I just read the article by Gale Bernhardt in Active Insider about impatience in training.
I was wondering, what do the ST coaches and people think about how long it takes to see improvements, weeks, months, years? I started tris 4yrs ago after being mainly sedentary and a smoker. I essentially made no gains at all over the past 4 yrs. My olympic distance PR still stems from my very first season, my gain in sprint distance was marginal if at all.
I trained maybe not as much as people around here but about as much as I could handle (I finished 3 ironman) and one would think that after 4yrs I would see SOME KIND of an improvement over my first year times?
But there are none - am I simply a “non-responder” or can I expect to see a large jump sometime in the future?
As it stands now I am pretty much fed up with tris because whether I train a lot or not so much - I seem to have the same results, always, all the time.
From a vey high level and a very general view, If you have only been doing triathlons for 4 years and you have already done 3 IM races, then very likley the thing you lack in your training is faster paced training that pushes the one key fitness parameter that matters - your lactate threshold. You probably have a very good aerobic base established if you have been consistantly training and the Im races have gone well. If going faster is a serious goal of yours, forget about the IM for this year and just focus on sprint distance and Olympic distace training. Try and set stand-alone life time bests in the 10K run and the 40K ITT. If you do this right and you do the right training, you will be faster at all race distances right up to the IM distance.
It has taken me 10 years now where I am starting to see some real time improvements. Main things I changed was racing a lot, move training, and I feel
swimming 5 days a week with the master swim team was the final piece I needed to get the endurance for all three events to improve. I am still setting new
PRs at 50.
Thank you! Makes me feel much better.
I have been avoiding the master’s swims so far because they are so darn early…I’ll give it a thought.
Martin C., that is in fact what I was contemplating, just saying the heck with triathlons, I’ll go fishing instead; or something…
but I actually like the feel of racing, and being exhausted from training and all;
but it is depressing to do all this work and then not improve with time and also gain weight rather than lose it. My BMI was almost in the underweight range before I started tris (18.5), now it is pretty much normal (20).
Part of your problem and possibly your frustration is that you did what many people do this days - you got into the sport and moved directly to the IM distance! It’s my feeling that this is NOT the best approach and their are more than a few coachs out there who would agree with me, but it’s what people want to do. However, what that does is grind you into the LSD rut that sometimes is physically and mentally hard to get out of.
What to so? It’s hard to say. What are your interests? What are your weaknesses? Is there one of the three sports you really like? Taking a 6 months to a year and just doing one sport - really immersing yourself in that one sport is often VERY helpful whether this be the sport you like or the one that you are weakest at… It relieves bordem, and gives you a huge boost in fitness in that one sport.
Again my one main suggestion would be to get out of the IM/LSD rut.
Steve, great points. It took me like 8 years before I did my one IM distance. And, it really was not that big of a deal. It, for me, sure was not a race,
but just a long long day.
So, this season I said whats the point of long long days? I can not get enough training in to do well. It really makes it a long day for my wife. So,
I have gone back to Sprint and Oly distance events this season and so far am having a MUCH better time! I can race them full out, be done in a few hours,
and even have time left in the day to do something else, and the energy. This also allows me to do my running at LSD pace, since I can use the races as
my full out training. :o) Also the sprint sets in Masters is as hard as any run intervals I have done, with no damage on the knees.
Thank you!
Yes, I think that may be the problem, too much too soon, but as you say the LSD is hard to get out of. Right now I’d say I am about equal in all three sports, depends a bit on the distance and on how hard I push the bike (eg if I push the bike hard, the bike split is good and the run split is bad and vice versa).
I like the swim least, it’s a nobrainer, the bike most with the run close second.
Before I got into tris I started running to help me quit smoking. I ran a marathon on about 3 months of run training and my 5k and 10k PRs that spring. Then
I got into tris, my run performance dropped dramatically as I trained the run less and gained some weight.
Not sure I want to do a run focus at this point, maybe a bike focus. Not sure really. Maybe take a break altogether…
let me guess, you train all at the same pace and your training lacks higher intensity efforts? There is absolutely no reason why you should still have a PR from your first year of doing tris.
let me guess, you train all at the same pace and your training lacks higher intensity efforts?
not necessarily. I was racing a lot of short distance and also doing some level 3 even level 4 workouts. I don’t do a lot of intervals I give you that. But there were times I did them and I still didn’t see much of a change.
There is absolutely no reason why you should still have a PR from your first year of doing tris.
That’s what I am thinking…what happened was that in my 2nd year my performance actually dropped some and it went back up to first year performance in the third and 4th year.
Very irritating. As a matter of fact, my sprint PR is still from my very first race, 4 yrs ago, on only a couple of months of training!!!
The oly PR was only a couple of months after that. I was thinking, wow, if I can do that good on this little training, wait what I can do when I train harder. But the improvement never happened.
And now I am just out of shape and wonder if it is even worth it trying to get back in shape only to have yet another mediocre performance.
why don’t you post a couple of your training weeks or give us an idea of what your training looks like.
With a well executed training plan you should easily see progress within the season and from season to season. How do you quantify/track your progress?
Can you give us some example of your training week?
I log my training in a little book/calendar, but mostly only time and distance, sometimes intensity and intervals if there are any.
I will dig out my logs tonight and send an example.
Thanks!
I’d say more like 9-10 months or so. I take off only maybe 2 weeks at a time but am mostly training unstructured over the winter and sometimes life just gets in the way.
Have you considered working with a coach for a season or at least a block of time leading to a couple of races to see what can you achieve?
From my own experience as I enter my 3rd season “seriously” doing triathlon" every year I have seen measurable improvements in each disciplines (bike/run more than swim) even as the distances get longer. Still is not even in my radar to attempt an IM, for this year only two 70.3 races. Also i am able to fit more quality/breakthrough workouts into my schedule with the same amount of time, just better allocation and tools (bike trainer)