I'm a big fan of repeatable workouts. I feel there is great value of doing a workout several times over the course of several weeks as you know what to expect and you can focus on executing better each time (especially under fatigue). I also believe that certain workouts are worth repeating year after year. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.
When training for a three-sport, ultra endurance event like an Ironman distance triathlon, I feel that the best training approach is to find the least amount of training needed to produce the biggest training gains. However, among the endurance triathlon community, I find that far too many athletes are doing the same workouts over and over, hoping for different results. Every weekend is a long ride (5-6 hours) followed by a run (20-40 minutes) and the next day is a long run of around 2 hours (and maybe a swim or bike before or after). The training is somewhat predictable for the majority of long distance triathletes and this often results in burnout, injury, illness, excessive fatigue or a plateau in fitness. This isn't to say that this type of training isn't productive but after a few years of building your endurance, a new training stimulus is needed - not just physically but mentally.
When training for a three-sport, ultra endurance event like an Ironman distance triathlon, I feel that the best training approach is to find the least amount of training needed to produce the biggest training gains. However, among the endurance triathlon community, I find that far too many athletes are doing the same workouts over and over, hoping for different results. Every weekend is a long ride (5-6 hours) followed by a run (20-40 minutes) and the next day is a long run of around 2 hours (and maybe a swim or bike before or after). The training is somewhat predictable for the majority of long distance triathletes and this often results in burnout, injury, illness, excessive fatigue or a plateau in fitness. This isn't to say that this type of training isn't productive but after a few years of building your endurance, a new training stimulus is needed - not just physically but mentally.
Endurance training is needed to build endurance capacity. Endurance training improves VO2 (max oxygen uptake), increases capillary density of working muscles, increases blood volume, decreases heart rate at the same intensity, increases mitochondria and so much more. But to truly prepare an athlete for a ultra distance triathlon, I feel too much weight is put on the long workouts as the way to ensure race readiness. But what about building strength, resiliency and improving the lactate threshold?
Taking a look inside our training/coaching methods, I'd say they are a bit unconventional. Our athletes aren't doing the typical "Ironman" training workouts that the majority athletes are doing. Yet our athletes feel prepared for their races because they are strong, resilient and healthy. We haven't always been this way but we have learned so much over the past decade of coaching endurance athletes. We found that endless hours of riding and running and continuous swimming didn't help our athletes become strong and resilient for race day.
It's important to understand that unconventional training isn't the opposite of conventional training. Conventional training methods are effective. But we have found that our unconventional training produces similar results to conventional training - like strength, resiliency and most importantly....endurance. Most importantly, it provides extra benefits like bigger gains with less work. This isn't to say that our workouts are easy (you can ask our athletes - they work hard) but the workouts are a mix of quality, skill and happy workouts - a nice blend of workouts to keep our athletes physically and mentally healthy while optimizing fitness for race day readiness.
I'm currently training for my biggest racing load of my endurance triathlon journey. I will be doing an Ironman, followed by a half ironman and then another half ironman - all within 6 weeks. Each race is two weeks apart. Then seven weeks later, I have another Ironman. I'm not sure how this will all work out but I know that I need to be incredibly strong and healthy in order for my body to perform well and not risk a health issue before/during this ambitious race schedule.
My overall endurance is great. I don't find there is much value in spending every weekend doing long rides. Additionally, our terrain is very challenging, hilly and technical so our miles go by very slow and those miles are very demanding. Running is very hard on my body and brings the greatest risk for injury so I have to be very careful with how I go about my run training. I love to swim but after 30 years of swimming, I still need to focus on my technique.
Finding different ways to stress my body helps my body adapt to different stressors. Because physiological gains are made in the later half of a long workout, I like finding different ways to stress my body so that it perceives the workout as "long." In other words, I not only mentally and physically feel like I've been training for many hours but physiologically, my body doesn't know the difference. Less time spent training = similar training adaptations.
Here are a few examples of my last two weekends of "long" workouts:
3/12:
90 min Bike + 23 min Run (2.88 miles) + 90 min Bike + 42 min Run (5.21) = 3 hour ride + 1 hour run (~8 miles)
Bike workout (trainer)
WU: 15 min EZ
Pre set:
3 rounds:
2.5 min Moderate effort and 80 - 85 RPM
40 sec Strong Effort and fast RPM
1.5 min Steady smooth Z2 type of effort and choice RPM
---
4 min EZ spin
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MS:
6x
1 min hard
4 min @ sub threshold/Sweet Spot and 80 - 85 RPM
2 min at steady smooth Z2 and 90+ RPM
---
10 min fast cadence recovery (100+ rpm)
---
5 min EZ spin
Run #1: Best EZ pace
Run #2: Steady effort
Run #1: Best EZ pace
Run #2: Steady effort
For this workout - the first "brick" of the 90 minute ride + short run was not too challenging, it was very doable like a mid-week brick. However, doing the same ride on fatigue legs was much more challenging and stressed my system similar to the last hour of an Ironman bike. And then running for over 5 miles after 3 hours of riding (and a 20 minute run) made for very tired legs - again, similar to the later miles of the Ironman. I needed to stay up with my hydration and fueling similar to a long workout and I also went through a lot of highs/lows - again, similar to a long distance triathlon.
The next day was a "long run" of 1:35/11 miles with a main set of 2 rounds of 4 x (1.5 miles of hill repeaters - 4 loops up and down a steep hill in Furman) and then a loop around the Furman lake. I took a reset break between the sets. Doing this run on tired legs from Saturday and including hills (a safe way to get the HR up) provided a valuable training stress with low risk of injury for me.
On Saturday (3/19) I did a slightly different workout of
Run (5.28 miles) + Bike (80 minutes) + Run (12.5 miles)
My first run was a form focused run w/ 20 sec walk breaks every mile. 43 minutes and 5.28 miles. All of my runs include hills because well, that's where we live - it's very hilly!
I then did a 80 minute ride on the trainer (I love riding outside but I need to do the trainer for steady state work since we don't have flat where we live and steady state is not a strength of mine). The trainer ride was similar to last week except it was 6 rounds of 4 minutes sweet spot into 30 sec strong followed by 2 min EZ spin. I then went back outside for another run of 1:45 (12.5 miles) and included 3 x 10 min loops of a tempo effort around 45 minutes into the run.
In total, I ran almost 18 miles and for the 12.5 mile run, my legs were incredibly tired. It felt like I was nearing the end of the Ironman. But I was able to practice good nutrition, work on my mental skills and focus on keeping my form in check. Of course, I was also receiving a lot of great physiological gains from this 3 hour and 45 minute "long" workout.
And then on Sunday - 3:44 (34 miles) of mountain biking with over 4000 feet elevation gain followed by a 20 min run off the bike.
This is just to show that there are different routes to get to the same final destination.
Make your training count and don't just count your training miles.
from Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition https://ift.tt/Y1XfVAv
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