Swimming

Swimming

Saturday, February 18, 2017

How to manage 10 hour training weeks


How do you fit in 8-10 hours of training per week in a normal life is a question I get quite often when I talk to non-triathlon friends and tell them what I dedicate my time and energy on. Well, for sure it is not easily done, but let me tell you how I structure my time to manage it.

So first of all, why 8-10 hours per week? Well, for me, a person who really doesn’t have an athletic background or real talent for doing sports (I was at best mediocre at school at athletics), it is the time I see required to build up a strong aerobic ability to do half ironman distance races at good times for my age group. I might maybe get off with less time, but training three disciplines in a constant fashion and getting the speed I look for (1:30 min/100m swim, 4:00 run pace and 36 km/hr bike speed) does require both volume and strength workouts. The training programs I follow means 2-3 sets per week in each discipline in average, which sums up to 7-8 sets per week, thus 8-10 hours per week in average. Some weeks less (5-6 hours), some more (15 hours).

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Race schedule 2017 and start of training season

After some half hearted training during November, I have now managed to squeeze in two months of well structured and focused training, averaging about 40 hours per month, which is fairly high for myself. This year I am not doing Vasaloppet (cross country skiing), so I have been able to use that valuable training time to work on the triathlon disciplines. I have a target to improve my bike power mainly, while managing to maintain my run fitness over winter without injuries so I can start of at a good level when the outdoor season starts end of March.

I have also put quiet a lot of time in swimming, increasing to three sessions per week, to see if I can get some improvements in this area as well. That is much more difficult as it depends very much on technique, hence in January I have started swimming with a coach once per week. Lost of things to work on, and as a 45 year old it is difficult to change…
Training wise I am following more strictly now a four week block structure: three weeks of high volume (10 hours per week approximately) and then one week of reduced volume (5-6 hours) to build up strength and compensate. I have gone through three sets now, and can see at least some improvement in the biking with increased wattage, going from 250W to 290W on my 4 minute intervals. By following more strictly the four week structure I also hope the body will use the compensation weeks better to build up endurance and strength after the three weeks of hard workout. Looking at the development of training load/fatuigue and performance I have a much better development this year compared to 2016, so so far, so good!