I’m coming to triathlon from a bike racing background. In recent years, I was having success utilizing the block training concept to get the same or better results on much fewer hours invested training. In a nut shell, block training is focused, intense training for 3 or 4 days in a row, followed by a roughly equal number of rest days off the bike or very easy. Block training equally emphasizes quality and recovery. For many people (me included), quality (wattage) is still obtainable on day 3 or 4 of a block, despite HR often being supressed… for myself, usually 10-15 beats lower at a typical high end power. Down side was that sometimes endurance was an issue in the longer bike races (80+ mi). But then I was only training 6-8 hours/wk (compared to 12-15 hours/wk, previously). Block training is gaining steam among many cycling coaches and riders as a viable training method for time constrained athletes, as evidenced by the many interesting threads at boards like cyclingforums, and recent books on the topic (Dave Morris, Michael Ross, etc).
Naturally, I’m wondering if and how such a concept can be applicable in triathlon. I’m definitely a fan of more bang for the buck in training.
Challenges as I see it would be in getting swim and run training during a rest block. As a pure cyclist, I took 2 days completely off the bike and another day of Z1 spinning for an hour. And even then, sometimes I would be just barely recovered to start a new training block. For triathlon, swimming probably wouldn’t be an issue in recovery, but any run workout would have to be very easy.
I’ll probably give it a go, reducing intensity on one or two days of a training block, given the addition of swim and run workouts into the mix. I’ll be very happy if I can come close to achieving my normal bike level on 5 or 6 hours per week of cycling. The trick wil be integrating in running and swimming at a sufficient level and still getting the recovery I need.
Any thoughts?