Get Ready

A Change In Your Training Program Can Be Good For Your Year Ahead
By Mark Allen for Ironmanlive.com on Thu, Feb 20th 2003 (11:14 AM).

The first of a three-part series of training Do's and Don'ts by six-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion Mark Allen.

Trouble shooting your program can be as important as actually creating a schedule of training to follow. The first part of this is to have a clear idea of where you want to end up. If you have not already done so, pick a goal race that you want to target for the year. The training program you will come up with is very different if your goal is to do a triathlon sometime in 2003 than it will be if you know your goal is to train for Ironman Wisconsin on September 7th.

Next, come up with a couple of clear goals that will be targets to shoot for at that race. Again, vague goals will give you only vague guidance to create a training schedule that will work for you. So knowing that you want to target building certain strengths, that you have maybe some specific time or place goals that you are after will help you to develop a schedule that can take you from where you are currently and get you up to the point of your dreams.

After that, the training begins. The greatest training program in the world is worthless if it is just numbers on a calendar. The work you do now will pay off later. Jump in.

� Get to the pool. That water wants you.

� Put your bike on the trainer and ride it before work. Have your running gear with you so that you can do the run during lunch.

� Put a gym bag with warms ups in them into your car's trunk so that you will be ready to stop at the health club and do weights on your way home from work. You know what happens if you go home after work to get your clothes and then go to the club: nothing.

In essence, set yourself up for success by being ready to jump in and do the workouts when you will most likely be able to do them. Have them be more than a concept!

After a time of training, say 6 weeks, it will be time to give a status report to yourself to see if your training is working. It takes about 6 weeks to really start to develop a base of fitness that will enable you to gauge if your training is working or not. If you make major modification to your program before that amount of time, you will never give your body a chance to get on the track of what you are trying to get it to do and will always be switching to a new idea before the old one has had time to ripen.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you make this assessment:

Don't assume that what worked in the past is the carbon copy of what will work in the future. This is one of the biggest traps triathletes with experience fall into. The training schedule that got someone to his or her PR in one race will never be the exact schedule that will get them to the next level after that.

The reason is that our lives affect our bodies in a very complex way. We have a total sum of the stresses that we can handle; emotional, physical, chemical. So one year a training schedule that was easy to execute and absorb the benefit from may lead to complete overload the next because a person's life situation has changed. This happened for me with the birth of my son. The workouts I had been able to do for years suddenly became way too much with the reality of an infant who was not sleeping at night.

Also, the level of fitness a person is at will affect the workouts he or she can handle. The catch here is that when we are in really great shape, we are also closer to the edge of being over trained. So in the beginning of a season, or at anytime when a person is not in peak form, they can actually handle a seemingly large volume of training simply because they are not in good enough shape to push themselves really hard. But when we are in peak form, we are able to push hard and we are also close to the line that will lead to burnout and over training.

Do assess what has brought you success in the past. Use that experience to develop a strategy that is likely to bring you the results you want, knowing that there will always need to be at least some minor adjustments in your program to reflect your current level of fitness and the demands of your life.

If your life feels more complex and demanding than during the last training schedule, factor that in by adding in extra rest. Also reduce the overall training volume by first cutting back on the shorter workouts. Then if need be, shorten the endurance days to keep your body in the realm where it can absorb the training you are doing.

If you feel you were short on fitness and are ready to try more, add in additional training time in the following order: longer endurance workouts, then frequency of workouts. Also, if you are particularly weak in a given sport, adding in one or two extra workouts per week in that sport can over time have a huge benefit.

Don't build a training schedule that will last more than about 20 weeks. Focusing on a program for longer than this is almost certain to lead to a burned out athlete.

Do have a big race that you will taper down for within a 12-20 week window from the time you start your structured training. This gives your body time to build up and then recover during your taper to the big event.

See you at the races!

Mark Allen

Editor's Note: Mark is a six-time winner of the Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. He offers a state of the art online triathlon training programs for all distances of races at www.markallenonline.com. On this site you can receive fully customized training programs that last 12-20 weeks. Each training schedule is based on your fitness history, age and racing goals.