Triathlon training, like just about everything in life, is both incredibly simple and infinitely complex. I could tell you that a table is composed of tiny building blocks called atoms, or, one could write a doctoral thesis on the idiosyncratic interrelationships of subatomic particles.
Do I really have the audacity to condense training for triathlon- with the volumes that have been written on the subject- into one short, simple blog post? In short, yes.
In that spirit, here are some suggestions in outline form that can take a new triathlete as far as they want to go.
1) Swimming
It's thought that Kevin Costner's part-man part-fish character in the movie Waterworld is loosely-based on Andy Potts
A1. Join a Masters Swim Team
A2. If no Masters Swim Team is available, swim on your own.
i. Swim 3-5 times per week, 2,000 to 4,000 yards per session.
ii. Include drills every workout.
iii. If you do three swim workouts per week, try two workouts composed of shorter intervals and one
with longer intervals or a long-set.
Example:
Warm Up: 500 easy: 300 of drills (with 50 yards per drill, eg. 50 yards of swimming with fists,) 200 kick or back stroke ( the latter complements muscles used in front crawl)
Main Set of Swim Workout 1: 5x50 on the 1min, 5x100 on the 2min, 5x50 on the 1min
Main Set of Swim Workout 2: Pyramids, swim 50 yrds, then 100, 150, 200, 200, 150, 100, then a final 50, with the final 50 of each interval at a hard pace. 15 sec. recovery between intervals.
Main Set of Swim Workout 3: 1000 yards. First 700 yards easy/moderate, final 300 yards HARD.
B1. Practice Open Water with a local triathlon club.
i. Learn how to sight, doing so about once every twenty strokes
ii. Practice swimming straight
iii. Gain comfort swimming in 'chop,' with the ability to breathe to either side and skip a breath if you get hit by a wave.
iv. Ensure that you have a comfortable, chafe-free fit in your wetsuit.
2) Cycling:
Sebastian Kienle makes a statement on the bike at Half-Iron World Champs in Vegas, 2012
Bike and Run training should both have just 3 main components: consistency, variety, and a weekly long workout.
A. Ride 3-6 times per week.
B. Add a weekly long ride, based off time spent in the saddle. For example, building up to say 3 hours for half-iron racing or 6+ hours for Iron-distance racing
C. Add in Speed / Tempo work
i. Time Trial: As triathletes, we're inherently time trial cyclists. To that end, add in workouts to prepare you for the time trial cycling leg of a triathlon.
Example Workouts:
These are actually from the first few days of Dave Luscan's time trial taper. Given that he is such an accomplished cyclist, however, I believe they're sufficient for standard workouts.
1 - 2 x 30 as hard as possible within a 95 minute ride, 3 x 1 minute very hard to finish.
2 - 90 minutes unstructured but mostly tempo in the aerobars the whole time
3 - 23 mile TT, race effort and gear rehearsal, 47 minute race, 60 minutes total on the bike
4 - 20 minutes easy, less than 50% of threshold
5 - 2 x 20 at projected 40k tt power (or perceived exertion if you're without a power meter), on a 70 minute ride
3) Running
Pete Jacobs runs to the crown, Kona 2012
A. Run 4-5 times per week.
i. Never increase mileage more than 10% a week. (Eg. If you ran 35 miles last week, you can run 39
miles this week).
B. Add a weekend long-run that you slowly build-up to a certain length depending on target race distance.
C. Once you've mastered A and B, add in Speed Workouts.
Example Speed Workouts:
i. Track Intervals.
ii. Fartlek- a fun workout wherein you have a single continuous run with random or patterned
variations in speed. Eg. 30min run, 10 min warmup- 10min of 30sec hard then 30
sec easy, 10min cool down
iii. Tempo- 10min warm up, 40min at 10km pace, 10min cool down.
4) Combining The Three
A. Brick workouts, or the combination of swim-bike or bike-run into one consecutive workout, can be incorporated into one's training to varying degrees. Professional triathletes have varied success, from Jared Shoemaker eschewing them entirely in favor of run-specific speed workouts, or others like Craig Alexander riding 100 miles then running 10 repeats of 1 mile at 5:00 pace. These workouts are inherently challenging, so they should not be added to a week already higher than normal in volume and consider having scheduled rest following the day of a brick workout. Bricks are best conducted with the swim-bike or bike-run sequence. A good way to approach bricks is to have only one of the workouts be difficult, and use the workout in the other sport as a warm-up or cool-down. The benefit to doing a brick dramatically decreases with a delay greater than 20min between the workouts.
Examples: 20min bike easy followed by 5mi tempo run
Hard Swim workout followed by a 30min spin on the bike.
5) Nutrition : this includes eating a healthy, natural diet for your general lifestyle and refining your race-specific diet in training. This is perhaps the most important element of your training.
Natural/non-processed foods in life and then processed/sport-specific foods in training and racing is a great way to start, but most importantly, experiment and find out what works best for you
6) Recovery: take one day each week completely off. I prefer a weekly schedule of Monday off and a light day Friday, as I do my longer workouts Saturday and Sunday. Proper recovery extends into nutrition (eating a small snack within 15min of a workout), along with injury prevention (I take two days off if I ever "feel" an injury coming on, such as an unusual pain or level of soreness), and preventative measures (using a hip roller, icing, etc...).
7) Periodization- the phenomenon of having a chronological progression to your training. First, an early Adaptation Phase transitions you from off the couch to training regularly, then a long Build Phase is comprised of high-volume, low-intensity work. Then a Strength Phase follows, wherein the amount of volume is reduced but the intensity increases (more tempo workouts), however your "long days" (long run and long bike workouts) may continue. Then finally there is a Taper prior to the event. Do not think of the taper as a period of rest- think of it like the final sharpening of a blade where you precisely reduce your volume, such as by 50% per week for two weeks, and refine your mental health prior to the race.
Periodization also occurs within each phase. I recommend a 3 week block in training, where the 2nd week builds on the 1st with more volume, and the 3rd week is a recovery week of lighter volume. Check out this chart to see it visually:
This excellent chart was obtained from this article on periodization, from ironmiketraining.org
8) Execution- all of the previous seven steps could be for not if this step is not properly addressed. Execution here is meant to encompasses a mentality of diligence, wherein you anticipate properly completing each element of your training and racing, while planning for any accidents that may happen along the way. There are innumerable examples of how one could properly execute, here are a few to get started: arrive at transition early on race day, mentally walk through your entire race (especially the transitions), learn- this is a weird one - how to use the bathroom race morning (for me, cup of coffee + pre-race jitters = good to go), prior to starting and thoughtfully set up your transition area accordingly, have your bike gearing set up for the grade you'll experience leaving transition, have your bike's brake calipers properly adjusted so they don't rub, put anti-fog in your goggles prior to race day, and be able to change a flat tire quickly (this is, sadly, an extremely rare ability among triathletes. I practiced at home and am down to ~2min 40sec).
There we have it- the entire sport of triathlon more or less distilled into 8 simple steps.
For more information on the topic, I found Matt Fitzgerald's, "Triathlete Magazine's Complete Triathlon Book," to be an excellent introductory text when I first took up the sport.
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