TRIATHLON

More Events Longer Season

By Silas Cullen



Following the worldwide trend, more triathlon events have emerged in New Zealand and across the ditch than ever before.

The calendar is packed and there will be more triathletes preparing for the coming season than ever before.

What are the training implications for dealing with both more events, and/or, a longer season? 


Recovery Strategies

If your season is going to be longer, hold more events or be more important than before then your approach will need to change to allow for this.

Firstly, the longer or more intense the season, the longer and more relaxing the break needs to be beforehand.

Or you will need to take more, shorter breaks.

Either way, taking on more events than before does not turn you into super man or woman. It just means you are doing more events.

You might need a month off after the last season instead of two weeks.

You might need an eight week build up to your key events and then one - two weeks off, instead of 12 weeks build up and one week off.

This is very individual and depends on the timing of your events.

What ever the case there will need to be a shift in this direction, so as not to lose the quality in training and racing.

The second strategy is around the difference between your training sessions.

Triathletes are notorious for doing far too much training at the same effort level: hard, but nothing really hard and nothing really easy.

Typically, triathletes, if feeling good, will train at race effort in most sessions or for at least part of the session.

If they are a little tired they will try to go race effort anyway and if they are really tired and cannot go hard will call it a "bad session".

What this means is that training intensity is largely dictated by things outside of training.

In other words, if a triathlete works late and misses a session, the next session is performed at race pace.

Almost like a self inflicted punishment for missing the previous training.

Following this hammer session an athlete will be more tired than a programme will anticipate; therefore subsequent training quality will be compromised.

The result is that the more life gets in the way, the more race pace work is performed.

The body goes into fight or flight mode.

With great determination an athlete may press on before crashing leading into the key event.

This Russian roulette form of intensity periodisation is more severe the longer the season.

Making hard sessions really hard and easy sessions really easy is the most effective way to improve in the same amount of weekly training time as long as they are not performed randomly or based on mood.

A typical triathlete will read this and think "I am obviously not training hard enough".

This may well be the case, but only because they may never be recovered enough through the week to do so.


When Does Training Not Feel Like Training?

With the season starting earlier, there is no getting around the fact that you will also need to be fitter earlier.

Your body will cope with this but through the winter months at some stage the questions will beg, "why am I doing this?" Especially when the only answer your coach can come up with is "physiological adaptation of the slow twitch muscle fibres".

Not exactly awe inspiring motivation for you.

When you are in the garage on the wind trainer staring at a brick wall, swimming in 10 degree water or squinting into pouring rain, there is only so much you can take.

This type of training needs to be limited.

When does training not feel like training? When it is fun! Swimming in a squad is an obvious answer to cover that base.

But for cycling and running you might want to try something a little different.

Mountain biking, group wind trainer sessions even a spin class at a gym.

Anything you can do to limit the mental drain before the real training begins leading into the first race of the season.

Running clubs run right through the winter with the cross country season.

Cross country is low impact and can help provide a great running base.

But more importantly this is a change in focus and a mental out from triathlon, while still beneficial to the overall goal.


Putting it all Together

Talk to your coach about all of this now - year planning.

Your goal will be to peak mentally and physically at the right times and multiple times.

With any increased load there is no room for Russian roulette periodisation.

Also, with an increase in load your recovery starts becoming much more important both now and during the season.

This all starts with your next training session.

It might be a fun ride with a group of mates or a specific session based on your strengths and weaknesses.

The important part is that you know why you are doing it.


Originally published in New Zealand Triathlon & Multisport, Issue 86, June 2012