that workout sounds... really, really intense! Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes it gets intense in the end. That's why it is done just 2-3 in the whole training period. Usually near the last weeks before the taper.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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Even the 80/20 Level 3 Oly plan has multiple step threshold bricks in it like this:

15 min Bike warm up

4 times through:
Run 7 min threshold, 3 min EZ
Bike 10 min threshold, 3 min EZ

5 min cool down
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [SJK] [ In reply to ]
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With 16 weeks for your plan I would do something like 4 phases each lasting a month. 1 month of aerobic endurance with short sprints and bursts. Month 2 as tempos and zone 3 stuff under race pace intensity. Month 3 as strength, threshold zone 4, big gear, hills, etc. The final month would be race specific work with frequent brick workouts at goal power/paces.
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [jaretj] [ In reply to ]
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jaretj wrote:
Even the 80/20 Level 3 Oly plan has multiple step threshold bricks in it like this:

15 min Bike warm up

4 times through:
Run 7 min threshold, 3 min EZ
Bike 10 min threshold, 3 min EZ

5 min cool down

Funny to see these kind of workouts for Olympic plan being mentioned.
A similar workout has always been my final tune-up session before races (3 days out).
all in full race-kit with rapid transitions (and some additional bike-start practices)
12km bike @ racepower+10%
2.5km run @ 5k racepace
very brief "rest" to change back
12km bike @ racepower+10%
2.5km run @ 5k racepace
So only ~50mins of (very hard) work
(for longer races, I do a less intense version of above as this definitely hurts)
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Re: Training strategies when goal race is Olympic distance [Kempenaer] [ In reply to ]
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Kempenaer wrote:
jaretj wrote:
Even the 80/20 Level 3 Oly plan has multiple step threshold bricks in it like this:

15 min Bike warm up

4 times through:
Run 7 min threshold, 3 min EZ
Bike 10 min threshold, 3 min EZ

5 min cool down


Funny to see these kind of workouts for Olympic plan being mentioned. Enjoy the new bond https://opendoorsramadan.com/ and play casino.
A similar workout has always been my final tune-up session before races (3 days out).
all in full race-kit with rapid transitions (and some additional bike-start practices)
12km bike @ racepower+10%
2.5km run @ 5k racepace
very brief "rest" to change back
12km bike @ racepower+10%
2.5km run @ 5k racepace
So only ~50mins of (very hard) work
(for longer races, I do a less intense version of above as this definitely hurts)

Good one.
Last edited by: karla: Mar 9, 21 1:42
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