Now, I've said this probably in every training discussion that I've ever had on this blog, the number one thing to keep in mind when putting together any training schedule, or specific workout, is to be able to clearly answer the question of "What is the purpose/goal of this workout, and how is this going to help me on race day." I think too many people see a workout maybe in Runner's World Magazine, or Triathlon Magazine, or maybe even a video of a workout on Flo Track and think alright that's what I'll do today, without actually ever thinking about how is this going to benefit them personally. Sometimes it makes me laugh, when FloTrack asks a coach about the workout and the coach takes a few minutes stumbling around an answer to the purpose of the workout. You should be able to answer the question pretty easily and quickly. It should be something like, "Coach what is the purpose of this interval workout today," "Increase VO2 max," or maybe "Increase lactate threshold." Yes of course some workouts have multiple benefits such as Tempo runs which not only help increase lactate threshold, but also help psychologically get accustomed to running comfortably fast for a long period of time, but no matter what you should know, understand, and have a clear purpose to each and every workout. And I'm not only talking about those hard epic interval workouts, sometimes a run's or bike's purpose may simply be to ride/run off some soreness.
On a bigger scale, not only do you need to be able to have a clear purpose to the individual workout, but you should have a clear over-arching goal or something you are working towards for the entire season (or period/phase within the season) to help you channel your effort. For this next section, initially I was going to give you a sample training schedule, then I changed it to show my normal weekly schedule, but now after having rewritten this section twice already, I think I'm going to just explain some basic principles to keep in mind when organizing your weekly training schedule. The reason I changed the format of this section a couple times now, is because I felt it wouldn't benefit all readers since we all have different goals, abilities, amounts of time available to train, and different strengths and weaknesses. So now let's get to it. Creating a training plan for self-coached athletes can seem like a daunting task because as I explained in my last post there are so many different workouts that can be done on the bike or run or swim, each with its own unique physiological stimulus forcing specific adaptations. But in order to start planning you need to first look at what is your goal event and what is going to be required in order for you to be successful in that particular event. For example, if your a pure cyclist who is targeting relatively flat road races like ones in Ontario, you know that you'll need to improve your endurance to be able to stay with the pack throughout the long race, but also improve your sprint power at the end of the race to be able to pull away and break the finish line first. If your goal is say to complete a 100 mile ride, or maybe a charity ride like the Ride to Conquer Cancer, then you know you'll just have to gradually increase the distance of your long ride to improve your endurance to be able to successfully complete the distance. If your goal is to perform time trials, or long course triathlon like the half-ironman or full ironman, then you know you have to work on sustained power. In the case of half-ironman improving your FTP over time to improve your aerobic power capacity, and improve your ability sustain anywhere from 80-85% of that FTP for 2 hours or more. After you know what the goal is you need to take into account how much time you have to train. In addition to training time, you need to also take into account recovery time between hard training sessions. And speaking of recovery time this is good place to talk about the number of hard workouts or types of workouts you are doing in a single week. I mentioned in the last post that there are 7 different power zones, however that doesn't mean that you need to spend time in all 7 zones each week. Too many people get overwhelmed designing their training schedule thinking that they must have a sweet spot workout, a VO2 max workout, a threshold workout, an endurance workout, an anaerobic workout, a tempo workout and recovery ride all in one week. That is simply not the case. The types of workouts you will be doing depends a lot on what time of the year it is (having a periodized training schedule which I've discussed in previous posts), and other factors such as what are your specific weaknesses that you are trying to improve, and again what are the specific fitness demands of the race. I like to have very a specific emphasis to each individual training block and that's how I like to organize my workouts. So for example a couple training blocks ago my goal was to improve my FTP in the 5-week span (which I did by an entire 5%). This last training block my goal was to improve VO2 max which it hard to tell that I really did physiologically speaking because I don't have access to a testing lab, however I saw major gains in the power I was able to sustain in a few of the key telling workouts.
When you start creating your weekly schedule the next thing to do, taking your goal event into account, is to schedule the key workouts (workouts that are the most important for your goals) into the week and build the rest of the week around those workouts. The key workouts are usually going to be the toughest, most race specific workouts. So if you are training for a half-ironman your key bike workout will be a longer bike with multiple intervals of 20 minutes or longer at your goal race wattage in Zone 3 into Zone 3.5 (Sweet Spot). To make it as race specific as possible you can couple those bike workouts with a run off the bike to get used to running after an effort like that. If your say a half-marathon runner I would say your key workouts for the week are your tempo run (or cruise intervals), speed interval session, and long run, the rest of the week is mostly just easy runs scheduled around those runs. Next, in terms of the organizing your weekly schedule and the workout pattern, most coaches go by the hard-easy schedule simply meaning you go hard one day, then easy, hard, then easy, etc. Others go by a block training approach where you string together numerous hard days in a row followed by a little more extended recovery to soak in the training adaptations. In my opinion, a block training approach is for a more experienced athlete as it does require a higher base training load to work off of, and more motivation since as you get deeper and deeper into the training block it becomes tougher and tougher to push through some of the workouts since the fatigue is progressively accumulating. Unlike distance running, in triathlon, organizing your weekly training schedule is obviously much more complicated since you need to balance the training load across three different sports, and the timing and ordering of your sessions becomes critical. Looking back on the days where I was only running, I spent much less time thinking about the organization of my training schedule. Really the formula was simple, each week was quite similar to the last in terms of its structuring of the workouts but the mileage or number of intervals in each individual session would just get longer or increase until race day, then the mileage would drop again, and then would start the process back over from scratch, maybe this time reaching a new height in mileage, or new height in terms of number of intervals at a certain pace completed or a faster pace across the same number of intervals. In triathlon, you are constantly having to deal with the crossover fatigue from one sport to the next, especially when it comes to cycling and running since the muscles used are very similar. Although some people like to say that swimming is its own monster, and could be dealt with separately because it uses different muscles than those two sports, I don't believe this to be entirely accurate for a number of reasons. Yes, running and cycling do share more in common with one another than swimming but you still have to deal with the overall body fatigue both physically and mentally that your cycling and running will cause, and also swimming and cycling/running still do share some similarities in muscle use. Looking at the lower body for instance do you use your glutes on the bike - for sure, what about in the pool - well how else do you kick. What about your calves: when biking and running - absolutely, when your swimming think about that strong explosive push off the wall, or how about the dolphin kick when your doing butterfly.
So how do you design your weekly schedule to get around some of this crossover fatigue to make sure your workouts are still of high quality? Well one strategy you can use is stringing together a couple very tough sessions on the same day and within close proximity time-wise of one another. What this does is it kind of tricks your body into thinking it is still fresh since the fatigue of the first hard workout hasn't quite kicked in yet. Afterwards though you will need a little more extended recovery time from the two hard sessions in a row - and for sure two good heaping scoops of Infinit Repair -- I really don't mean this to be such a blatant sponsor plug but the honest truth is I've had so many workouts in the last couple months where I feel completely spent and it takes all my strength to climb upstairs from the pain cave in the basement, but when I get up to my big case of Infinit and have my bottle it makes me feel like I can function again. Now this topic of stringing the two hard workouts on the same day is a controversial one. Some say that by doing this the quality of the second workout will suffer and therefore may not be as specific to what you are trying to accomplish. For example, if you do a big long threshold session on the bike and then go for run a workout a few hours later where the aim is to do 12x400 at 3:00/km pace (72s - VO2 max pace) but you end up doing 76s which is closer to your threshold pace because your knackered from the bike then you've lost the purpose of the workout. Instead, people who advocate this approach suggest that you do your hard bike one day and the hard run another. But again I think it all depends on what your goals are and your own physiology. Some people are just better at others at recovering quickly after a hard workout (and this is where nutrition during and after is very important) and could therefore handle the two hard workouts the same day. And while some say doing your hard bike and run workout on the same day can lead to injury and the quality of the second workout suffering, I could argue that doing your hard bike on say Monday and then hard run on Tuesday can lead to injury and poor performance just as easily since A) your never really getting an easy day in between and therefore your training is looking more like the block training approach which is only really for very experienced athletes who have a big training load to begin with, and B) your run may end up suffering all the same thanks to DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) - that soreness in your legs about 24 hours a hard effort. I mentioned it also depends on what your goals are since people who advocate not doing the hard bike and run on the same day could say instead of doing hard bike Monday and hard run Tuesday where yes you could be feeling the effects of DOMS and the quality would suffer, you could just do the hard bike Monday, easy day Tuesday, then hard run Wednesday, easy Thursday and so fourth. However, for someone who is going for the podium like myself, an approach like this would mean that your really only doing 1-2 quality bikes, and 1-2 quality runs in the week (1-2 because it would mean under this scenario the following week has 2 hard bikes and only 1 hard run). Because the long run and long bike for the week count as one of your high TSS (high strain sessions) then other than those two workouts you could only have 1 hard/faster run session, and 1 harder (higher power) bike session a week, and on following week where you only get 1 hard run and two hard bikes anyways then other than your long run you won't have any speedy run session in that entire week. And to add to matters, I think all triathletes should have a brick session in their week since being able to run off the bike is kind of important for the race, and so now where does that fit in - because a bike/run brick really no matter the intensity is always a taxing session just by its nature. So it really all goes back to your own goals, and abilities (and this is why I didn't give a sample program) because some people can handle a hard bike and hard run on the same day, and then have very easy day the next day to recovery, while others who maybe don't require such a high training volume/load to achieve their own goals could be successful with the second approach of having 1-2 hard bikes a week, and 1-2 hard runs a week. For me personally, I recover very quickly from one workout to the next thanks to years of maintaining a very high training load, and having run two-a-days for years, and also really taking my nutrition seriously, therefore I can handle the two big workouts on the same day. One tip I could add if you decide to go the route of the hard workouts on the same day is to put the harder more important session first. So if doing a hard run workout of say 8x1km at VO2 max pace and the hard bike is maybe 3x20minutes of steady sweet spot power, put the run first (it is higher intensity in that case). If just starting out in triathlon though I would recommend the approach of splitting up the hard bike and run sessions with an easy day in between.
So with that information you can start planning your weeks. I would recommend starting with the hard/easy training principle over the block training approach, since it takes quite a long time to build up to the point of being able to the handle stringing multiple tough days in a row. Also a hard/easy setup to training will keep things less monotonous, and it can help you avoid burnout/injury. An interesting post by Craig Taylor who is Coach for Regional Triathlon Centre in Guelph (http://provincialtriathloncentre.blogspot.ca/2009/01/micro-structure-part-1.html) looked at a couple studies on microcycle structure (weekly training structure) which essentially showed that the less monotonous the training load the less chance of injury/illness. To summarize, in the first study, the research group put a group of horses on a training program for 260 days. They alternated 1 hard day with 1 easy day, and over the 260 days the easy days always stayed the same, and the hard days got progressively harder and longer. For those 260 days the horses thrived. On the 261st day the researchers started to progressively increase the training load on the easy days, and the horses only lasted 12 days before the experiment had to be stopped because the horses couldn't handle the training load. The second study showed the more monotonous a training schedule the higher chance of injury/illness. Monotony refers to the variation from training load from one day to the next. So if you have two athletes who both do the same 21 hours of training in a week but structure there weeks like so
Athlete A is more likely to get an injury/illness than Athlete B because every day they are training the same amount therefore the monotony is higher meaning the strain is higher.
To summarize, things to consider for putting your weekly schedule together are:
1) What is your goal event?
2) How much time do you have available to train (and maybe more importantly recover from workouts)?
3) What are you strengths, and what are you weakness that you need to work on to be successful in your goal event? Furthermore, what are the very specific demands of that event. For half-ironman bike leg is it a hilly course and if so are the hills short and steep, or gradual and long (hopefully not both steep and long). Looking at the demands of your specific event will then help you to decide on the nature of your key workouts that need to be spaced out between the week's schedule.
4) Start planning your weekly schedule you can either do your hard bike and hard run on the same day to minimize crossover fatigue, or you could do your hard bike workout followed by an easy day then the following day your hard run workout again followed by an easy day, and keep alternating that pattern.
5) When planning your weeks remember that you don't necessarily need to hit every single training zone. In fact, some can argue that some athletes will never need to tap into some of the training zones -- Does a full ironman triathlete need to do microburst intervals in Zone 7? Probably not since you would never need to do that in a race. Generally for a half-ironman bike leg your key sessions will be from zone 3-5 (Tempo zone to practice pacing and getting comfortable with sustained power for long periods of time, lactate threshold like over-under intervals to increase lactate threshold and push that FTP a little higher, and VO2 max training to increase your overall and maximal aerobic capabilities).
6) When organizing the pattern to your weekly schedule as Craig Taylor explained in his post vary the training load from one day to the next to minimize the monotony and therefore lower the overall strain and chance of injury, and to do this alternate hard days with easy days but make sure to go Hard on those hard days and Easy on the easy days.
So there you have it. I could probably go on about the various themes and principles introduced in this post into much more depth, and yes many will have conflicting opinions on some of the topics, but this will give you a good idea I think of how to start plotting your weekly schedule. The ideas here are just my take on things, that have been formed from a combination of my own training philosophies with what I have learned through reading many training books and training articles from world renowned coaches. For a more individual questions about your schedule feel free to leave comment below and I'll respond right away.
