I am not a professional athlete but I have done a few sub 10hr IM, raced Hawaii and have a first class honours degree in Exercise Science (kinesiology for the Americans/Canadians). I have trained for less than 10hrs a week to over 30 hours a week whilst competing in IM events, all with good results
Training is an individual thing, and what works for one will not necessarily work for another. I have never trained for ‘only’ 13 weeks in order to race an IM, I have always planned my race at least a year in advance. I find it hard to see how you can build an endurance base in less time as many of the physiological adaptations required to race at your optimum take a year to develop to their full potential. But assuming you have your base in my humble opinion there are two fundamental principles you must take into account in order to race an IM
Ø Firstly you must balance the amount of training you do (stress applied) with the amount of recovery you need. This is a complicated equation with a whole myriad of individual circumstances to be taken into account. For me I now work long hours for six days and then have four days off, so it works for me to train really hard for those four days and do very little for the next six in order to recover and be ready to hit it hard again my next set of four days off work. You do not get fitter by training, you only break your body down, it is during recovery you make all your gains. The amount of training you can do is capped by the amount of rest you can get. ‘More is better’ the more rest you get the more training you can do.
Ø Secondly is the law of specificity; i.e. to be a good at an IM events you need to do them in training. I am not a fan of going to the gym when you could be out on the bike or doing a hard 10 mile time trail for a ten hour triathlon. For what they are worth here are my four key sessions:
o 1) In winter I gat my base and do lots of swim technique training as this has always capped my swim ability, not my fitness. Then as soon as I can swim under the hour I back off the volume as it gives me a diminishing return after that. I can maintain that pace on very little swim training after that but I need to swim 1000’s of meters more a week in order to take a minute or two off my time.
o 2) Shorter race pace or slightly above (the law of overload) sessions i.e. your two hour turbo sessions followed by a ten mile run
o 3) Longer race distance or slightly below i.e. 80 miles on the bike at a little below race pace followed by a 10k run at a little above race pace or a 40k bike followed by a three hour run.
o 5) Finally you cannot beat full individual distance time trials on similar courses to the one you are going to race on (or better yet the same course) to find your pace.
In summary there is no reason you cannot race a good IM on ‘around’ ten hours a week if that’s all you have but remember never sacrifice recovery in order to do more. On ten hours a week you must do quality training (brick sessions are a must), work on your weaknesses, get a swim coach, watch your diet, know your race and train appropriately for it (if its hilly do hills, this isn’t brain surgery) and finally have a really strong positive attitude. Do all this and you will stand on the start line with confidence and be looking forward to what lies ahead.
Well thats what I think anyway, good luck and above all enjoy the journey
AndyA