I have accepted a new job offer and am giving notice at my current job on Monday (or maybe sooner if they monitor my website usage!). I am taking two weeks off between jobs and plan to put myself through an intensive two week training camp in preparation for IMWI. The current plan is rough and I am looking for some input. I plan to swim with the masters program 5 times a week plus two additional open water swims each week. I also plan to spend 2 days in Madison doing the 40 loop course 3 times on back to back days. Otherwise I’m still filling in the blanks. I’m currently training about 20 hours a week. Is a jump to about 35+ hours a week too much or since I’ll have the time to propertly recover is this reasonable? Also, does it make sense to try and add yoga and weight training or since I’m focusing on IM is this not the best use of my time? I want the two weeks to hurt and I want to be exhausted but I don’t want to toast myself such that my IM performance is hurt rather than helped. Any advice is appreciated.
If you’re training 20 and you jump to 25 or 26 for two weeks you’ll notice a big difference.
35? I’m thinking no. But the extra recovery time would be huge, you can stretch, eat properly and put your feet up.
You’re probably right and I’m experience delusions of great training volumes that are unrealistic. I’m just thinking back to college and pre-season where practice times suddenly jumped to about 35 hours a week and while the first couple of days sucked, by the end I felt awesome. But I was younger then and probably recovered quicker.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s still an extra century ride each of those two weeks.
are you going to run? cycling is easy
Yeah, I’m going to run although haven’t worked out how I’m going to break down the volume yet. I’m thinking I’ll alternate easy and hard days, hard days being a long run in the morning, short run at night and easy days being a short run at night. Fitting the running in and doing so smartly is the big challenge I think because I don’t want to get injured. Not so worried about getting injured with big volume of swimming and biking.
You could do a lot of shorter runs while keeping your long run where it is or shortening it a bit each week.
FWIW…I did a 14 day ‘training camp’ in February, in preparation for IMAZ. My total time for that 14 day window was 59.5 hours. I saw a huge boost in my endurance following the block. I spent very little time swimming, a whole lot of time biking (2nd week was 500 miles), and a fair amount of time running (50 & 40 miles respectively)
I was averaging 15-18 per week prior, and then backed this two-week period up with a weeks of 13, 21 and 23 hours. I didn’t experience any problems as a result of bumping up the hours. Do you have a lot of experience with IM and training at that level? because your ability to handle the increase will probably stem from how long and how consistently you’ve been training at 15-20 hour level. I know I was much better able to absorb the increase because I’ve been in a consistent IM training mode for going on 5 years. If it were my first year, I probably wouldn’t have considered it.
I was still working a few hours per day, so I didn’t have much free time. My recommendation would be to skip the weights, focus on stretching and focus on resting. Being away from home (and the kids) made the second week much easier for me. Also, it helped to have a training partner along.
We kept everything at pretty low intensity, save for a couple of transition runs and two trail runs. But, my goals were different as I just wanted to build base and not ‘exhaust’ myself or make myself ‘hurt.’ The reason being that the value of these two weeks will only come if you can back it up with more consistently big weeks.
In retrospect, it was a lot of fun and definitely contributed to a successful race.
Good luck with it!
I have been doing consistently big weeks since March (between 15-20 hours) but don’t have 5 years of IM training under my bellt like you did, this is only my second year of IM training and third year of triathlons. But I do have a pretty extensive athletic background so my body is used to dealing with some abuse and long days of practice.
Do you remember how you structured your days back in February? No kids for me to worry about and my husband works long hours so I should have flexibility in how I divide my time.
The structure was pretty simple, and generally followed this:
Day A - AM: long ride/transition run; swim in afternoon
Day B - AM: 90 minute ride/med-long run as a transition run; swim in the afternoon
I generally alternated between these two types of days, but with some variation
The swims got dropped in the second week because where I was staying didn’t have a decent pool within easy driving distance - and because I was still working, had 1 kid with me and was staying at my parent’s place…well, I had a lot of excuses to skip the swim.
When I originally planned it, I had it so that I was doing the ride/run in the early morning, the swim at lunchtime, and another short run or ride in the evening (only on days where I did only a short t-run in the morning). But, because I was training with someone else, and not fully in control of what times I could train at - it didn’t work out that way. In any case, what we did was still sufficient.
I’ll do this again in early '08, and plan to be more diligent about managing my day so that I can get the swims in, at the least, and definitely more stretching/resting.
Most important thing is to keep some flexibility in what you are doing, don’t be over-agressive in your planning, and not sweat it when things don’t follow your plan.
FWIW, Gordo has indicated in the past that most athletes will reap the greatest benefit from big weeks by just holding their swim and run volume steady and increasing their cycling volume. (Check out the relevant pages here.)
Your athletic history will probably help you, but increasing run volume is especially risky, since a run-related injury could turn into a chronic issue or even just derail your run training in the short-term. Given that a successful IM run stems from superior bike fitness (not to mention excellent pacing), I think an increased focus on big bike miles during these two weeks has the best risk/reward ratio.
My two cents.
cramer
Nice timing on the job change, I’m envious, except I’m not that motivated to train like that this year. Some thoughts on the bike rides in Wisconsin to make things interesting:
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If you haven’t already, try riding the loop backwards to see if it’s any harder, some people say it is (never done it). Assuming you’ve ridden it before, you don’t need to worry as much about scouting it out, if not, you still have 5 passes at it in the right direction.
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Hill Work: There is a brutally steep hill between hills #1 and #2 just past Cross Plains, the road is Cleveland Road, it’s on the left as you traverse the only flat section of Old Sauk Pass. I’ve never ridden it, but it looked crazy when driving it. I think doing one or two hill repeats on that road would definitely give you a workout within your 120 mile ride Added bonus, I don’t think there are any houses on the steep section, so I think you can just cuss up a storm, which may be required.
Other things you might want to consider:
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Try the no alarm clock method for waking up in the morning (i.e. naturally), that way your body can get as much rest as it needs. If you’re a data geek, you might want to check your morning HR each day to see if you’re recovering as well.
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Stretch a lot, work in a sports massage or two.
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Enjoy not working!
The timing on the job changed worked out perfectly and my new boss is a triathlete so he’s very excited that I’m doing an Ironman - everyone at my current job just thinks I’m nuts.
I have done the Madison course a number of times and doing it backwards is a fantastic idea. I have a tendency to get lost and miss turns so I’ll have to pay attention. I’ll have to find the hill you are talking about. I was thinking about trying to find some of the hills from the HHH and doing repeats on those hills. They certainly kicked my ass a month ago.
Waking up without an alarm is a great idea but we have the world’s loudest neighbor living above us with the world’s largest loud barking dog and she gets up everyday at 6 so even on those days I try to sleep in, I’m up at 6. I think the key will be naps during the day when the rest of the world is at work.