Hey!
I have a question for the more seasoned athletes here.
I currently train btw. 10-13 hours a week, with the intention of doing well in what will be my third 70.3 and next year trying an IM. During the peak weeks of my plan I feel quite tired, and can´t imagine the effort of training more then I do now (but hope on doing it someday)
How do the people who train 20-25 hours a week manage to recover, mainly between sessions.
I’ve only trained 20-25hrs when I wasn’t working and that was hard enough. Naps during the day (30-120 minutes), eating whenever awake, getting 8hrs sleep at night, staying hydrated, the usual etc. Even then, it took a couple months to build into the training volume and I had weeks when the hour volume was lower (e.g. recovery week, a run-focus week, etc).
Now I’m back to doing 12-16hrs, and working. The main difference for me is that when I wasn’t working I was able to put in more ~3 hours lower intensity bike rides.
Not sure I’d consider myself seasoned though, going into my 5th season
I do 10-12 hours of running weekly (no swim or bike currently) but something that’s very important when at a high training load is being able to actually do the easy workouts easy. Aside from that, it’s the general eat, sleep, hydrate.
PS: I see you’re in Quito. Would you mind if I send you a message to chat about that? My wife is going to be in Ecuador this summer for a couple weeks (I think with a stop in Quito) and we’re looking for resources on visiting down there and potentially even relocating. She’s a Spanish teacher and wishes to move to S. America to become bilingual and earn a masters degree, and I am able to work remotely. I’ve been hoping to find a contact in Quito.
Sure!!
if you want you can send me an e-mail: martin.penaherrera.o@gmail.com
I would be happy to help you with information on Quito a.k.a “the altitude tent”
There’s a big shift away from the old school 20-25hrs a week training for IM for the Age Grouper. Unless you’re a pro who has the time to recover you’ll most probably be constantly tired on those kind of hours. I recently did my first IM and my biggest week was 15hrs (average 12-13hrs). This requires hard sessions to be HARD and not a lot of ‘junk miles’ in your program.
To answer your question I’d recommend a program that allows your body to continually get stronger without digging your nervous system into a hole. Finding the right balance takes experience and patience but is worth finding. Eating foods which are minimally processed and nutrient dense will aid recovery, so will getting enough sleep and keeping the body mobile by foam rolling and stretching.
Hey!
I have a question for the more seasoned athletes here.
I currently train btw. 10-13 hours a week, with the intention of doing well in what will be my third 70.3 and next year trying an IM. During the peak weeks of my plan I feel quite tired, and can´t imagine the effort of training more then I do now (but hope on doing it someday)
How do the people who train 20-25 hours a week manage to recover, mainly between sessions.
I don’t do triathlons but have gotten up around 20 hours/week for bike racing, and the thing was that was only for a few peak weeks in building a big base. And the only way to do it was to take vacation from work. I was working, but took a couple afternoons off so I could do 4-hour days four times in the week, plus a couple 2-hour days.
Trying for 20 hours or more while working full-time is a recipe for overtraining. It might be possible if you had zero other life committments, but even that would be hard.