There seems to be a bit of an arms war going on here, in terms of how much training people put in. How about someone fessin’ up to how little they do. Like me, for instance. I can happlly go for two weeks without doing anything at all. In the off-season I take a complete break for two months. My biggest training week ever was 16 hours, but really, in the heat of my program, I would be doing 5-9 hours a week…
This lack of effort gets me around most courses: sprint, half IM, Ironman. I finish, I’m running all the way (well, not quite in the IM) and I am in front of fair few people. Triathlon is not my life, its just a way to keep in reasonable shape. I can now train up for an event such as a 160k bike ride in about 10-12 weeks. I can wind myself up to do a longish open water swim in about six weeks. A half marathon takes about six weeks to work up for. If I contemplate an IM again I’ll stick with my 5-9 hours a week to get to half IM level, and then have three months to train for the main event. Then I’ll be on the 9 to 16 hour weeks. Quite frankly, thats all I want to do. Even then, I’m probably exercising more than I need to just keep healthy.
You can see I didn’t do much before June. I was coaching a 29-7 baseball team and got watch our catcher have the 3rd best season in Illinois (a big state) history. 21 HR’s and 72 RBI’s in 36 games. I also watched a junior rack up 134 strikeouts in 72 innings (9-1 1.43) … and hit 92mph on pitch #111 in front of 3 major league and 6 college scouts. I’d much rather be coaching.
If time does not permit me to train … I don;t sweat it. I can only so so much in a 24-hour period and my wife and young kids are my priority. But, when I do get the time to train, I take it rather seriously and do pretty well.
Dude…you are doing geneva? Tell you what. I am going to ride up there that day and buy you a beer just for the courage of doing that race…besides, I need the miles…51 miles from my door to the Starbucks.
Dude…you are doing geneva? Tell you what. I am going to ride up there that day and buy you a beer just for the courage of doing that race…besides, I need the miles…51 miles from my door to the Starbucks.
Oh great … it’s my first official race. Hey c’mon up … it’ll be like watching an Arturo Gatti fight. I’ll take the beer though … probably about mile 6 on the run.
I bet you have that stored, along with average cadence and watts.
I wouldn’t equate number of training hours with obsession. Obsession for me means thinking about it all the time, which doesn’t necessarily mean doing it. Kinda like sex, eh?
Personally, the more experience I have with triathlon the less I obsess about it and the more I just do it, so while my training hours have gone up substantially I fit it in around the rest of my life better, rather than making it the dominant center of my life.
Obsession isn’t healthy. Focus, ability to prioritize, and efficiency is much better.
Hours of training alone don’t define obsession. I am averaging just under 20 hours/week since last December, with some 25+ hour weeks in late May/June. BUT…I did take a pass on doing one of my two biggest planned races of the year, Short Course USAT Duathlon Nationals, in June so that I could have my two non-custodial children visit longer this summer.
<< How about someone fessin’ up to how little they do >>
Whoo-hoo - a thread for me! I am “low-volume man”
Well, I can’t say I’m ‘non-obsessed’, since I did actually start keeping a training log this season, and I do work out 6 days/wk on avg. (Which probably makes my totals look much much more lame than if I only trained say 3-5 days/wk.)
So, one good thing about a training log is that you can see how much you have or have not done - like so:
Averages - 6:25 / wk, (“longest” week 11:30) Bike miles/wk 51, run miles/wk 17.
Swim and lift weights each less than 1 hr / wk on avg.
Prior to 2 days ago, I hadn’t done a ride of over 60m / 3hrs YTD (or since '02, I think…)
MM - I’m planning on the same thing for IM that you mention - be in sold HIM shape (I am, believe it or not - well, except for running at the moment), then add volume the last 3-4 months prior. I don’t have the time, or even the inclination if I did have the time, to train for 10-15-20+ hrs a week, every week. That’d cut way too much into all the other things I enjoy doing.
I try to lead a balanced life with work, family, and church. I do sprints and did my first Olympic Distance this past weekend as you can see I like to bike and don’t run and swim enough.
Did my ‘season’ race, Disney 1/2 IM in late May. So now I’m just in maintenance mode. 20 miles/wk running, 100 miles/wk riding, 1500 meters/wk swimming. 8-9 hours a week total. During training for an event, jump to about 12-14 hours.
reading through the few post on this thread is still pretty amazing - think about it - even out “low volume” people or weeks would beat the hell out of what the large majority of Americans do in terms of exercising for a month or more.
If that is obsession (sp?) then we’re not all that bad
I know I couldn’t train for long distance events like IMs or marathons without becoming obsessed (and injured and chronically tired) For me, the shorter the race the better. I can train 8-10 hours a week and still usually win or place in my age group in the short races. That’s enough “achievement” to keep me going.
A big training week for me is 12-14 hours. In fact, I’m not sure that i’ve ever done a 14 hour training week. I just don’t have time to put in those kinds of hours. I have registered for an October IM race, and I’m going to be grossly undertrained for it. My approach is to hit a target on certain key workouts, not to follow a given training plan or shoot for a certain number of hours per week.
And if I need to skip a workout, I skip it. I try to be creative about scheduling workouts, but if things start to get too complicated, I just don’t work out. I’m not getting up at 4:00 a.m. to exercise, and I’m not going spend every Saturday and Sunday working out, either.
I have learned to make my workouts more meaningful, and to do more quality training. That gives me better results for each hour I train.
But to answer your original question – I don’t I’m obsessed with triathlon. My wife, however, does . . .
I am most certainly obsessed. In the last 6 months my right ankle has been in a splint for 3 weeks, a fiberglass cast for 11 weeks, a walking “moon boot” for 4 weeks and an air cast for another 3-4 weeks. I get my cast off again this Friday and the first question I am going to ask my Doc is what can I do workout wise. I am getting huge, about 20 pounds heavier than my last race a year ago when this mess started and I am dying to get active again all I think about is swimming riding and running. I am a mess.
<<you know you’re a slacker once you spend more time on Slowtwitch than training. >>
I think I am the poster boy for the above statement. D’OH!!!
Comparing the “slacker” training schedule of a triathlete to pretty much any “normal” person is always going to make even the least motivated triathlete seem obsessed - since hardly anybody gets any appreciable amount of exercise anymore. I occasionally get asked by folks at work about how much I exercise, and I tell them that I average about an hour a day, 6 days a week. And they think that that is an insane amount to train. Although, in the grand scheme of things, that’s about how long it’d take to play one round of golf, and then have a few drinks afterwards. It’s all relative.
But, compared to most folks who are lining up to do HIM’s (using me as an example), I bet the majority of athletes have 2-3X the time/volume that I do. Maybe more.
