Have a BHAG to hopefully do UM Aus in 2017 ( as I live in Sthn hemisphere). Next year have some other plans ( with that goal in mind) and my qualifying race; have done 7 IMs ( range of 11.26-12.30- helps to eat more than 4 gels+ a few cups of coke in an IM lol -) , many multi day tri camps with cycling focus so I know I can back things up day to day and also qualifying time not an issue.
Run is my strength, bike is OK and improved a lot after a winter on trainer road. Im swim times ~ 1.10-1.12
I work a 32 hr week, no kids, 1 dog. Age 41, 161cm and 57 kg
If that helps.
Main q’s I have are:-
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What does the training look like compared to IM training ? For an IM I’d do 18-20 hr weeks , not sure I could squeeze out much more volume.
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Should I start building my swim endurance now ( UM Aus is in ~ 18 months )??
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For those who have done any UM race, did you stack back to back big bike rides?
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Any good blogs to read of participants where I may get some advice and ideas.
Thanks in advance STers.
Basically you are looking at 18 months or so. What you do now should look different than what you would do in specific phase.
Also really depends on the athlete. We looked at it more like a 3 day stage race than one big event.
Swim: Depending on what kind of swimmer you are you may not need to do the distance in training. We had only two long swims of 7 and around 8km with some intensity, but lots of shorter intensity sets of 4-6km. She was about an hour IM swimmer. Sessional volume is not as important as weekly volume, personal opinion that 6km with lots of intensity has way more value than 10km steady, unless you want to cover the distance once or twice for mental reasons.
Bike: Lots of Volume combined with intensity, basically we took some intensity on the run and put it on the bike. With UM (IMO but depending on the athlete) there is more room to move or execute perhaps a slightly higher % of threshold power than the IM. Again longest workout was 230 km but lots of shorter 4-5 hour rides with intervals or overall pretty high intensity. Also a certain amount of shorter work that you might call traditional FTP stuff.
Run: For sure no need to cover the distance, longest run was 46km but there were some back to back long run days, or Sat/mon longer combos. For the run you need to understand basic speed, IE a working knowledge of how fast you are. After that you want really good durability.
Basically in terms of putting it all together we had some big (really big) weekends with pretty high recovery in between, IE High modulation of training stress or load.
As someone else mentioned the crew is EXTREMELY important, having a crew plan laid out several weeks in advance, with lots of contingency etc.
Maurice