the silly season

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."― Friedrich Nietzsche

Spring. Time for soccer tryouts. If you haven't been involved in competitive club soccer, you may be shocked to learn that normal everyday people undergo a Jekyll and Hyde transformation into a Machiavellian Jerry McGuire at this time of the year.

Kids as young as 10 years old try out to make "the cut" and be on a team. If they make the cut, then their parents will fork out up to a few thousand dollars to join that team. If the kid doesn't make the cut, or if they don't make the team their parents feel they should make, then it's often off to another club.

As an armchair anthropologist, I've often wondered at the root of this behavior. Is it a college scholarship? The chance to turn pro? Just the desire to do "what's best" for the kids?

In the case of a scholarship, the math simply doesn't work. If you just saved the fees from dues and tournaments and invested in a college savings plan, the total reward over the course of an 8 year playing career would be much greater than the average scholarship offering. Not to mention, there are countless stories of kids that were in fact good enough to get a scholarship, but declined it because they were sick of playing soccer year round the decade prior. There's a reason college coaches recruit multi-sport athletes.

The chance to turn pro? Go to a big tournament where there's a soccer culture. Let's say Dallas. If your kid isn't clearly the best player on the entire field at the tournament, the odds are not in your favor.

Is it the "do what's best"? TBD...

Kona: Sub 9:00 on 10 hours per week!

I always see a lot of talk about training methods/protocols at the end of the season (which happens to be the start of the next season), and they almost always take the following form:

1. My friend is a:
• kona qualifier
• ex-pro
• swam/biked/ran in college
• just really freakin' fast
2. And they:
• do a TON of low-intensity miles
• only work out "x" hours per week (where "x" is a sufficiently low number), but they always go hard
• have some "secret" intervals or workouts they do (usually involving a spreadsheet and a copy of a so-called "bible")


Nothing wrong so far... I love reading about new approaches to training. Where people usually make the mistake is in following up with:


3. "Therefore, I am going to ....".

Right now there's a popular post making the rounds about going sub 9 hours at Kona on less than 10 hours per week. There always is. Every year. And of course there's a slew of counter-point posts about putting in double-century weekends and and 60, 70 mile run weeks.

What people fail to realize is that none of these posts prove a thing because the sample size is too limited.

I could be trained by the winningest NCAA D1 track coach in history, and even given 4 years I'm not going to beat the guy that has a string of sub 16:00 5k times from high school and only runs "socially" a few times a week.

Why? We're all born with a certain limit. True, we may never find out what that limit is, but it's there. Further, gains are easy to come by at first... We've all experienced it: You double from 10 miles per week running to 20 miles per week, and you knock 5 minutes off your 5k time... Then you add another 10 miles for 30 miles per week, but you only knock off another minute from your 5k time. Consider the following graph:

Here's how my own personal graph *might* look:

Notice that I can run pretty close to my potential (at least in the same ballpark) on just a little bit of training. 20 miles per week is going to get me quite a long ways.

But compare that to the naturally "gifted" runner below:

The only chance I have of beating him is if I've been putting in 30 mile weeks and he's coming off the couch and is only in the low teens for mileage.

Getting strong in the hills

Ok, so maybe you're like me and showed up at Rob's sufferfest, got "it" handed to you, and realized you're not quite in hill climbing shape. So what now? Well, in addition to showing up at the next ride, you can do some trainer work!

The biggest climbing appeared to be on that 6-7 mile stretch of 15th street, so I looked at that section to see what sort of power output was being required and to develop a specific hill climbing workout I could do on the trainer. The first step was to find all the climbs where I had to go above my threshold power for more than 20 seconds (aka "hills"), and I came up with this:

Clumping all of those together yields the following pattern:

climbs descents watts
1:36:00 1:01:00 272
1:06:00 1:13:00 295
1:17:00 2:29:00 281
0:25:00 0:30:00 271
0:44:00 0:54:00 299
0:26:00 1:40:00 303
0:44:00 0:30:00 287
1:07:00 0:52:00 307
0:30:00 0:33:00 310
0:43:00 0:38:00 313
0:25:00 1:18:00 282
0:40:00 0:26:00 320
1:07:00 2:25:00 301
0:42:00 1:06:50 350
done!

Averaging all of that out:
average duration climbing: 49 seconds
average duration descending: 67 seconds
average wattage: 300 watts

To me, the following distinct patterns emerge:

30 seconds on / 30 seconds off

and

60 seconds on / 60 seconds off

For the "on" section, an average of 300 watts would be in my vo2 power level. I actually want to bump this up a little, as on several of the climbs I was just hanging on for dear life. Depending on how much you weigh and how fast you're trying to get over the hill, your power level may be higher or lower, but for the workout I'm about to describe that's in the right ballpark.

If you don't know your vo2 power, you can use the following description: Strong to severe sensations of leg effort/fatigue, such that completion of more than 30-40 min total training time is difficult at best. Conversation not possible due to often 'ragged' breathing.  A 6-7 Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE).

A 6-7 level of effort on the Borg Perceived Exertion scale:
RPE - Description

0 - Nothing at all
1 - Very light
2 - Fairly light
3 - Moderate
4 - Some what hard
5 - Hard
6
7 - Very hard
8
9
10 - Very, very hard

One possible workout using the previous data would be to alternate 30 seconds going very hard with 30 seconds going easy for a total of 20 minutes. Another possibility would be to alternate 1 minute going slightly less hard with 1 minute going easy. Don't think you'll get a better workout by doubling the total amount of intervals - go hard enough that the amount of intervals done makes you sufficiently tired. Also, try to keep the same gearing/resistance for the last interval that you used for the first. It may take a couple of attempts before you can really start to nail the workout.

Sample 1hr trainer workouts:

Workout #1:
20 minute warmup: 5 minutes easy, 3 x 1'(1') fast spinning, 5 minutes moderately-hard (4-5 RPE), 4 minutes easy
20 minute main set: alternate 30 seconds very hard (7 RPE) with 30 seconds easy
20 minute cool-down: 15 minutes moderate followed by 5 minutes easy

Workout #2:
10 minute warmup: 5 minutes easy + 5 minutes moderately-hard (4-5 RPE)
40 minute main set: alternate 1 minute very hard (6 RPE) with 1 minute easy
10 minute cooldown: 10 minutes easy

That's it! One hour, once a week, and you'll become a monster hill climber and still have time to play guitar hero. Have any questions? 

Planning a Season

What kinds of workouts, and when to do them, are two of the biggest concerns for triathletes. Triathletes must juggle training for three sports, exacerbating the difficulty of ensuring sufficient quality and quantity from their workouts. The difficulty in establishing a productive training plan is often overcome by incorporating periodization. Periodization refers to manipulating the composition of training load (defined as duration, frequency, and intensity of exercise) over specified time periods in order to bring about your best performance.

The time periods are usually referred to as:

A Microcycle: Your weekly schedule most commonly.
A Mesocycle: A block of time, usually 3-6 weeks, consisting of several microcycles dedicated to a specific focus.
A Macrocycle: Usually a yearly plan, integrating several mesocycles for an overall goal(s) or peak event(s).

Basically, you can't expect to run your best 10k if all you do is run 3 x 6 miles per week at the same easy pace over & over. Likewise, you don't want to try the opposite and run 3 x 6 mile time trials per week starting 6 months from the event. To get better, you are going to have to manipulate the frequency, duration, and/or intensity of your routine, and your periodization plan involves the details of how you are going to go about doing that.


Different strokes

There are a couple of major (and several minor) approaches to this, all of which have merit. Here are the two major themes.

“The miles make the champions”

The first approach is the so-called "classical" or wavelike model, and is the one in which most of us are probably familiar with. This is the classic "base-building" approach that seeks to increase your training load with a large volume of low intensity miles, then gradually adding and increasing the amount of intensity that you do before peaking. For running, such an approach would see you adding a weekly run, and increasing the distance of each of your runs until you are running at your peak mileage for the event. At that point, you would begin your "speedwork" phase, maybe progressing from tempo runs in one mesocycle to track repeats in the next.

Graphically speaking, it would look like this:

Note how intensity is held constant while overall training load in the form of easy miles is increased. After a certain point, training load is still increased, but comes as a result of adding intensity (effort). The miles would stay the same, or probably even drop. The main impetus behind this approach is that you will gain more from your speedwork after a solid foundation of base work.

Such a training plan for the run might resemble the following:

Block I: Increase volume. Build from 3 x 6 miles per week to 4 x 8 miles per week.

Block II: Increase specific volume. Build from 4 x 8 miles per week to 3 x 8 miles plus 1 x 12 miles.

Block III: Add tempo. 2 x 8 miles, 1 x 6 miles with tempo, 1 x 12 miles.

Block IV: Add speed. 1 x 8 miles, 1 x 6 miles with tempo, 1 x 4 miles with track work, 1 x 12 miles.

“Raise the left, fill the right”

The second approach is sometimes called "reverse" periodization, where the reverse part refers to the reversing of the classical approach, and what a lot of coaches insist is really "proper" periodization for long distance triathlon. In this approach, you do all of your hard training at the start of the season, and then work on extending that power or speed out to further & further durations as the season progresses. Of course, if you're starting from scratch or after a long layoff, you'll still need to do a period of lower intensity training to prepare yourself. So a marathoner might take the approach of concentrating on 5k & 10k racing in the spring - fairly low mileage and a lot of intensity, then increasing miles per week in prep for a fall marathon. This might make more sense in light of a power profile curve from some bike data:

The idea in this model would be to first increase your power (or running/swimming pace) at the shorter durations of 3, 6, 9, 12, and 20 minutes - the left part of the curve - before working on extending the duration - the right part of the curve. Graphically, this is how the training mix would look:

Notice that in this model the intensity (effort) gradually decreases, but the overall training load increases. This simply reflects substituting short, intense sessions with longer, easier miles. Something that happens naturally for a lot of us when we go from a winter of spin class or Spinervals to long outdoor rides. The driving force behind this approach is that your endurance sessions will be of higher quality after a solid period of threshold work - you'll go faster, longer.

Such a training plan for the bike might resemble the following:

Block I: 1 VO2 bike session (i.e. hard, short intervals with long rest periods), 1 short length tempo ride, 1 moderate length easy ride.

Block II: 1 threshold bike session (i.e. long intervals with short rest periods), 1 moderate length tempo ride, 1 moderate length easy ride.

Block III: 1 moderate length tempo ride, 1 medium-long bike, 1 long bike.

The middle ground

There is no one right way. In other words, what works best for one person might not work so well for another. The popular running coach Jack Daniels has worked with marathoners that performed their best when their final mesocycle involved a focus on speed work, and others that performed better with the traditional approach of having the final mesocycle focus on long runs at marathon pace.

There is, however, a mixture that fits in well with the seasonal weather patterns we have in Oklahoma: The "reverse" approach for biking and the "classical" approach for running (and either one for swimming). You could do your short, intense work on the bike (Spinervals/spin classes) when the weather is nasty and the light is sparse. Since the pool is heated and it's more comfortable to run in the cold, you could concentrate on building a base of steady run miles and swim yards. Maybe you could devote one mesocycle to swimming, and one to running. You might prefer to do 2 big run weeks followed by a big swim week all winter.

This also fits nicely with what most age groupers can tolerate physically: It's a lot easier on the body to hammer out intervals on the swim & bike than on the run. When the weather turns nicer in the spring, you could start to replace the spin classes with some longer outdoor rides. For running you could do the opposite: cut your mileage some and start hitting the local 5k/10k races.

Forget all of that

Running Coach Pat Clohessy:

Although I now coach national-class and world-class runners, I taught and coached teenage athletes for many years. I soon realized that they needed short-term goals. There wasn’t any way that lengthy Lydiard-type periodization program would work with maybe a month of racing as the reward. We did all the things Lydiard suggested (distance, hills, fartlek, speed) but we did them every week. Basically that’s how the Complex Training system evolved.

There's a lot of merit to this approach: are we closer to the teenagers that schedule racing around their life, or the world-class athletes that schedule their life around training & racing?

Famed triathlon coach Brett Sutton, responsible for dozens of swimming & triathlon championships at national and international levels, relates a story about giving a talk at a national swim coaching symposium. Much to the dismay of the coaches in attendance, he revealed that he would have his athletes repeat the same workouts day in and day out, right up until the final few weeks before competition when they'd repeat a different set of workouts.

Real life often interferes with the best laid training plans. The most important point to remember is that periodization is a 5% solution, meaning that your overall training load has a much bigger impact on your performance than how you organize your workouts. Periodization isn't a magical bullet that you can substitute for hard work or natural talent.

That said, we still have to juggle what we do, and when we do it. In light of that, perhaps the biggest consideration is the structure of the weekly microcycle, in relation to the goals of the mesocycle. In other words, developing a weekly plan for where you want to be at the end of a month or two. This doesn't need to be complicated: If your goal is to hold 1:30 per 100 in a 500m sprint triathlon swim, you might spend a few weeks swimming 8 x 100 on 1:30 with 30 seconds rest in between each, then a few weeks swimming 8 x 100 on 1:30 with 20 seconds rest, then a few weeks swimming 8 x 100 on 1:30 with 10 seconds rest... that should pretty much get you there. Then you might decide that you have enough swimming speed, but need more endurance to carry that speed over to longer distances. This means you might spend a few weeks going from 8k to 10k per week, then a few more weeks going from 10k to 12k per week.

The tricky part comes when we try to add back in the other two sports at the same time. You can only do a certain number of high heart rate workouts in a week. With that in mind, I like to focus on the following principles:

1. Diminishing returns. The bulk of your fitness comes from the minority of your workouts. If 10 miles per week results in a 30 minute 5k, doubling your training load to 20 miles per week might shave off 6 minutes and result in a 24 minute 5k. But doubling that to 40 miles per week might only shave off an additional 2 minutes for a 21 minute 5k. You have to decide how bad you want those additional minutes. This is the reason you often hear of competitive 5k runners putting in 40-60 miles per week trying to shave off a few more seconds.

2. Specificity of Stress. If you run 3 times a week, for 6 miles at a time, at a 9 minute per mile pace, then you will adapt to running 9 minute miles 6 miles at a time 3 times per week. You will plateau. To get better, you're going to need to add a session, increase the pace of one or more runs, and/or increase the length of one or more runs.

3. Rate of achievement. This is somewhat related to the first principle. After the first several weeks of running 3 x 6 miles at 9:00/mile, you will have gained the largest adaptations of that training load. Little more will occur after the 6-8 week mark.

4. Ease of maintenance. This ties it all together. It basically states that the amount of work you had to do to run your first sub 20 minute 5k is a lot more than what it takes for you to maintain that level or get back to that level. You don't have to kill yourself day in / day out to see progress. You can spend a few weeks working on one sport while maintaining the others, switch emphasis every few weeks, then wrap it up with a nice balanced approach a few weeks before your competition. You can put in a high volume swim, bike, or run phase, and carry that fitness through the racing season with a lot less volume.

Here is an intermediate level example plan illustrating these concepts (based on fitness, the specific workouts can be individually adjusted):

3 week swim focus

This plan increases the overall swim training load by adding an extra session per week.

The bike consists of 2 trainer sessions... just the minimum. However, when done properly, 2 trainer sessions can go a long way in keeping your fitness up.

	Swim	Bike	Run
Mon	200 swim 200 pull 4 x 150 descend on 15” rest 2:00 rest 4 x 150 descend on 15” rest 200 easy
Tue	400 swim 400 pull 4 x 400 on 15” rest		4 miles easy
Wed		10 minute w/u 4 x 4 min all-out (4 min rest)
Thu	200 swim 200 pull 2 x 300 on 15” 3 x 200 on 15” 6 x 100 on 15”		4 miles easy
Fri	10 x 200 steady on 30” rest 1st and last as w/u & c/d
Sat			6 miles easy
Sun		10 minute w/u 10 x 1 min hard (1 min rest) 5 minute c/d

3 week bike focus

This plan removes one of the swim sessions to make room in the schedule for a bike.

The focus is 2 trainer workouts plus some long weekend saddle time (however you define long).

	Swim	Bike	Run
Mon			4 miles easy
Tue	4 x 100 easy 2 x 300 pull on 30” rest 8 x 150	10 minute w/u 15 x 1 min hard (1 min rest) 5 minute c/d
Wed			6 miles easy
Thu	300 easy 3 x 200 pull on 15” rest 15 x 100 on 30” rest 100 easy	10 minute warmup 5 x 3 min all-out + 3 min rest 5 minute cooldown
Fri			6 miles easy
Sat	4 rounds of: 200 free 200 pull buoy only 200 paddles only all on 30” rest	30-40 miles easy
Sun		20-30 miles easy

3 week run focus

1 long swim is added on Saturday. After doing this session, the ability to go all-out for the race distance will not be in question!

The bike is back to 2 sessions... but increasing the long ride.

An extra session is added to the run, and some moderate paced tempo running is included.

	Swim	Bike	Run
Mon	200 easy 200 pull 8 x 150 on 20” rest 200 easy
Tue		10 min warmup 20 x 1 min hard + 1min easy	As a brick: 15 minutes moderate + 10 minutes easy
Wed			6 miles easy
Thu	4 rounds of: 200 free 200 pull buoy only 200 paddles only all on 30” rest
Fri	300 easy 300 pull 2 x 300 on 15” rest 3 x 200 on 15” rest 6 x 100 on 15” rest 3 x 200 on 15” rest 2 x 300 on 15” rest		6 miles easy
Sat		40-50 miles easy
Sun			6 miles easy

3 week balanced focus

The long swim is reduced for more bike and run work.

A moderate group ride with some race pace would be good for the Tuesday session.

The run overall mileage is reduced somewhat, but intensity is added to the Tue brick and the length of the long run is increased.

	Swim	Bike	Run
Mon	300 easy 300 pull 4 x 300 on 30” rest 300 easy
Tue		20-30 miles hills or moderate	As a brick: 15 minutes fast 10 minutes easy
Wed	4 rounds of: 200 free 200 pull buoy only 200 paddles only all on 30” rest		6 miles easy
Thu		20-30 miles easy
Fri	10 x 300 on 30” rest first & last as w/u & c/d
Sat			8 miles easy
Sun		35-45 miles easy