Planning for a Triathlon


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Planning

Seasonal Planning with Wayne;

Single Sport - £50 per month - Including all session plans, goal setting, periodisation with unlimited emails, texts and telephone contact.

Multi-Sport - from £85 per month - Including all session plans, goal setting, periodisation with unlimited emails, texts and telephone contact.

To start contact Wayne :-
by email or phone 07956 133443

Let's face it, the whole purpose of this site is to help you achieve your goals through the basic principle of "Training With a Brain", so this is probably the most important section of the whole web site.

Whether you're a fitness athlete or a budding Olympian if you approach your training with common sense, don't ignore the basic elements of your sport and train with a plan, you'll get far more out of your training and a lot more enjoyment from it than by approaching it haphazardly.

Here's an age old equation often suggested by trainers and coach's all over the world:

Failing to Plan = Planning to Fail

which by and large equates pretty much to reality. This doesn't mean to say that if you don't plan you can't possibly succeed or that you can't deviate in any way from the plan you've made. What it simply suggests

is that you're much more likely to successfully achieve any goal if you honestly judge where you are today and sensibly plan a step by step approach to take you to where you need to be to achieve that goal. However, before we start going into specific examples of training in each individual sport let's look at the general principles of training for any sport and also to dispel some commonly held myths:

Any plan should incorporate a series of cycles or phases, often split into Base, Pre-Competition, Competition and Recovery, with each phase concentrating on a slightly different elements of the training mix.

Base Phase:-

Is the time when basic fitness is gained and forms the foundation of a successful plan. The distances covered in this period are likely to be far greater than in competition but will be generally undertaken at a very slow pace. New athletes will simply use this period to gain fitness whereas competitive or improving athletes will add "Reminder Speed" sections, where they raise the pace for a short period to race pace or above, to remind their bodies of the speed they will need during competition.

Pre-Competition Phase:
Allows the athlete to consolidate on their fitness gains while adding the speed element they will need in competition. Distances covered therefore generally reduce but the pace increases and you begin to reproduce the speed you need to get used to producing in competition.

Competition Phase:

Is what all your training is about and will have both minor and major targets to achieve. Minor targets will give you a chance to both practice elements of your racing and test your speed for a smaller portion of racing against your main targeted goal. So it's a matter of maintaining fitness while testing your speed in competition and recovering from a previously heavy training load. As your major season goal approaches you will also taper down while maintaining and building on your speed.

Recovery Phase:

In the Recovery phase it's important to give your body and mind time to recover from a hard season of training and racing. This doesn't mean you go to bed and don't get up for 4 weeks it simply means you don't train in your major sports. Often people will go skiing, mountain bike or play tennis to enjoy themselves, so participating in sport is still OK but a short break from structured training is important.

Once you understand the phasing and dependant on your actual goal, it's just a simple matter of dividing the available time to your major competition into these phases. The longest phase will almost always be the base period, unless you are looking to peak more than once in a season and the length of the recovery phase will depend on when the next competition period starts.

With an understanding of the phases of training you, or your coach, can begin to build your seasonal or annual, weekly and session plans to fit into your and help you achieve goals.

Goal Setting

Setting goals are important for every athlete, whether you're just starting out or a seasoned professional. However, whatever goals you set yourself they have to be;

Realistic
Achievable
Challenging
Measurable
Time Specific

To explain further

Realistic Goals

Setting goals that are realistic makes sure you relate your goal to your current level of achievement. If you made a statement "My goal is to do a 5k run in under 20 minutes" I would say that it's a reasonably realistic goal. However if you said "My goal is to do a 5k run in 20 minutes in the next 6 months" and you're currently a 35 minute runner, I would suggest it might be unrealistic. Here are some examples of realistic goals, dependent on your current level;

Level	Short Term Goal Examples
Novice Athlete	Start running 2 times, Swimming 3 times and Cycling 2 times per week Swim 60 lengths continuously Cycle 40 miles in one ride Run a 5k sponsored run Complete a Sprint Triathlon
Improving Triathlete	Reduce my 1500m swim from 28 mins to 26 mins Improve my transition times and mounting and dismounting the bike Improve the finish time of last years sponsored run by 2 minutes Run off the bike at the same pace as my first 5k sponsored run Complete 3 Sprint Triathlons and 1 Standard Distance
Age Group Athlete	Reduce my 1500m open water swim time to 23 mins Do a 10 mile cycling TT in 27:30 Complete the Age group Championships in 2:11, hopefully getting in the top 10 Start a 2 year plan to do 1/2 Ironman this year and Full Ironman next year Aim to qualify for the Sprint Triathlon Age Group World Championships (time of 1:06 needed)
Elite Athlete	Reduce my long course pool 1500m swim to 16 minutes Run a track 10k in 28 minutes Complete Ironman UK in under 8 hours 30 mins Improve my ability to cycle up hills for an olympic qualifying race

Achievable Goals

If you could, in all probability, never achieve a specific goal then you're simply heading for failure and that's not the point of goal setting. Here are some examples of achievable and non-achievable goals;

Non-Achievable Goals	To beat John Smith next year - what happens if John Smith doesn't race or improves dramatically? To go sub 2 hours for a standard race (when you're currently a 2:40 hour athlete) I'm going to take 15 minutes off my 5k run time Reduce my swim time from 26 mins to under 20 mins
Achievable Goals	To go sub 2:30 for a standard race (when you're currently a 2:40 hour athlete) Complete an Ironman 70.3 next year Improve my 10k pb from 50 mins to 45 mins (5 min to 4:30 pace) Reduce my average 100m swim time in training from 1:40 to 1:30 To reduce the time it takes me to take my wet suit off to 13 seconds

Challenging Goals

For the novice triathlete a challenging goal might be just to complete their first triahtlon, but once that's done the challenge to finish isn't there any more. Setting a challenge to complete the same race next year isn't really hard. However, saying that you're going to take 10 mins off your time is.

To be a challenge there has to be a chance of failure, especially if you don't put in the work to ensure success. That means you will have to plan to meet the goal and perhaps use some tests to see that you're on the road to success. For example;

Goal

Steps to Achieve Goal

Do the Goals Triathlon (August next year) in a time of 1:10

Note that this will take a swim of 12:30 Cycle of 32:30 and Run of 22:30 mins, leaving 2:30 for transitions
Do regular 400m swim time trials looking for 6:30 consistently 2 months before race
Run bi-monthly 5k time trial looking for sub 22:00 by July next year
Cycle 10 mile time trial in 31 mins by July next year
Do the Blenheim Triahtlon with swim of 12:30 and cycle in 32:30
Do the Big Cow event with run as close to 22:30 as possible (steady swim and run)

Measurable Goals

To be able to see if you are progressing it's important to be able to judge how close you are to achieving your goal, so there has to be some way of measuring your success. Even if you have the goal of completing your first triahtlon you can measure your progress. For example, completing 20 then 40 then 60 lengths in the pool. Doing a 2k, 4k, 6k and 8k run from a warm up. Doing a brick session (multi sport) of a cycle of 20k and a run of 3k.

A goal like "I'm going to beat Johnny Smith" isn't measurable along the way and is purely in the hands of Johnny Smith. All he has to do to make sure you do or don't achieve your target is to improve dramatically himself or have an injury.

Time Specific Goals

Potential Olympians have the goal of making the olympic team in a specific year. That makes their long term goal setting based on a 4 year cycle. Within that they may have lesser targets and goals, partly there to ensure they actually make their long term goal and partly to make money along the way.

Not having a time frame makes your goal so flexible that it's likely not to be achieved. You need to know that by a certain date you have to achieved your aim or failed, it concentrates the mind and makes sure yo do the necessary training or you risk failure.

The Seasonal or Annual Plan
Any complete plan should incorporate the series of cycles or phases outlined on the planning tag. Here's an example of an overall (macro) plan covering 34 weeks and taking into account a minor ans major goal (both the Big Cow Sprint races) in weeks 24 and 39. This whole plan covers 2 cycles, the first from week 5 to 24 and then next from weeks 25 to 39. Each cycle goes through Base, Pre-Competition, and Competition phases.

Volume, here indicated by the differing shades of blue, means the actual amount of training within a week, and in this plan it peaks in weeks 16 and 31 of the plan. Intensity, the measure of how hard on the body training is, is. That will be quite low during this period but peaks twice in the pre-competition and competition phases, then drops dramatically in the next base period and climbs again as we head towards the main target in week 39. As a judge of intensity we were using heart rate (HR), through the use of a Garmin 310XT. That made a comparison of speed v's HR simple and shareable through the Garmin on line facility.
The Base Phases:
This overall plan was for a novice triathlete so the initial base phase lasted 14 weeks, to gain the fitness benefits that long distance slower work gives the body. The volume went higher then lower, so the athlete could recovery from the increasing effort. The second Base Phase was only 8 weeks and after a short recovery rose steadily in volume to peak just below the previous high and then after a recovery rose to the same volume level as in the first base phase. Note that in both these phases as volume increased the intensity reduced.
Pre-Competition:
Lasted 4 weeks each and began to increase the intensity of sessions but reduced the overall volume. In weeks 5, 10 and 11 we planned tests and filming. The filming was primarily to see how the stroke was coming along and time trials were over a calculated distance. After these tests, from the feedback given by the athlete, we knew that the times we had projected were achievable at the intensities we wanted to maintain during the target race.
Competition Phase:
In the competition phase we scheduled major brick sessions, putting together both the cycle and run. The aim was again to practice race pacing and get the body used to the pace needed and the feeling of "Dead Legs" that often comes when running off the bike. The difficulty with anyone starting in triathlon is to keep the intensity down to a level where pace is sustainable throughout a race. All of these reafirmed the pace that the athlete should maintain during his main target race. Both competition phases contained 3 week tapers where the speed in each session were increased but the distance covered reduced. During this time honing speed was the key, with long rest intervals.
Recovery:
This is a well earned rest from formal training but still with activity included. It is time to enjoy wind surfing, kayaking, tennis and anything else you enjoy. It will start immediately after the main target race and last a full 4 weeks but beginning to pick up the swimming and cycling again in the final week. We then re-asses and start again with new targets and goals for the coming season.

Monthly / Weekly Plans
Once we have an annual or seasonal plan and have set the intensity for each training phase we then have to break that down into monthly, weekly and daily plans within those phases. With triathlon all three sports have to be practiced so each week must all of these plus an element of rest built into the programme, as it's only after rest that you can begin to improve. The plan below is from the end of the base 2 period and pre-competition phases and incorporates rest days on the first Monday and following Tuesday. From the long ride on the first Sunday the intensity drops except for swimming. There are 3 swimming, cycling and running sessions in each week and the distances of each session are shown in the grid below the daily plan.

The monthly plan below is from a different athlete and shows the transition between the pre-competition and competition phases. This particular athlete wanted to do 3 races in the space of 6 days, all of these were sprint races and only 1 was considered important. Volume had been reducing over the pre-competition phase and you can see the loading reducing before the Grendon triathlon. The day before the race we planned a short run with a warm iup, 1k at race pace and then a cool down, to keep fresh for the race. From that point there was a recovery run on Monday followed by a couple of medium loaded days, a rest day and then 2 race days. We used Turbo sessions to fully control the intensity of the cycle sessions and had reduced the swim volume from 2600 down to the levels you see here.

The distances are taken from the individual session plans, which were made up to so that the intensities and volumes matched the planned weekly activity. You can't really work the other way around, make the distances and then the session plans, as your session plan may have extra rest put in as recovery swims that add to the total. It also depends on the effect you're looking to achieve in each session. Very fast sessions need additional rest and long repeat times, whereas skills sessions migh be pretty continuous.

Session Plans
Every time you go out and do a session it should have a purpose. That purpose could be as simple as "Recovery Run" but without a purpose you won't in the end achieve a coherent and consistent training regime. After that all sessions should contain a Warm Up, Main Set and then a Cool Down. The main set can be made up of a few different types of set, all combined to achieve the purpose of the session. You should always print out your session and take it to the track or pool. The only place you might need to leave the plan at home is on the bike, for safety. The session plans below coinside with Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th August from the top weekly Micro-Plan. The swimming session comes from the 4th August and there is a dual purpose to the session, Slowly Getting Longer Distance and Gaining Real Speed. After a warm up and some kick and drill sets the aim is to first swim with really good Distance Per Stroke (DPS) and then use that good stroke to increase the speed. This would happen over increasing distances and should improve the form of the swimmer even thought they are getting more tired as the distance increases. After that there is a short sprint set to ensure the swimmer is thinking about really moving swiftly through the water.

The aim of this cycle session is fairly simple, to maintain race pace over less than race distance. This time of year we are generally looking either to recover from an effort, simulate race intensities or go even faster than race pace to get used to the demands of racing.

This particular athlete likes to really warm up well and then follow that with some stretching before getting down to real effort. we're also trying to get the athlete to maintin a pace of around 4:00 per kilometer during a race. Eventually we should get below that level but as a newer triathlete we need to cement the complete performance before we begin to move towards real speed.