By AJ Johnson
Nov. 15, 2007 -- With the off season officially upon us, now is the time that many athletes relax, let go and recover. This is certainly necessary and recommended, but there are several other things you can do to ensure your 2008 season is your best yet. One of those is planning. Get out your calendar, set out your priority races and create a solid foundation to achieve success. In structuring your plan, the question many athletes have is how soon before their goal race should they start structured training.
That question has many different answers. It depends on the experience of the athlete, the length of the "A" race, your goal in that race and even your location. What is not in question is the fact that the earlier you start, the better prepared you will be on race day.
For those athletes that are competing in an early season long-course or Ironman event, you need to start at least 20 weeks out, or just about 5 months. These weeks are easily broken down into segments:
Weeks 1 through 12 should be focused on endurance training and strengthening your weakest sport.
I like the approach of 3 weeks of training, 1 week resting. This keeps you from overdoing it and being fried by week 10. If you are not so fleet on your feet, those weeks would be a good time to cycle in some run-focused periods. This will build your aerobic base while you turn your running into something you can bank on. If swimming is your limiter, hit the pool 4 to 5 times a week and concentrate on perfecting your efficiency. Athletes that live in warm climates can add bike miles to up their bike performance. During these weeks the focus is on an aerobic effort. You want to build your body’s ability to handle the speed work to come. Keep your heart rate at 70 to 80% of max for the majority of the time. You do want to keep in touch with LT, so one hard effort a week is recommended. I also like to do a test on either the bike or the run, so that you can track your progress along the way.
For next 6 weeks, the focus is switched to building up your strength and speed. These weeks are where you can let your heart rate start to creep up to 80 and 90%. You can do this by adding intervals to your bike and run, and doing shorter speed-oriented sets in the pool. Start to add more quality time at goal-race pace or goal-race power. Race day speed or power doesn’t just appear on race day, you have to train at that intensity. This is also a good time to head into the hills.
Building your sport-oriented strength adds the muscular endurance you need to finish strong. You don’t need to go hard very often to see results. One hard session a week per sport is enough. In fact, if you can do more than one hard session per sport a week, then you are not going hard enough! It is important that your easy days are truly easy, so you can really nail your hard days. A rest period is also needed during this phase, along with more recovery-oriented sessions within the week. At least once during this phase you want to perform the same test as in the endurance phase to see how effective the training has been. These tests often increase your motivation, as they show you are getting fitter and faster.
The final 2 weeks are taper weeks. Back off the mileage, keep the intensity and let the last 18 weeks of work be absorbed.
You have reached the point where you can’t do much good for your fitness, but you can do a lot of harm. Know that you have put in the work and don’t keep testing the legs to make sure they are there.
For short-course athletes, or for more experienced athletes you can shorten the start time before the "A" race. You still want to go through the same progression, but the number of weeks can be less. A short-course athlete may want to focus more on the strength and speed phase as those are the attributes needed to do well in an Olympic Distance race. You can do 8 to 10 weeks of endurance then 8 to 10 weeks of strength and speed. For an experienced Ironman athlete, you still want to build your endurance, but you may add more strength work into the early phase of training.
The keys to success at your first goal race are to plan now, write out the focus of each week and execute properly. Keep it simple and easy for yourself to stick to the plan. By planning for your A race now you can ensure that you will be ready to achieve your goal.
Train Hard, Train Smart,
AJ Johnson
AJ is a USAT Level I Certified Coach for D3 Multisport. He has been a USAT All American 3 times and is a 3 time IM Hawaii Finisher. You can learn more about D3 at www.D3Multisport.com and to learn more about Coach AJ, go to http://web.mac.com/epicaj