Planning training for the 2014 season

The first objective of the year is completed, yay! I'm still super-happy about my 03:59:19 at the Rotterdam marathon. There's a lot of year left though, and a lot I've signed up for (have you seen the 2014 race calendar panel over there on the right hand side?).

Need to take a rational look. What's practical. I've withdrawn from the Eton 10km swim - I still intend to do one, but i need more than 5 weeks training to prepare (particularly seeing as there's Mallorca 70.3 in the middle!). I also decided not to do today's Thames Turbo Triathlon - there's no need to race a hard sprint when I'm still only a week after the marathon. Instead I went for a ride with Mrs on our "3 Hills" route - first time for a year. Loved it.

Our "3 Hills" ride (Staple Lane, Crocknorth, and Box Hill)

I enjoyed having a training plan for the last few months, even if it was just out of a book. I like not needing to think about what needs to be done. However, I don't feel ready to get a new coach. Maybe next year, maybe never, but not right now. So, what's the plan?

The plan is: write your own plan. Here's the plan.


Swimming:

Brett Sutton wrote a piece on swimming for the Buccaneer Race Team. In essence, the message was: "Want to get better at swimming? Well then swim more."

So, let's just swim some more then. I bought a book called For Swimmers 365 Main Sets a while ago by Ironman swim-master Andrew Starykowicz. It's basically just what it says on the tin. I'm going to start from set one and try to do 2-3 per week. That's easy - I just schedule them in, and do them.


Cycling:

My main races this year are both quite hilly - Ironman 70.3 UK in Wimbleball with its (in)famous "52 hills in 56 miles" or whatever it is (I think the bark is worse than the bite to be frank), and then Ironman Wales in Tenby - where I'm determined to ride better than last time. So I need to ride up hills, and ride them regularly. I'll be racing Wimbleball on my road bike and Tenby on my tri-bike, so I need good miles on both.

I should be able to get mid-week miles just by commuting whenever I can, and then a longer ride at the weekend to/from a parkrun or round in the Surrey hills. I'd like to revisit the Ride London 100 route ahead of this year's event (I was lucky enough to get a ballot spot), the Hell of the Ashdown route, and there's scope to make our 3 Hills route into a lot more than three hills.

When the weather is bad, or the time is unhelpful, I could do well to remember that I have a turbo-trainer, I don't need to be outside to ride. This is important, it takes away the barriers to missing sessions. Additionally on a turbo trainer you can focus on cadence, power, and never getting any respite! No traffic lights in the kitchen...


Running:

Running is trickier. The marathon training had me running 4-6 times per week, and my highest weekly mileage ever. I can't sustain that on top of everything else. Running breaks you down. The long run is important - one of the Pfitzinger & Douglas training principles is the value of the mid-week long run. I should therefore work in a run home from work during the week to compliment the weekend long run - or maybe a couple of runs home per week and free myself from the need to run long at the weekend all together.

The main thing is that each session is quality. It needs a purpose. When I'm approaching the shorter races I should be running fast, and when I move towards Wales I should drop the pace a little and work on endurance. I also need to learn to love the hills! Throughout I'd like to get back to running hard and fast parkruns. It's OK running them as recovery runs, but I miss just running as fast as I can, and that's a quality session in itself. I think 3 runs per week should be about right - and, importantly, a sustainable volume.


Gym:

I've really enjoyed hitting the gym regularly - I feel stronger and more resilient. This makes me better able to accommodate training without getting injured again. The guided strength and conditioning sessions seem to be working so far. Twice weekly visits to Ben and Josh at Athletic Edge will remain. Monday and Thursday mornings seem to work. Swimming in the evening after a gym visit in the morning seems to work well for me - active recovery and hopefully eases the DOMS a bit (and man those guys are the kings of DOMS).


Periodisation and specificity:

This is where it gets harder. It's impossible to peak for every race, particularly if you've signed up for a lot. You need to build and peak for your main race. Training is also normally divided into micro and macro cycles, e.g. 4x 4-week blocks making a 16-week block, with each 4th week reduced in load to allow a little more time for recovery and accommodation (absorbing the training so you actually get faster as a result).

Specificity is ensuring your training is relevant. My training for Rotterdam was all on the road and didn't contain many hills - that's because the race was a fast flat road race. Wimbleball and Tenby are both hilly on the run, so I need to learn to love the hills in training. Likewise for cycling. I'm not worrying too much about swim specificity, other than I'll need to get open water and wetsuit swimming in as often as I can - this has been a failing in the past, and I think partially responsible for my frustrating swim-start freak-outs (see both Ironman Wales in 2012 and Ironman 70.3 Zell am See/Kaprun in 2013).

Up to Wimbleball I'll work on faster mid-distance training, and then build up the duration afterwards ready for the big fella in Tenby.


Putting it together:

What are my A-races? For A-races I want to be peaking and tapered (fresh, from a de-loaded week). I should be champing at the bit, raring to go! I've done both these races before and I certainly have much more to give.

• Ironman 70.3 UK, Wimbleball, 15th June
• Ironman Wales, Tenby, 14th September

What are my B-races? For B-races I want to treat race day absolutely as if it were an A-race, however I won't worry so much about a full taper before hand. It's more about real race experience and sorting my technique, and less about pulling about a top (for me) performance.

• Ironman 70.3 Mallorca, 10th May
• Blenheim Triathlon, 8th June
• London Triathlon, 3rd August

What are my training races? Training races are just to get experience, try out my race day strategies, and have fun. I won't taper for them and won't pay too much attention to the results. These are the "everything else" category. The only one of these that needs care is the long course weekend. This is an Ironman on the Ironman Wales course (near enough) but split across three days. This will be hard effort, and the marathon will take time to recover from even if I run it at Ironman pace (i.e. very easy).

• Electric Run, 26th April (A fun 5km at night with loads of glowing stuff and music!)
• Clapham Common 15km, Race 3, 1st June (Happy Birthday to me!)
• The Long Course Weekend, Day 1 - Swim, 11th July
• The Long Course Weekend, Day 1 - Bike, 12th July
• The Long Course Weekend, Day 1 - Run, 13th July
• Hampton Court swim, 20th July
• Ride London 100, 10th August
• Marlow swim, 24th August
• Thames Turbo sprint triathlon, Race 4, 25th August
• Clapham Common 15km, Race 4, 31st August

And then there are the wild-cards... These races are on the "would like to" list. Not confirmed or entered. I'd really like to run an ultra with my Mrs at some point! These don't really feature in my thinking right now.

• RRR, 18th October
• Thames Turbo marathon, Richmond Park, November

...and there's so many other things!


The plan:

As it happens, the timing works out perfectly - it's almost as if I'd planned it (I hadn't).

I'm going to go for two macro cycles - one for Ironman 70.3 UK, and one for Ironman Wales. There are two four-week blocks from now until Wimbleball, then after a recovery week there are three four-week blocks leading up to Ironman Wales. The B-races come at the end of build periods, and have de-load weeks afterwards. This is ideal.

Build up to Ironman 70.3 UK, started today!

Build up to Ironman Wales, starts with a recovery week after Ironman 70.3 UK

I like the idea of doing a race simulation two to four weeks out. A popular technique is to complete the number of miles, but in kilometres. Simulate the race entirely, including fast transitions and fuelling, but don't suffer the fatigue of going full distance.

For the 70.3 that's 1200m swim, 56km bike, and 13km run - those distances are short enough to go pretty hard and really enjoy it. May 31st looks like a good time for that - the weekend before we'll be at Wimbleball Lake checking out the bike course - unfortunately you can't normally swim in it, otherwise that would have been ideal.

For the full distance it's 2.4km swim, 112km ride, and 26km run - a bit more of an undertaking, but training should mean the distances are achievable with some good effort. It's an ideal kit and nutrition test. The more you treat it like the real thing, the more it will help. I could get a really big weekend in right at the start of my final block - I'll be relatively fresh after a de-load week. Pencilled in for 17th August.

There's more work to do to plan each block. I'll do that at each at the start of each, based on the experience, progress, and real-life (damn you, real-life!). Given block one starts tomorrow I guess I'd better plan that now...


Block one, 2014 weeks 17 to 20:

Block one, week one: Need to take it easy, this is about getting the right sessions done and building good habits. Set the plan and stick to it. I need to remember I'm only one week post-marathon - I'm feeling fine now, but I will probably find hard efforts, well, hard. I'd like to get started on the 365 main sets too. Real life is difficult this week, very busy at work and my 5th wedding anniversary on Thursday.

Week one - Monday done!

Block one, week two: I'm on a training course all week this week so as long as I can stick to mornings and evenings I should be OK, however bike commuting is off the cards (remember you have a turbo trainer and a lot of The Wire to watch...). I enjoy a little training during these times, it helps clear my head and be able to focus in the classroom. The end of the week will be hard, Mrs and I are crewing for Louise at the Thames Path 100 (boy, can that girl run!).

Week two

Block one, week three: In Mallorca from Monday. Looking forward to riding the 70.3 course a few times ahead of the race. This week will be about cycling and swimming, I'm not so concerned about running. The race is on the Saturday, so Sunday will be a lovely day off in the sun.

Week three - rocking it in Mallorca, can't wait to see/ride the bike course

Block one, week four: A de-load week at the end of my first block. The aim here is to keep the number of sessions up, but the intensity down - not stopping completely but taking the opportunity to recover well.

Week four, de-loading ready for the next block

And then...

There's loads of other stuff to consider - kit, nutrition, race plan, etc. I could plan for hours. Let's see how this first block goes.

Thinking about 2014

While I'm enjoying a bit of racing right now, I think it's time to have a muse about next year.

Looking back through my training record for early 2012 I can see that although I did a fair amount of work, much of it was the same thing week-in week-out. There was little in the way of periodisation and specific training.

“Periodisation” means a gradual build of effort over the course of a few weeks followed by an adaptation period of reduced intensity. Often there will be meta-cycles mapped over this such as a group of 4x 4-week periods with a specific objective. 16 weeks is often regarded as the time before a race where extra focus really pays off and you can perform to your best. Many Ironman and marathon training plans are 16-weeks in duration.

Training is considered “specific” if is designed to improve your performance over the course you will be racing on. If you’re taking on a fast flat bike and run course then you might work on pushing a steady wattage for a long period on the bike, keeping your aero position for the full time, and sustaining a fast run speed. However if your race is full of hills then you will really want to work on strength and climbing technique both on the bike and in the run. Maintaining a specific approach during your pre-race period will work to ensure you’re as prepared as possible – mentally and physically. If possible you should train on the actual course you will be racing on, learning the best lines on the climbs and descents, where you need to brake (or just as importantly where you don’t need to brake), and developing an appropriate fuelling strategy.

In order to train and race in this way you need to decide on your “A” race(s) – the one or two races where you really want to do well and perform at your best. Other races in the lead-up could be good tests for technique, equipment, and race strategy. Some races might just be for fun, or integrated into a training plan as longer or harder effort sessions. As far as is within your control there should be no unknowns when going into your A-race. You should have as much of your mental bandwidth available for focusing on your performance, following your plan, and dealing with anything unexpected. Practice might not guarantee perfect in triathlon, but it can certainly help you stay calm and perform efficiently.

It’s important to work on the psychological side too – Mrs and I were very strict with ourselves in the first half of 2012, unsustainably so, which is why I think as soon as the races started my weight started drifting upwards. A healthier approach is to reserve the strictest periods for the final approach to the race making it easier to stay on track.

At the moment, I’m signed up for a lot of races for next year including three Ironman events (IM 70.3 Mallorca in May, IM 70.3 UK in June, and IM UK in July). This is very exciting, and I feel motivated to have a good winter working on my strength and fitness - but if I'm to take it to the next level I'll need to work out my A-race events. It'll certainly be a triathlon. I’ll be competing in some single discipline events but those will just be for training and race exposure. I am also sure it will be a long-distance event. From my racing last year I am utterly convinced that I have the capability of going significantly faster over 70.3 and full Ironman distance triathlon - providing I can remain focussed and avoid injury. As for which event, I think it makes sense to pick an early season race and a later season race and peak for both. Races I’ve completed before will be good – it’s motivating to have prior course experience and a PB you can aim for. I’d like to race on courses it’s relatively easy to get to for training experience, and so that means the UK.

Meeting all those requirements means the decision basically makes itself. My A-races for next year will be:

• Ironman 70.3 UK, Wimbleball Lake, Exmoor, 15^th June 2014 (already entered)
• Ironman Wales, Tenby, mid-September 2014 (entries not open yet)

A 16-week run into Wimbleball is clearly achievable, but there are only around 13 weeks between Wimbleball and Wales, and that period has IM UK in the middle, which I've already entered.

A quiet week after IM 70.3 UK followed by a 12-week run into IM Wales could work, but effort would need to be very carefully managed at the UK event. This period will be essential if a good performance is to be attained at IM Wales. It might be wise to defer my IM UK entry to IM Wales to take it out of the middle all together. I’ll decide on this once the date for next year’s IM Wales event is announced – the 2013 edition is on this weekend so it’ll be announced and open for entry shortly afterwards.

Obviously a great deal can change in a year, who knows what will happen between now and then – but right now, these two races are what I'm going to target.

• 2012 gave structured training, something I’ve never done before in my life, but with no target other than “complete the Ultimate Challenge”.
• 2013 brought injury and frustration for the first half, underlining the importance of maintaining a strong flexible base to remain resilient to injury, and some fun training and racing in the second half (so far at least!).
• 2014 will bring an A-race or two and a periodised targeted training plan, as discussed above.

For the first time I want to get to a long-course triathlon and actually race it hard and to the best of my abilities rather than just aim for completion with a time or age-group position as a secondary concern. Let's give it a shot and see what happens. Next I'll be looking at periodisation and working out where training blocks fit between now and the races, then I'll start to work out what the objectives of each block are. Plenty of work to do! Stay tuned!