Slowman, question about your IM Program...I mean Campaign...Article

Triathlon Forum
1

Very much looking forward to the entire 4 parts of your article. Had a few questions that I’d like to throw out there:

  1. Recovery from a mid-distance “long” run is easier than a long ride. I’m not sure I would recover faster from a 14 mile run vs. a 5 hour ride. I’m hoping you can expand a bit on that.

  2. what did the athlete in question do for his/her living? To be able to ride 120 miles on a TUESDAY…I’m jealous. Also, did the athlete have a family?

  3. how would a plan like this be adjusted using a trainer?

Thanks.

2

“I’m not sure I would recover faster from a 14 mile run vs. a 5 hour ride. I’m hoping you can expand a bit on that.”

i wrote that in the context of recovering from a 120-mile ride. if you can perform a training ride of that distance in 5hr, you’re probably in the pro wave. this is, for most folks, as for this AG whom this schedule was prepared for, a 8hr ride. this is a hard ride, and it’s hard systemically. yes, your legs will feel a bit stiff after a 15mi run, but if you’re properly trained to run 15mi that stiffness will go away. a 2hr run, assuming it’s done in coolish, not blazing hot, temperatures (and i don’t believe in doing these long workouts in heat for acclimation purposes), is not going to stress the body overmuch. you have a bit of microtearing, but that’s quickly absorbed and fixed. that 8hr ride, that’s going to take longer to recover from.

“To be able to ride 120 miles on a TUESDAY…I’m jealous.”

suffice it to say that tuesday worked out for this particular athlete. you bring up a point, that any coach is going to have to take into consideration the time requirements of an athlete. for this reason, ganging up the long rides into a 3-day weekend is a favorite tactic of mine. for example, if you’re getting ready for, say, IM AZ, grabbing buddies and setting off for 250 miles over labor day weekend is a great way to help get ready for that final long ride we’ve been describing. there is no workout in this campaign that wasn’t well prepared for by the workouts preceding it.

“how would a plan like this be adjusted using a trainer?”

i’m not really prepared to tackle this now. i’d need to have a lot more context before i could answer in an informed manner and, no, please do not respond by giving me all the context :wink: i rarely train people these days and do not want to set up individual programs for readers on the forum board. however, others might want to reply to this question.

3

ok so are u gonna divulge who the athlete is at some point? and the plan designer?

only 70 or so miles of biking last 18 days??

not sure I understand the philosophy behind the planning from the race backwards, given that sometimes life or injury gets in the way, potentially changing the volume build portion of the plan, and perhaps necessitating a different taper…Maybe it should really be from the award ceremony backwards…

4

not sure I understand the philosophy behind the planning from the race backwards, given that sometimes life or injury gets in the way, potentially changing the volume build portion of the plan, and perhaps necessitating a different taper…

Pretty common goal setting strategy. Look where you want to go and work backwards. Of course if you have an injury you need to re-evaluate, but that can’t be helped. And you are still likely to look at where you need to get to, and work backwards from there.

5

“only 70 or so miles of biking last 18 days??”

as the race approaches, i think you have to ask yourself, “how much fitness is going to be gained from here to the race?” if the answer is, “none, or not much,” then i think your goal switches from gaining fitness to gaining freshness without losing fitness. no, there’s not much cycling in the last 2 1/2 weeks, but there was a LOT of cycling up to that point.

“not sure I understand the philosophy behind the planning from the race backwards”

everything in my life where there’s a target performance date is approached this way (not just training). for example, as a manufacturer, interbike was the performance date. working backwards you have certain target events. brochures printed for example. so, art to the printer by a certain time, so that the printer can finish the brochures in time for interbike. then backwards from that, photos to the graphic designer who’s preparing the brochure art. back from that, the photo shoot to generate the brochure photos. back from that, a finished next year’s bike to the photographer. if you work chronologically, you don’t take into consideration the time required to get these intermediate tasks finished. if you have a hard and fast target date, then as you work backward from it you find out how much time it takes to get to the starting line ready.

yes, injuries, illness, set you back. bummer. if they set you back too far, you skip the race. if you start your campaign too far in advance, you end up one of those guys who posts here, “it’s two weeks to the ironman and i have no desire to do it.” so, depending on the athlete, the campaign is 8 to 12 weeks. and that’s for the first IM of the year (if you’ll do two). that’s for, say, IM lake placid. then its recovery, working your way back to general fitness training, then getting ready for kona, that campaign is might be 6 weeks, or even as little as 8 weeks, and that includes another 3 week taper. (this, if the two ironman races are not too far apart from each other.)

6

Dan, I would never expect (or ask you to formulate my perosnal plan. I didn’t know if you had an internal (personal) formula in your head that translates trainer work with ‘real’ cycling. No biggie.

“I’m not sure I would recover faster from a 14 mile run vs. a 5 hour ride. I’m hoping you can expand a bit on that.”

i wrote that in the context of recovering from a 120-mile ride. if you can perform a training ride of that distance in 5hr, you’re probably in the pro wave. this is, for most folks, as for this AG whom this schedule was prepared for, a 8hr ride. this is a hard ride, and it’s hard systemically. yes, your legs will feel a bit stiff after a 15mi run, but if you’re properly trained to run 15mi that stiffness will go away. a 2hr run, assuming it’s done in coolish, not blazing hot, temperatures (and i don’t believe in doing these long workouts in heat for acclimation purposes), is not going to stress the body overmuch. you have a bit of microtearing, but that’s quickly absorbed and fixed. that 8hr ride, that’s going to take longer to recover from.

“To be able to ride 120 miles on a TUESDAY…I’m jealous.”

suffice it to say that tuesday worked out for this particular athlete. you bring up a point, that any coach is going to have to take into consideration the time requirements of an athlete. for this reason, ganging up the long rides into a 3-day weekend is a favorite tactic of mine. for example, if you’re getting ready for, say, IM AZ, grabbing buddies and setting off for 250 miles over labor day weekend is a great way to help get ready for that final long ride we’ve been describing. there is no workout in this campaign that wasn’t well prepared for by the workouts preceding it.

“how would a plan like this be adjusted using a trainer?”

i’m not really prepared to tackle this now. i’d need to have a lot more context before i could answer in an informed manner and, no, please do not respond by giving me all the context :wink: i rarely train people these days and do not want to set up individual programs for readers on the forum board. however, others might want to reply to this question.

7

Dan,

Was this plan created all at once or is this a culmination of the plans you sent to the person week by week? Meaning, did you make a plan for a week or two, send it to him, he did it and sent the results back to you. Then you analyzed the results and created the next 2 week block based on the results? Just curious more than anything.
Mark

8

this plan was sent all at once, with the proviso that it might change depending on how well the athlete was adapting to the work, whether the athlete got sick or injured, and so forth.

9

seems like the running is a bit on the low side, only two runs in each of week 6 and 7?

10

i believe in tapering during the taper. this is a three week taper. you’re seeing the taper, that’s what’s published so far. within a day or so i’ll put up the three weeks prior to that, you can see if you still think the running mileage is low. i’ve got about 20mi a week each of the first two weeks of the taper, and 13mi in the final week. there isn’t much room for more than 20 miles the third week out from the race, because i’ve got a 120mi ride in there (plus other stuff). if you ascribe to the three week taper idea, which is a pretty commonly held view for IM racing, how much more running do you want during a taper?

11

agreed, not seeing the previous weeks has an impact. With that in mind, depending on what the weekend was like for week 5 I might add a 4 mile run to Monday of week 6. Then also add a 4 mile run to Wednesday. Week 7 I would add a 4 mile run to Thursday.
Of course I know that this is a program that was built for a select individual so it takes into account their needs and not mine, but I know that with my knee issues I need more frequency in the run othewise my knees are not happy. I get more knee pain from running twice a week then I do from running 6 times a week.