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.
: Your weekly schedule most commonly.
: A block of time, usually 3-6 weeks, consisting of several microcycles dedicated to a specific focus.
: 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.
There are a couple of major (and several minor) approaches to this, all of which have merit. Here are the two major themes.
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.
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 | |
