I have a couple of questions about my daughter’s training plan. She is a competitive swimmer and does Sprint Triathlons. I am trying to mesh her swim training schedule with her tri training. Working around her swim meet schedule, she will have mini cycles of two weeks build, one week recovery between now and end of May. There are two spots within her schedule where she could have a cycle of three weeks build, 1 week recovery. Do you think I should stick with the 2/1 cycles or should I throw in the 3/1 cycles where I can fit them? Both of these spots are after big swim meet weekends, where she will swim prelims and finals for 3 days. I have the week of and the week after both of these meets as recovery weeks. Also, beginning in June, she will have six weeks of double swim practices, increasing her swim training load by about 30%. She will be doing a sprint tri at the end of the six weeks. How much can I/should I cut back on her tri training to compensate for the increase in her swim training load, while still maintaining her race readiness? Thanks.
How old is she? Does her swim coach care if she does triathlons? Some do, particularly if the kid is a top age-grouper and a key point person. Been there, done that.
-Robert
She is 12. Her coach is supportive of her tri training/racing as long as swimming comes first during championship season. She is the flyer for the medley relays and also swims the free relays. Her heart is not wholely in swimming right now though. She really loves triathlon and has enthusiastically begun her training for this season. I keep her swim coach informed about her tri training and he shares his season plans with me so that I can better plan her training and recovery. So far, the only major stumbling block was last summer, prior to Junior Olympics, when she was doing doubles. Although she was not physically overtrained, she was definitely mentally fatigued. I am hoping to avoid that this summer with careful planning and more input from her.
My advice would be to chill out. Having been a competitive swimmer in the past, the LAST thing I needed was heavy input about my “schedule” from my father. Enable her to do what she enjoys (i.e. provide equipment, pool time, chauffer service, etc.), provide high-level guidance so she gets an idea of how to approach her training, and be super supportive. She’ll quit swimming at that level (we all do, eventually) & migrate to triathlon on a time table that makes sense to her.
I have a 15-year-old who runs a 19 min 5k & swims a sub-60 100 free, and I know she’ll be a solid multi-sport athlete when she’s ready. My wife & I just keep driving home our goal for all three of our kids: We want you to want to be athletes for life, not just when you’re young.
This is a critical point for her because she’s at the age when many kids drop out of swimming. My daughter swam from 7 to 12, then decided she was too bored with the training, so she abruptly quit.
Here, if she stays on the team she will be expected to do double workoouts (you DO realize we are talking about 12-15K some days?), play a key role in her age group relays and individual events, AND do triathlon training?
Also, tri training at 12 is a bit premature, in my view. If she were 14, I could understand substituting swimming for multisport, but to do both at 12 strikes me as excessive. And something has to give at 12 or 14.
If she’s bored with swimming and ready to quit, I’d suggest USCF age group cycling, or soccer, or a very light tri training regimen on her own. If you can ride with her on safe roads (where would you find such roads?) then she could be doing 100 miles a week on the bike in a month IF she enjoyed it. I’d keep the running light and short at that age, no more than 10-12 miles per week. She could probably swim one day a week for a few years and still be competitive coming into T1. Having fun at that age should be the focus though.
Good luck, and make sure you are reading the signals correctly. Twelve year old girls are often very emotionally labile. Mine is now 16 and a hand full…
-Robert
If I were you I wouldn’t worry much about bike and run training. If she’s interested in triathlons, let her ask to do the bike and swim workouts and limit her to a maximum of 2-3 runs a week and 1-2 bike rides. She’s got enough training stress from swimming, she doesn’t need anymore from bike+run. You have to realize that even 2.3 runs and 1-2 bikes may be the difference that gets her overtraining.
Let triathlon be the fun sport and swimming the boring sport, you’ll have a happy triathlete in the future 
Thanks Robert and SAC. I appreciate what you are saying. She is not doing an excessive amount of tri training. She runs with her swim team, 2 miles twice a week ,and she trys to get another run in, but no biggie if she misses it. On the bike, right now she is doing the Recovery and Technique Spinervals on the trainer, 45 min twice a week, and an hour ride on the weekends. She will do this for two weeks, then cut back in week three to one run, one bike because she has a swim meet.
I am not trying to have the top age grouper in the country in either swimming or triathlon. Right now, triathlon is what is getting her to swim practice. She has been swimming competitively, as a top local age grouper, since she was five years old. The thrill is gone and she knows that the worst is yet to come. Triathlon is a diversion that keeps her in the pool and that she really loves to do. Anyone who has or has had a twelve year old girl knows that it would be next to impossible to MAKE her do any of this if she didn’t want to do it. She loves the sport of triathlon and WANTS to train for it. We, her swim coach and parents, are trying very hard to strike a balance with this child. We want to keep her swimming, and keep her happy. Triathlon, so far, is doing it for her. That could change at any moment, we are all well aware of that.
As far as USCF age group cycling goes, there is not much in our area. We would have to travel 2-3 hours for any other juniors. She prefers triathlon to just cycling. She has never really been that into ball sports. Soccer around her is very competitive and she did not enjoy it very much.
So, I conclude from the replys that it doesn’t matter whether she does 2/1 cycles or 3/1 cycles, as long as her training is not excessive. To that end, her heaviest training week, 20 weeks in, consists of 2x 30 min run, 2x 60 min ride, 1x 90 min ride, and one short brick: 30 min ride, 15 min run. Her swim training for that week will be aproximately 30,000 yards in 6 sessions. She will have one complete rest day and the following week is a recovery week, where she will do half as much run/bike training and drop her swim yardage by aproximately 20%. She will be a couple of weeks from 13 years old then. Would this be considered an appropriate amount of training? Thanks for replys, I am really trying to get this right.
My advice would be one run and one bike per week. At twelve years old, that will be plently in order for her to finish the triathlon comfortably. 2 or more runs plus 2 or more bikes will be way too much on top of double swim workouts. Unless she’s extraordinarily strong mentally and physically, she will get burned out (both mentally and physically) from the schedule you propose.
If swimming is the main focus, then the tri should be strictly for fun. Let her bike and run when she feels like it and don’t make it a structured “Base, Build, Peak” schedule. This advice comes from my own experience as a swimmer and a youth triathlon coach.
Dan
“So, I conclude from the replys that it doesn’t matter whether she does 2/1 cycles or 3/1 cycles, as long as her training is not excessive. To that end, her heaviest training week, 20 weeks in, consists of 2x 30 min run, 2x 60 min ride, 1x 90 min ride, and one short brick: 30 min ride, 15 min run. Her swim training for that week will be aproximately 30,000 yards in 6 sessions. She will have one complete rest day and the following week is a recovery week, where she will do half as much run/bike training and drop her swim yardage by aproximately 20%. She will be a couple of weeks from 13 years old then. Would this be considered an appropriate amount of training? Thanks for replys, I am really trying to get this right.”
Her total running volume, including swim team running appears to be about 12 miles per week, which is on the high side in my view based upon her swimming volume, biking, and age. If she were a dedicated runner on a middle school cross country team she might be doing as much as 15 miles of running in a heavy week. Most weeks with most coaches around here would be about 10 miles a week. Of course, they would be doing speed work in small quantities as well.
Regarding the 2/1 vs. 3/1 I wouldn’t hazard a guess because I don’t know the athlete as well as you do, but I do think a SCHEDULE is a bad idea at her age.
Also, no one here knows all the other issues in her life, like school activities, church, volunteer work, etc.
Good luck with that. You appear to be asking most of the right questions.
-Robert
She is not doing double swim practices right now. She will only do doubles for six weeks during the summer. I would like swimming to be the main focus, but she is more into triathlon than swimming right now. This will be her second season doing sprints. She did 6 last year over 9 months. Last season she did bike and run as she felt like it, except for one day a week with a running coach. This year, she wants a more strucured appraoch, as in “What do I need to do so I can race as well as …”.
Just keep in mind that she is working realy hard in the pool. Her weekly total training effort is probably harder than 90% of all adult triathletes. And she is doing this work while she is still growing, trying to do her school work and hopefully trying to be a 12 year old girl.
It sounds like she is happy with whatever extra work comes along. But, don’t forget that the best and fastest way to ride some thoroughbreds is with the reins pulled back a little. Be open to the possiblility that this might be a situation where the proper response of a coach is to say “do less” rather than “do more.”
Okay, so here is what I understand her current schedule to be:
Non Swim Meet Week:
Swim: 6 ~ 1.5-2 hours ~ 5000y
Bike: 3 ~ 2 x 0:45 trainer, 1 x 60:00 outdoor
Run: 3 ~ 2 x 2 mile, 1 x ??
I would classify this as “excessive” tri training. We have a few athletes around this age that have to be “held-back”. They, like your daughter, have a passion for the sport and love to train. Unfortunately, it is hard for a 12 year old to foresee what the fatigue will be like in 6 months time (heck, that’s true for a lot of age groupers as well - do too much, too soon, get burned out).
Assuming the 6 swims per week is mandatory, I would recommend sticking to the one outdoor ride each week, and the two run workouts with the swim team. This would be plenty of training until spring. Note that this recommendation does not consider any other interests or activities that she may be involved in.
Dan
Looks like you’re getting things right I would just add that 3 bikes and 3 runs might be still a bit too much.
My mistake, I was not clear. When she runs with her swim team, those are her running workouts for the week. Sometimes we can fit an interval workout in during the week. Last year, the most she ever trained a week was 6 miles. She only ran 5ks in triathlons. The bulk of her run training was intervals with her running coach. Her long runs were 1 1/2 miles with her swim team, early season. This year, we would like to get her run totals up to 8-10 miles per week tops. She will not be working with her running coach again until mid-March. Until then, she will run with her swim team twice a week and hit the mulch trail for some intervals when she can fit it in. She is fortunate to be home-schooled, so she is able to get plenty of sleep and has more available hours to train than most middle school aged kids, since her schooling takes half the time as a regular school day.
We are planning her triathlon training for several reasons: 1. To teach her about training principles, 2: To avoid over-training by meshing her tri training with her swim schedules and 3: To help her achieve HER racing goals. Thanks again for your replys. I appreciate your input.
Ok. That sounds much better.
Good luck to her and I’m glad you found someone else in the family who shares your passion. I get my kids to run or bike with me occasionally and that’s about it!
-Robert