How you set your goals
I figure out what I want to do. Usually pick out way too many things. Determine what’s important and use a broad brush to decide what i’ll be prioritizing month by month. I work backwards from race day and line up things to work on based on race requirements. And then I usually completely throw it out the window halfway thru
All tools & software you use to plan your training
training peaks for all the planning. Notebook/excel for macro plan
How successful you’ve been in achieving your goals
Hard to determine this answer as a range, but binary I think I have been successful. Lots of setbacks and lack of interest is where my problems lie.
What major changes you’ve made so far
Resting much much more. Taking it less seriously. And remembering to make time for fun instead just constant training sessions.
How long it takes you to plan your training per week.
It bounces around in my head the whole week, but usually 10-15min sitting down in front of the calendar to determine what specific things ill do.
What content you’ve consumed to get you to be self-coached.
Empirical cycling podcasts. Scientific triathlon podcast. Steve Magnus. The more prevalent tri and running books.
example of macro planning. a lot of this went to the wayside after needing to take nearly 2months off but really helps the initial planning phsse
I start my year plan in October or November of each year and choose races that will be meaningful to me. It could be a race in a place I want to visit for personal reasons, it could be races that will be ideal for a PR, it could be races races at a distance that I feel will push me to be better, etc. After I have races in place the goals focus on how I will prepare for the races.
All tools & software you use to plan your training
A sheet of white computer paper
A straight edge
A #2 pencil
A Calendar (usually from my iPhone)
My past Training Records (usually from Training Peaks - Free version)
Free On-line running plans (Outdoors Magazine, Furman Institute’s Run-Less-Run-Fast, Hal Higdon, Ryan Hall, dozens of running blogs and run club/coach websites, Runner’s World, etc.)
Trainer Roads (This is the only paid Ap that I have. I don’t have a PowerMeter so It was originally what I used to get virtual Power, but I know have gone through a half dozen of their bike training programs.
I have a $99 Garmin GPS watch, HRM, and speed & Cadence sensors.
I have a green Kurt’s Kinetic Bike Trainer
How successful you’ve been in achieving your goals
It took me three years to make my goal of sub-5 Hr 70.3. That is two years longer than my goal but faster than most.
It tool me about 6 years to make USAT All-American. Again that is 5 years older than my goal but faster than most.
Never had any goals to be first place over all or to break any course records, but I have been first place over all at three multisport events now and I have broke one course record that I know of.
I DID have a coaching scholarship for one year. The coach worked my a lot harder than I push myself and I thought that my gains would be huge that year, but I saw smaller gains and fewer goals met that year than about any year that I have been self coached. Coaches don’t see everything. I would sometimes bring up concerns and the coach would said let’s back-burner that for now and come back to it in 5 weeks. Or, I would be in the middle of a workout out and have things not go well but instead of modifying the workout on the fly to keep things productive I would try to do the whole workout that the coach had prescribed so that he could see in the data where things went wrong how it effected me at the end of the workout, etc. Since he didn’t know how I felt I had to show him though data and that often slowed my progress. The coaching I got that year didn’t do much for my short term gains. I might have progress quicker on my own. The value of my coach is that he didn’t train me to be a triathlete. He trained me to be a coach. 2-3 months before my coaching scholarship was up the training weeks and workouts got to be so predictable that I could have written them all myself before I saw what the coach posted and they would have been 90% the same. There were things that I felt the coach was missing or overlooking that I wanted to try but I had committed to follow the coaches training and do everything his way for a year so I felt like my hands were tied. My first day without a coach I felt like a child does when they get out of school for the summer. They are free from structure and able to learn through their own experiences at their own pace outside the structured environment of a classroom. I got to do the same thing with my training. I have seen PR’s every year for my 10 years in the sport and I continue to get better every year.
What major changes you’ve made so far
I don’t make major changes. My coach taught me that gains come from consistency. I said above, that I review my training records every year. The three years before I had a coach those training records were from plans I wrote myself based on my knowledge of marathon training plans and 30 years as a competitive runner. I structured my bike training with building “long rides” every week, tempo rides, intervals work on the bike as I would a run plan. I did the same thing in the pool doing a continuous long swim every week of increasing volume and tempo swims and swim intervals. After having a coach, I now know what a bike workout should look like (my coach basically put me on Trainer Roads plans so that is what I do for myself know). my swimming workouts likewise have changed to be more like what my coach prescribed. I try new things every year but don’t make big changes. I bike 3-4 days a weeks, run 3-4 days a week (Note: my coach had me run everyday on a Barry-P type plan but it didn’t work for me so that is the first thing I changed when I went back to being self coached)
How long it takes you to plan your training per week
When I am training for races I spent 60-90 minutes every week reviewing workouts and setting up the following week. When I don’t have any races I will just take 5-minutes before I get in bed at night to see what I have listed on my boiler plate plan for the next day so I know how early I need to get up to finish before the rest of my day starts.
What content you’ve consumed to get you to be self-coached
I don’t understand this questions. I assume it is asking what training books, etc. I have read. I am on the on-line forms a lot seeing what mistakes and successes everyone else is sharing for there most recent adventure in the sport. I have my own coach’s filter to screen out what information could work for me and what information is not suited for me. I did read Dave Scott’s Triathlon Training book about 10 years ago. It was fun to read but really didn’t have a lot of specifics that I could use to set up training plans. Taking 3-4 different 70.3 plans and putting the side-by-side to see what they have in common and where they deviated was much more helpful. The things in common are what I used as the skeleton plans since there is a wide consensus that those workouts are the core staples to follow. Then I can pick and choose the deviations. I might do the same core plan for three races in three consecutive years with different deviations each year and see which works best for me. Then, when I see boiler plate plans in the future, I have a good Idea if it will work for me or not because I know what I respond to best. If there are deviations I haven’t seen before I will follow them to try something new and keep things fresh.
What I’m interested in is during your self-coaching, if you’ve made any massive changes to your training philosophy. E.g. more threshold training, less volume, more indoor riding etc…
And how you arrived at those changes. What content did you consume / what behavior led you to make that change.
assuming you mean, longer-term multi-year type goals: these have evolved over time; I write them down; sometimes they change at the end of a season but they’ve been stable for 2-3 years now
they are organised into 3 buckets: experiences, skills & performance, and outcomes
sometimes I do a SWOT and GAP analysis to highlight things that would be helpful to work on
All tools & software you use to plan your training
just a spreadsheet, albeit it’s become feature-rich as I try to incorporate things I learn about planning training into it
How succesfull you’ve been in achieving your goals
I rank my achievement using a simple traffic light indicator
4 out of 4 ‘experience’ goals are ‘green’
4 out of 4 ‘skills & performance’ goals are ‘amber’
2 out of 3 ‘outcomes’ goals are ‘amber’ and the other is ‘red’
What major changes you’ve made so far
I wouldn’t describe any changes as major but I have certainly have experimented with variations of training approach (% of different intensities, balance of strength training, how much swimming vs, biking vs running, more/less gadgets, heat training, etc)
How long it takes you to plan your training per week
planning a week is quick (10-15mins)
but this is because I have an annual training plan with blocks of work sketched out already … so a single week is just the practical implementation of the type of work I already knew I planned to do
I also tend to use a standard template for a week (e.g. Mon/Wed are higher intensity days, Tue easier day, 2-3 swims are with my tri squad on a fixed schedule, Sat is longer endurance day, Sun is recovery day) … I am able to work to this template most weeks again that saves time with planning a week)
What content you’ve consumed to get you to be self-coached
100s of podcast episodes; many books/articles
have been coached in the past so learned from that
we have a tri squad coach and while he doesn’t coach me individually he is always there to bounce things off
i have not SBR for a few years until June this year
My current week is 3-4 sessions of BJJ, 3-4 Bikes, 3 weight
I will start swimming in NY and run a couple of times a week but I have no goals beyond finishing - my priority is BJJ and weights - the goal is to be fit enough to finish and I am pretty certain I can do that, I’ll prob end up with 3B, 3R, 2S, 3BJJ and 3W - weights and BJJ are always combined. I’ll do one long B and R a week
I do not really have a plan - i pick rides that are within the zone / recovery I want to be in on a given day, I have ez days every week, most of it is done in z2 (drifts to z3) hardest cardio of the week is BJJ rounds
selfcoached since leaving school in 1977, university X-C and other running was so amateur we didn’t even have a coach for the team…
self-coached means you have a fool for a coach and a fool for an athlete, but at least they work for free…
How you set your goals
in running they set themselves - break 40min 10k, 38, 35, etc.
the problem here is when you stop improving, particularly when it becomes clear there will never be another PR.
At that point I switched to tri
In tri the goalposts shift, can’t use times anymore because tri courses are never comparable even slightly. So the goals become competitive ones, and depend a lot on who shows up at the race, which is frustrating. Also used comparisons with previous years on the same course, for personal goals.
All tools & software you use to plan your training
plain text file for logging and notes on context, life outside training etc
spreadsheet with macros to calculate TSS, weekly/monthly totals, etc
the plan goes in the spreadsheet, the actual is also logged there.
How succesfull you’ve been in achieving your goals
in running major goals were -
top 100 in Two Oceans 56km ultra
qualify for national championships road race
2:40 marathon
hit 2 of the 3.
Failed on the marathon - ran a 2:41 at Denver altitude on an uphill course in 80deg weather. Previous years had a flat course and temps in the 60s, still think I could have done it in an ordinary year. The next year I started postgrad degree while working fulltime and didn’t train well, three years later had a serious illness which ended the run career at least for PRs.
tri goals were -
qualify for Olympic Nationals
qualify for Worlds Oly
top 25 at Worlds
Again 2 of the 3.
I should have used a coach for the 3rd goal, was very distracted with work/family and did not plan well.
What major changes you’ve made so far
oh so many…
Lydiard-based for the run training after 1984 was very successful.
Tri training, never did enough volume to really need to make changes. The change I would have made is a lot more easy volume, never had time.
How long it takes you to plan your training per week
a couple of hours at the start of a training block to a goal race, 10min/week after that to adjust.
What content you’ve consumed to get you to be self-coached
Lore of Running Dr T Noakes, Scott Tinley’s Winning Triathlon, the books from Lydiard’s athletes, Peter Snell etc.
Currently rely on Alex Hutchinson and Dave Roche to keep me informed of latest research. Also Twitter used to have a lot of interesting exercise science from researchers like Dr Seiler, Prof Jeukendrup etc. It’s become a elon wasteland sadly.
How you set your goals
I’ve set my goals based on what is going on in my life- when my kids were little and my job was low demand, tri was more of a priority and I devoted a lot of time and energy to it. At that time my goal was to qualify for the half Ironman world championship and after achieving that, I was ready to step up to full Ironman. My goal then was to qualify for the full Ironman world championship. After achieving that, my goals have been a little less clear and my training less driven. As my kids have gotten older and involved in sports, etc, I’m training less and my goals are less competitive and more experiential. I’m still competitive in smaller local races, so my goals mostly revolve around that now.
All tools & software you use to plan your training
I use trainerroad for bike training and strava subscription version as a training log. My goal is consistent training week in and week out, and I try to build throughout my season to my targeted races. I don’t write down a plan, but I have one in mind and I refer to my strava training log to let me know how close i’m coming to reaching my weekly goals for distances, paces, and fitness.
How succesfull you’ve been in achieving your goals
I’ve been very successful in achieving my overall goals. Some process goals, less so. I wanted to break an hour in an Ironman swim and break 10 hours overall in an Ironman, but didn’t achieve either. 1:01 and 10:03 respectively. Might still try for sub 10, but age is working against me at 47.
What major changes you’ve made so far
I’ve realized that strength training is key to performance by keeping me injury free and consistent. I’ve realized that I have to back off the intensity to maintain or increase volume as I age. I’ve started running less and biking more. I’ve biked more indoors in order to increase my biking mileage and frequency.
How long it takes you to plan your training per week
Less than 5 minutes a week. I think about the main goals for the week and structure my daily workouts around those goals (swim 2 times per week/long bike of 100 miles/long run of 17 miles, etc)
What content you’ve consumed to get you to be self-coached
I’ve asked lots of questions on slowtwitch and gotten a great deal of information from this community. I’ve read the triathlete’s training bible as well as tons of articles on nutrition, training methods, equipment, etc.
Blockquote > * Kids/spouse and their activities always come first
Fit in training when I can, at times where it doesn’t take away from family time. Early morning workouts, late night Zwift races, etc.
Thats it for this MOP’er
Pretty much this. Calling it “planning” or even “self-coaching” is a stretch.
that said, I do have some broad-strokes training objectives, right now I’m getting back into training after a lot of time off. Focus is on weight loss (I was at 220lbs, I’m now down 20lbs since beginning of Sep, still have 20-30 to go to where I would like to be). Once the weight is down I’ll look at proper training a bit more, but running a big calorie deficit means that most of my workouts are squarely in the “easy” category. Even so, FTP has gone from ~200 back in July to 241 yesterday, not quite where I was at a couple of years ago, but I should be able to bump that quite a bit higher over the winter.
Tools / Software main ones are:
intervals.icu
myfitnesspal
trainingpeaks - will likely upgrade to premium at some point.
Zwift
Garmin Connect (I have a couple of segments on there that I use for benchmarking runs) - and it’s a conduit to other apps.
strava - just to see what friends are up to.
Goal Setting: Trying to think about process related goals versus place/time goals but there’s definitely a balance of both. Think about the entire season & work backwards. Decide which races are most important/when I want to be peaking. It’s impossible to peak for every race. Need to build in rest/short season break. Need to monitor energy levels. Etc.
TrainingPeaks/Strava/Google Sheets. Google Sheets isn’t exactly high tech but use a yearly calendar template that is super easy to plug in workouts. I don’t need accountability structures. If I write in the training session, I’ll knock it out.
Steady progress in the sport since I’ve started.
No major changes.
Not long. Generally plug in key sessions in a 6-12 week block. Work backwards from the race. Taper week looks the same for each main block. Sequence of key sessions is roughly the same, with small variations. Swim/bike/run, broken down by day each week, is roughly the same. Ex: Wednesday’s are always a mid-week bike specific session. I swim every Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday. I’ll swim more than that but those days are always a given. So it’s about recognizing where you’re at in the build to determine what you’re doing in the session. It doesn’t have to be complicated. There are lots of ways to get to similar results. Generally, if you put in the work you’ll find some improvement (or maintain fitness).
Books, video aides, looking through high level training plans, etc.
How you set your goals
Pretty wrote, IM pro calendar is released and you pick the races. Goals generally based on previous year’s results and areas for improvement. Process>outcome
All tools & software you use to plan your training
Trainingpeaks is the gold standard. A notebook is good for keeping you grounded. Golden cheetah aerolab is very helpful. Power is nothing without aero.
How succesfull you’ve been in achieving your goals
Disagree with the premise of this question. 100% success points less towards coaching success and more towards bad goal setting. Different people need different success rates to keep them motivated.
What major changes you’ve made so far
Less volume (down from ~30h/w to ~25), more intensity, block periodization
How long it takes you to plan your training per week
Weekly schedule in terms of when training can happen is fixed, training within those windows fluctuates. Generally have a goal of volume in each zone for each week written as a grand plan a few months out, then pick on the day which intervals you feel you can do best.
What content you’ve consumed to get you to be self-coached
Work with coaches first, then continue reading pubmed studies.
My background is in competitive running. I had coaches for my first 12 years in the sport. I participated in everything from Junior USATF to Division 1 college athletics. All I had to do every day was show up and do what the coach said to do for the day. I gave training very little thought. When I got my first job out of college I had to take control of my training for the first time in my life and I was at a bit of a loss. I fortunately had training logs from my half dozen middle school, high school, and college coaches so I started reading back through them. It didn’t take long to see patterns. Multiple coach spread across three states all had similar recipes. So, I started to write my own running plans based on what I learned from each of the teams I was on and each of the coaches I had. I did that for 9 years before crossing over to Triathlons. When I crossed over to Triathlon I was living in a town of population 5,000 (10,000 in the greater area) with no bike shops, running clubs, swim teams, etc. for 50+ miles in any direction. There was no one to teach me how to train for a Triathlon so I did things the same way I did my run training 9 years earlier. I looked at how people in the know set up their training plans, cross examined them to other plans to see what was in common, came to my own conclusions of what was going to be the most important part of my training and what I could modify to fit my own schedules/needs/taste/etc. The truth is I did a lot of thing the wrong way, or at least very inefficiently my first few years. The year I had a coach I was 3-4 years into the sport and that was the first time I really had any guidance to bike or swim training. I didn’t progress a lot that year as an athlete in that it was one of the smallest margin of PR years in the sport for me in my 10 years, but I learned a ton about how to train myself for a triathlon. My coach was not just training me for some races, he was teaching me how to train and how to race. I still go back to other on-line plans to see what different plans prescribe. Especially if I have time or other constraints that require me to do things in a new way than what I was able to do in previous years. When it comes to training there is more than one way to skin a cat and some times I see things is a new plan that are very unexpected. Sometimes I try the unexpected elements to the plans and learn something new I can add to my quiver of training arrows. Other times I learn that they aren’t in other plans because they are a bad idea and never do that training again. I do like the way I do things. It keeps things from getting stale or boring and so far I keep progressing every years so I have no regrets.
Some metrics
2015: 70.3 : USAT Score 61.72
2016: 70.3: USAT Score 78.00 (score? I remember getting a score but it is no longer on the USAT Rankings. Everyone in that race now show zeros)
2017: 70.3: USAT Score 86.56
2018: 70.3: USAT Score 88.37 (coached)
2019: Sprint USAT Score 88.63
2020: Duathlon Score *103.49 (Du’s score higher, No Tri’s during Covid)
2021: OLY USAT Score 90.33
2022: Sprint USAT Score 92.91
2022 Duathlon Score *117.64
2023: MOVED NO RACES
2024: Duathlon Score *125.06 (No Tri’s this year)
So…not as steady progress as I was expecting to see. I won my first overall race in 2019 at Sprint Tri with a canceled swim. Score was low due to the turn-a-round on the out-and-back run blowing way in the high wind before I got to it and going an extra .3-.4 on the run). My second overall win was at a Super Sprint Duathlon in 2021. I am much better and duathlons than Triathlons. I did put some good Triathlons together in 2021 & 2022 though scoring over 92 at both the sprint triathlons I did in 2022. In 2024 I scored over 126.37 at an Olympic distance duathlon to break the course record by 3 minutes. I am defiantly improving. When I started I couldn’t hold even 20 MPH for an hour or go under 20 minutes on a 3.1 mi run at the end of a triathlon. Now I can hold 24 MPH on the bike for an hour and can go sub 18 on a 3.1 run at the end of a triathlon. Swimming has also improved. I did have some swim instruction at my team Tri-camp in 2022 (first ever on the deck feed back) as well as do 3-4 30-minutes swim sessions with a coach outside of camp. So I guess I can’t say I was 100% self coached but the coach didn’t set up any training, etc. outside my 3-4 sessions. I take all the coaching I can get, I just don’t have a full time coached and am on my own to set up training plans and manage my schedule week-in and week-out.
As a family man and a life long endurance athlete, I think having a coach would be a waste of time and fun. No coach is going to be able to tell me how I feel at any moment. I train when I can and for however long I can. Often times that means not enough. So when I get out, I go hard on 2 weekly A+ group rides. Attack the entire time. It’s fun, interval’ish, and it will make you stronger and recover better. On Saturday long rides I go above and beyond what I think race pace is. Do it till you can’t.
All my running is on a treadmill when kids are sleeping. That’s when I get my long zone 2 workouts and some interval work when the legs and joints feel healthy and strong.
People over think things. Biggest thing you can do is learn to listen to the body over time and adapt. Fine tune training by feel and knowing how to ride the line of your individual thresholds. Fuel well, recover well. Don’t be stupid. But don’t think big gains are gonna be made in zone 2 for 20 hrs a week either. And have fun. Following a spreadsheet like a zombie aint for me!
I started to use athletica.ai recently and after a week trial subscribed. It’s by far the most promising AI adaptive training plans from what I tried (Tridot, Humango).
