How I Train

My 2005-2006 season began officially 9/12/2005. That was the day after the DNF at Ironman Wisconsin. Someone asked about what I'm now training for, so to put it into perspective, let's step back a few weeks, and then I'll clue you in on how I train at a macro level.

Here are my actual weekly training hours since IMWI and events I completed during those weeks:

Week Beg. Hours Event
9/12/2005 10.92
9/19/2005 14.04 Solo 1/2 marathon 9/24. PR'ed
9/26/2005 10.64 Solo marathon 10/2. PR'ed (4:10). Notice lack of taper!
10/3/2005 10.61
10/10/2005 13.10 10K 10/16. PR'ed
10/17/2005 14.08
10/24/2005 13.86
10/31/2005 13.27
11/7/2005 13.94
11/14/2005 15.01 Solo Indoor 1/2 Ironman 11/19.
11/21/2005 12.65 5K 11/24. Slight PR (windchill was -5!)

10-12 hours per week is pretty standard far for me in my "off season." But remember, I've been training at a pretty high volume now for 5 years. Here are my annualized training hours for the past few years:

Season Annual Hours Bike Miles Avg. Weekly Hours
2000-2001 684.96 3791 13.70 Ironman Lake Placid
2001-2002 681.82 4250 13.64 Ironman Wisconsin
2002-2003 730.54 4960 14.61 Ironman Wisconsin (DNF), GFT Ironman
2003-2004 790.70 5697 15.81 Ironman Canada, Ironman Hawaii
2004-2005 709.52 5307 14.19 Ironman Wisconsin (DNF)

My highest training volume will occur within the 8 week run-up to an Ironman race. I'll hit 25 hours or so.

Here's what else I'm currently training for:
1/7/2006 Disney 1/2 Marathon ("B") race)
1/8/2006 Disney full marathon ("C" race)
3/18/2006 Ralph's 1/2 Ironman ("B" race)
5/28/2006 Ironman Brazil ("A" race)
6/17/2006 Horribly Hilly Hundreds 200K Ride (come do this ride, it ROCKS!)
7/23/2006 Spirit of Racine 1/2 Ironman
10/14/2006 Ironman Hawaii (if Brazil pans out!!!)
11/4/2006 Ironman Florida

I'll be throwing in at least 2 "big weekends", one probably in February, another definitely in August, where I do about 250 miles of biking over 3 days plus some running and swimming. I did 2 of these last year, and I love them, and they aren't for beginners obviously, but give a huge boost to one's fitness. I will also do 1-3 2-mile open water swim races and 1 or 2 sprint or Oly races in my "rest" weeks.

Last season I got in (10) 100+ mile rides. For my first Ironman race in 2001, my longest ride was 90 miles! I have a coach, Rich Strauss of Crucible Fitness. I began working with Rich in 2004. I used a different coach for my first season of Ironman training, and was self-coached for the next 2 seasons.

You can see that my very first season of Ironman training I cranked out a good number of hours. How? Because I had already been doing combined run and strength training of about 10 hours per week through 1999, and then in the 1999-2000 season was when I began triathlon training and hung out at about 11 hours per week average. So going up to almost 14 hours per week was "safe" for me considering what I had been training at previously. One way a lot of athletes end up sick or injured training for their first Ironman is they quickly bump up the number of hours of training they are doing, which is a recipe for disaster. Or they don't sleep enough. Or they have crap nutrition.

Here are my cardinal rules of success for Ironman training, and let me give credit to my coach and others I have read and studied from, since a lot of what comes out of my mouth can and should be attributed to others!

1. Train a reasonable number of hours based on the time you actually have available to train and will commit to 80% or better of every week, week in, week out. If you can't do that, either train less or pick a less stressful sport. If you can only commit to 8 hours per week, hey, you probably CAN complete an Ironman that way, but you may need to adjust your outcome goals downward.
2. Get/keep your body composition under control. Do you honestly want to be carrying around a 20+ lb. bag of rocks on your back while you are doing all this training? Try that sometime. Run 3 miles with a backpack filled with 20 lbs. of stuff. Then run a mile without it. If you are carrying around any extra weight, you are just hurting yourself--your performance, your joints. Not to mention, you will gain FREE SPEED. Notice how much faster you can run without that bag of rocks!
3. Corollary to #2 is eat enough, particularly carbs, and high enough quality, to support your training and racing. If you don't know how much you need, get measured (body fat %, RMR) so you can do the very best job of fueling yourself. Would you put crap into your car's fuel tank? No! Would you forget to change the oil in your car? No! News flash--your car is only going to last maybe 10 years, but that body of yours, well, it depends on what you put into it. I find it amazing how much time some triathletes will spend on reading magazines that have little to no applicability to what they are actually doing, tooling around on the Internet, fussing about gadgets, etc., but when it comes to their own nutrition they plead "I don't have time to learn how to ." Get your priorities straight!
4. Recover! You might be laughing and saying who am I to talk about this--look at all the training I do! But, this is all predicated on me sleeping at least 8 hours every night. Right now I'm averaging close to 9. Yes, this means I have no social life EVER on weeknights, because I have a fairly stressful job, and yes, I'm fortunate to live alone without kids. But I've known for years that as my training hours go up so does my need for sleep or else I feel like total crap. Another element of recovery is not overcommitting to everything under the sun. Trust me, people will still like you if you aren't trying to be social chairman of the world, and why do you care if they like you anyway? (That is another topic entirely, which some of my older posts get into and you'll see more). It's important to find that magic number of training hours that you can both do AND recover from. They go hand in hand.
5. Work on your mental game. How? There are a number of ways. But I will say that if you are sitting around thinking, "I suck" or "I'm not as good as her" or "I can't ever accomplish that" then that is what is true for you. There are some good books: The Power of Now, Flow in Sports, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values , and Awareness that I would personally recommend. These are not books you read and go, "that was a good story." You need to write your story. From here on out. Remember that anyone who appears to be successful at any endeavor did not get that way overnight. It may seem that all of a sudden a particular athlete got fast or that all of a sudden an author became popular, but that is not the truth. Success and inner fulfillment take time!
6. It IS all about the bike. Sorry, but pick up any good book about Ironman training, and fact is, you need to spend a lot of time in the saddle, quality time in the saddle, and gosh, it will help if you like riding your bike (particular credit for these statements go to my coach). Look at the table above for how much biking I've done. One tenet I use in my training is "extra time on the bike never hurts." So let's say your training plan says ride 4 hours, with some focused intensity in there. You go riding with some buddies, and some of them need to go 5 hours. Is it OK for you to go 5? Sure, as long as you hold down the intensity and don't do a hammer-fest for the extra hour. The point is, as long as you are careful with the intensity, you almost can't bike too much! The reverse is true, too. Don't ever let someone talk you into riding less than you need to!
7. Don't race too much! This is especially true when it comes to running races. If you want to do them, do them in your base training (or whatever you call the beginning of your training year). In general, marathons done during the meat of Ironman training are a stupid, stupid idea (I've said this before). You will lose 3-4 weeks of your Ironman-specific training. 1/2 Ironman races are not good race simulations for Ironman races. Pacing is way different, you can blow your nutrition and still not blow up. But 1/2 Ironman races are OK provided they are 6-8+ weeks out from your Ironman race(s). If you are trying to be a long distance athlete, then do long distance races! Sprints are fun, but unless they are either early in the season, or you have the base and muscular endurance to say, do a sprint and then ride 100 miles the next day (which is how I do it), then don't bother with the sprint or Oly at all.
8. Seek guidance in choosing your races and creating and maintaining your training program. Personally, I believe coaching is the way to go. You can go self-coached, but if you do, I assume you are very well-read, know your body extremely well, understand some degree of exercise physiology, understand concepts of periodization, and you do all of the above #1-#7! If not, you will probably benefit from a coach. I've known some people who year after year say "I'm going to qualify for Kona," and they are self-coached, and they implode every single season, and these are people with the cash to pay a coach. I don't know what they are thinking. On paper, swimming, biking and running are quite simple--assembling a performance program to achieve specific objectives in a fun and safe manner is the result of the equivalent of a studying for and earning a college degree, if you ask me, and to have the commitment to accomplish that while holding down a full-time job and keeping family and social commitments is a huge deal.
9. Set reasonable goals, and always include a definition of SUCCESS. Face it, if you are going to carry around that 20-lb. bag of rocks, miss 1/3 of your scheduled training, fail to work on your personal limiters, not get enough recovery, and on top of that you think you are going to set specific time goals for your race, you are truly delusional. On the other hand, don't limit your goals/success definition to time-based only. Improving your economy from season to season, for example is HUGE. Let's say I rode 6:15 in an Ironman race, but I ran 6:30. Let's say the following year I work like hell on my biking, and I go and ride 6:15, but it's easier, and I run 5:30. HUGE! What if I swim 2.4 in 1:15 one year at an average HR of 125, and the next year I swim the same time, but at an average HR of 115? HUGE! You need to have these success definitions in advance or as you look back at your past season so that you don't get locked into negative thinking. Take me, for example. My big A-race, IMWI, I DNF'ed last season. However, I became tremendously strong on the bike (as measured during my training), I was running stronger and faster, and swimming more economically. How do I know? Look at what I've done this fall so far.
10. Build/manage your support network. If you are trying to do big things, associate with others who are doing those big things. If you are trying to be mentally strong, associate with others who are mentally strong. If you have a family to cope with, get their buy-in to what you are doing, and if you've scheduled an appropriate amount of training, make sure they know that that is a priority. Find people to train with who are slightly stronger than you. The only way to lift heavier weights is to LIFT HEAVIER WEIGHTS. Duh.
11. Enjoy the process! Wow, look at all these things she's saying I need to do to be successful. How can you call that fun? First of all, I'm not sure "fun" is always the right word. Sometimes it's fulfillment due to the sense of accomplishment. But I hope the word fun is in there, too!