Endurance Nation | Online Triathlon Coaching & Community

This article outlines the thinking that has driven Rich and I to combine communities and create Endurance Nation. As background, our collaboration began (modestly) in 2005 with a joint camp held in SoCal. We continued “dating” in 2006, holding another California Camp and adding a mid-season camp in Lake Placid. The latter sold out with over 20 folks and we quickly began to realize our combined value.

As individual coaches, more than 1,000 athletes have benefited from our training plans, camps, clinics and coaching. Over the past 5+ years we have worked with almost every athlete “type” imaginable, from total newbies to Kona qualifiers. Independent of one another, we developed similar “less is more” coaching philosophies, where endurance athletes maximize their training time through the application of intensity and endurance, not simply by piling on “junk” hours of training. In short, our focus and coaching experience has been directed towards the tools and perspective an the age group athlete. Our experience and methodologies enabled Rich and I to build successful coaching businesses on opposite ends of the country…but we knew that we could do more.

With that perspective, we began putting our heads together around how we could combine our businesses and really create something of value for our respective athlete communities. At IMCDA of this year, we brainstormed the concept of Endurance Nation over the course of 2 days – and more coffee than you can imagine – at an Econolodge. Less than five months later, we are proud to present Endurance Nation to the world.

The Endurance Nation Coaching Model
Proven Training Plans + Coach Input + Community + The Real World + Affordability = High Value
Proven Training Plans
Online training plans hit the triathlon world big in 2005, with us as the market leaders, frankly. From the beginning we were committed to delivering a great deal of supporting information at the time of the sale, continued support after the sale, and continuous improvement: each year we learned new stuff, refined our tools and implemented these into our training plans.
The bottom line boils down to two things: what you’ve been told/heard/read/hope works, what has been proven to work by the smart guys. There is what works for the pro or the time-unlimited athlete, there is what works for the time constrained athlete. Our training plans are effective because they are:

1. Tested across 5 years and 1,000+ athletes — the plans just get stronger with each revision.
2. Framed within the time constraint box of the common age group athlete.
3. Entirely based on sound, scientific principles.

Coach Input
In the Endurance Nation model:

• Athletes are grouped by training plan or self-grouped by race focus; either way our coaches are able to keep tabs on multiple athletes using our platform’s profile information, training data sheets, and our killer online forum.
• Athletes are able to share information and resources under the watchful eye of the EN coaches, ensuring consistency and quality.
• Information is not only readily available via the EN Library; it’s accumulated and processed daily in the forums, groups, and between members. Someone is always asking the “dumb” question; hence we all win by learning from the answers.
• Multiple perspectives and / input on a single idea means each concept is well-tested and viable. Don’t think so? Add your input to the mix and help make it stronger!

Community
Endurance training can be a lonely, intimidating affair. With so much to learn, only so many hours in the day, and limited local resources, you are typically steered towards online spaces to connect with other athletes, read articles, and Google training ideas and race reports. There are many sites out there that serve the triathlon community, but each has it’s own take on what the athlete wants:

• Pro athlete + Industry News that’s nice to browse during the lunch hour — but has zero relevance on an individual athlete’s training, racing, or lifestyle;

• Content and Articles from coaches and other smart guys — resulting in an aggregation of disparate and often contradictory advice and viewpoints. Haven’t you had the experience of sifting through a that the athlete has to sift through, with Article “Do This” article often sitting next to an Article that says “Do That?”

• Online Forums to share information and training advice with no personal accountability leads to name-calling and flaming — it’s hard to find the good information and terrifying for newbies to join in;

• Social Platforms for peer athletes to review equipment, give advice, and share blogs.

In order to solve these challenges, Endurance Nation is not only run and supported by proven coaches, it also combines all of the aforementioned elements into one house:

• High quality training plans in their third iteration and proven across 1000+ athletes.
• Active support via online presence of coaches + accountability to your peer athletes.
• Quality content + new research unified under consistent, coherent themes.
• An online community housed in a state-of-the-art platform.
• Actual online profiles so you can interact…find a Race Report you like? You can email the author or see what else they are up to by searching the forum.

Real World
Race events are amazing gatherings with super-cool, fitness-crazed people just like yourself…too bad you are so busy tapering/racing that you don’t have the time to meet any of them. We solve that problem with our social network, but enough about all this virtual stuff. We are committed to having a strong, real world presence. Last year alone we attended IM Arizona, IM CDA, IM USA, IM Louisville, IM Hawaii, IM Florida, as well as several HIM races. The only other folks who attended more IM races were the announcers! Ask yourself:

• Will your coach organize virtual training weekends where you can train side by side with fellow teammates doing the same race?

• Is your coach going to offer a training camp for you + your teammates on the course of your next A race? Has your coach seen that course in person?

• Is your coach going to BE at your race, to create a team atmosphere for you through uniforms, social events, talk you down from the ledge, or jump out of bush on the run course to deliver some well timed motivation, not to mention the mojo of racing with your fellow Team EN members?

• What is the value of being able to plug your family into an organized race day support structure on race day while you’re out there doing your thing?

Why Build Endurance Nation?
Just as you want to be successful in your career, a good coach wants to be successful in his/hers. After the first couple years of full-time coaching, becoming or remaining a successful coach is less about what you (the athlete) think of as coaching and more about being a successful business person. Being a good technician only gets you so far, usually to an income cap. To grow above that ceiling, the coach must evolve as a business person or face stagnation. Rich and I have chosen to evolve by changing the game to include athletes; to build a community, not to sell high priced widgets. There is surely a space for one-on-one (1:1) coaching, but it’s not in our future. Here’s why.

Premium 1:1 Coaching is a Business Model, Not a Coaching Method
This ceiling is largely a function of the business track that most coaches follow: a person (we’ll call him Bob), usually the local fast guy but sometimes also the local smart guy, is approached by local athletes to “help me with my training.” Money and training schedules exchange hands and over time and usually through word of mouth, more and more athletes seek Bob’s services. Bob reaches his first fork in the coaching road—raise : raise his fees or take on more athletes. After an initial period of “I’m- not- worthy” self-doubt, Bob gets over it and raises his fees. More people want to work with Bob at his new, higher fees and Bob reaches the next critical fork in the coaching road: scaleable or unscaleable. Recognizing this fork, when it happens, however, requires a good deal of strategic thinking, and in our experience, most coaches are too busy thinking tactically (what do I need to get TODAY to eat tomorrow) to take the elevator up to the second floor, look down and make strategic decisions.

As such, the coach is usually led down this road:

• Raise fees but still more people come.
  Hire associate coaches to provide coaching services to athletes attracted by the brand.
• These associates in turn raise their fees.
• Before long the brand has a squad of X athletes demanding local services: swim, bike, run workouts, training camps, and maybe an actual physical location to perform training and other high-end services.

But the core of this coaching business is providing 1:1 coaching services for a premium fee. In our evolution, we realized that 1:1 triathlon coaching is a business model first, a coaching method second. In other words, did Coach Bob Incorporated make a conscious decision to offer expensive 1:1 coaching because it felt it was the best coaching method available? Or was Coach Bob Incorporated led down the path toward this tier of service by making a tactical decision at a fork in the coaching road, choosing the high end 1:1 coaching model as default business model? Our experience dictates that it’s the latter.

The Future of Coaching
Like other service-based industries, endurance coaching will eventually consolidate into two segments: expensive access to elite coaches and low-cost access to generic templates and very basic information. There are already coaches out there who offer 1:1 coaching @ $1500/month (that’s $18,000 a year). As you well know, there are also countless magazine articles and templates out there for free. The assumption inherent in this comparison is that the high-dollar, premium coaching is a “better service” because it costs more. You believe this because you are working with a “professional,” and because you have access to their attention and input.

The the media, industry, and culture founded on the 1:1 coaching model have conspired to tell you that you are special and unique, and that you need a custom solution different from everyone else out there. Yes, you are special, but not as special as these people (and your mom) have lead you to believe. We are all human beings, subject to the same laws of physics, physiology, and, as age group athletes, similar time constraints. As such, through our experience with well over 1000 athletes, we’ve learned that a library of training plans can provide a 95% solution for almost any athlete. The remaining 5% is the exception, not the rule. We’ve learned we can address these exceptions by:

• Creating learning tools to help you become a better self-coached athlete so you can figure out on your own what you need: the Wiki, podcasts, videos, articles, etc.
• Making ourselves available to you to help you when you get stuck, via forums, conference calls, webchats, and other highly efficient tools.

And so the role of the coach in a 1:1 relationship is to perform items #1 and #2 in a 1:1 environment. The very nature of this business model means that your coach has little time to learn, reflect, innovate and bring all of this to you — s/he is too busy reading emails, checking files, working a full-time job somewhere else, etc. The true power of the Endurance Nation model is that your membership enables us to provide you with more outstanding information and resources; we are not limited by the number of people in the house; in fact, we are incentivized by it.

But before we finish, this is a short list of support products we’ve provide to ALL of our 300+ athletes, none paying more than $15/wk, in the four months since our founding in November, 2007:

• ENForum, with over 10,000 posts.
• Podcast, Planning Your Triathlon Season
• Webinar, The Basic Training Week
• Virtual Training Camp: MLK
• Webinar, Epic Training Weekends
• Webinar Series: Training and Racing with Power, 3 x 90′ sessions with expert panelists.
• The Endurance Nation Beginner Triathlete Project
• 17 podcasts recorded for our ENGroups Off-Season athletes, one for each week.
• 20 podcasts recorded for ENGroups Ironman program, one for each week.
• 16 podcasts, HIM, on due end of January.
• 35 videos uploaded.
• Plenty more on the way…

So ask yourself: what has your $$$ coach done for you lately? Is it worth a 500-1000% markup on this list above? And remember, we are not over-night startups in this business. With 13+ years in the business between us, we’ve both been at $350+ per month, with full coaching rosters, for years. We’ve made a business decision to go a different route, reserving our 1:1 services for local athletes who we can create value for with our physical presence and leadership.

Conclusion
The future isn’t high-dollar 1:1 coaching, it’s a hybrid — an online athletic community run by coaches and populated with your peers. As a member of Endurance Nation you will be an active participant in defining this cutting-edge community. There is no other place like it in the triathlon world. Membership in Endurance Nation will give you:

• Access to other smart gals/guys as we bring their expertise to the community via video, audio, etc.
• A community that will, with few exceptions, participate in every long-course triathlon in the country next year. Talk about value!
• Accountability and feedback from your peers and us coaches. Feedback is right there, 24/7. You will get faster, there’s no doubt about that. There is no interpretive bias, feedback is instantaneous, and you’ll get faster!

Whether you are a hard-core athlete or a total newbie, Endurance Nation has a place waiting just for you. See you on the inside!

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Now that we’ve established our broad training principles, let’s move forward by discussing their application to the training season and beyond.

In this chapter we will:

• Layout our overview for the Long Course Season;
• Discuss each training period in detail;
• Finally, we’ll put it all together for you by laying out the Perfect Ironman Season.

Endurance Nation Season Overview

OutSeason Overview
Of all the items in our tool-kit, we’ve found our views on OutSeason training, what you know as the Off-Season, are most counter to what you’ve been told. Open a tri magazine or check your email between October and February and you’ll be met with a constant stream of messages that have been recycled year after year until they’ve become firmly woven into the very fabric of our sport:

• Go long and slow now so you can build a bigger engine. Then make that engine faster when it matters: closer to the race.
• High intensity training is risky. You need to pay your dues, earn the right to get fast through being slow for a long time.

Recall from Chapter Two that fitness is the ability to do work, and we create and retain that ability by…doing more work. Here’s a tale of two athletes to illustrate our point: Waiting Walt and Get Faster Today Tom.
Waiting Walt
Walt begins October with a Functional Threshold Power (FTP) of 220 watts and 10k pace of 8:00/mile. He throws a leg over his bike or laces up his shoes, does his training at the prescribed intensities he’s read about in the latest tri-mag. It’s cold outside, it’s dark outside and so, while his frequency may be the same as In Season, his intensity continues to be low (per tri-mag) and his volume is low (see cold and dark). He rides and runs precisely on Zone 1, maybe Zone 2, confident he is building his “engine” and will get faster when the time is right. But let’s look at the training math: frequency is held constant while volume and intensity both decrease = Walt does less work = his body adapts by becoming less fit. If you cheese in the gym, you get weaker. You know this. Why should endurance training be any different?

Get Faster Today Tom
Tom’s game is much simpler. His Functional Threshold Power (FTP) is also 220w and 10k pace is 8:00. He is completely focused on watts/pace/speed at FTP or LTHR. On the bike, he might set himself of goal of X minutes per week at his FTP, increasing the watts he dials in on those sessions as he sees his FTP increasing. He does similarly on the run, using his 10k pace to calculate is other training paces, but is much more cautious than on the bike. He knows that running intensity is more risky than cycling intensity. He still does it, he’s just careful.

At the end of 8-10wks our two heroes meet for some field testing and then have a beer afterwards to discuss their training and where to go from here. Walt’s FTP is 225w, maybe 230w, and 10k pace is 7:45-50. Tom, on the other hand, has lifted his FT to 235-240w and his 10k pace is closer to 7:30. However, as Walt and Tom enter the next phase of their training Tom has a 10-15w and 15-20″ head start on Walt. That’s a lot of catchup, folks. In our experience, even if Walt gets on board the Tom Train, Tom will continue to increase this delta even more because he “gets it.” He has learned that work works, he’s not afraid to work, and he has a significantly different perspective than Tom on what work truly is. Walt’s experience, when riding with Tom (mostly likely on his wheel) will be WTF!!!

At this point in time, and we’ll discuss this more below, both Tom and Walt now realize that they need to start putting in the volume to get ready for the race.

• Walt: Is now trying to build “fast” at the same time he is trying to build “far.” He cannot manage the two simultaneously and spends his lunches sleeping under his desk (we’ve been there).

• Tom: He has built “fast.” He has more flexibility to separate his fast training from his far training. If he wants, he can consolidate his fast, focus on his far, and introduce bits of fast training into or around his far as he assesses his fitness and recovery from day-to-day, week-to-week, etc.

Building Your Perfect IM Season
OutSeason Dates:
The length of your OutSeason is entirely dependent on life and the weather, although a 16 week window is optimal.

• Able to ride outside most if not all year: October through late February.

• All others: About Nov or Dec through March or April.

OutSeason Keys:

1. Total Focus on ROI: weather, daylight, family, and, most importantly, the need to conserve your head across a long season, demand that you maximize your return on a minimum of time investment. In the OutSeason we build the FAST that will put the FAR under when we are closer to your race and you have more time available. Again, this structure is a necessary product of the “real life age grouper” condition first, good training scientific sense second.
2. Get FAST while the competition gets FAT. In Chapter Two we discussed our ideas of base, LSD training in contrast to our perspective of fitness as simply the ability to do more work, and that it’s never too soon to start going fast.
3. Zero weekly and session volume goals. Workouts are usually described as the Main Set only, volume is up to you. The only exception is the long run, which do have volume goals for to support your half marathon race focus (see below).

OutSeason Focus Points:

• Swim: Very much an individual, return on investment (ROI) decision. We feel that the time, logistical, and mental cost of swimming often does not yield a high enough ROI to justify much time, if any, in the pool during the OutSeason. We’ve done this informally with our athletes for years but in the Fall/Winter of 2007-2008 we had the opportunity to apply this principle to over 80 athletes in our ENGroups Off-Season training program. After a week or two of kicking and screaming, they eventually came around, especially when they began to see the gains they were making on the bike and run compared to the relatively small gains they knew they would have seen for the same or even greater time investment on the pool. That said, it is always a good idea to attend a swim clinic in your area and, if you are going to swim, swim for technique and form, not fitness.
  
• Bike: Build 40k bike fitness, ie, GET FAST! Insert athlete on bike, ride hard/push the watts, done, repeat. No regard for cycling volume. 3-4hrs per week on the bike is entirely common for our athletes at this point in time.
  
• Run: Build half marathon fitness through high frequency running, tempo runs, and a long run just long enough to support the half marathon goal.
  

OutSeason Results Summary, 2007-2008
October 2007 through April 2008 we trained approximately 80 athletes through these protocols via our ENGroups program. We have seen some incredible gains made in just 16 weeks and are working on getting the data for everyone compiled. This section will be completed when that data is made available.

Transition Overview
From a physiological standpoint, the OS paradigm we outline is effective and scientifically sound; it’s valid for making fitness gains all year long. The only problem? You aren’t a robot. In our world, fitness is the ability to do work; increased fitness is the ability to do more work. But an individual’s ability to do the the training in the first place is a combination of physical and mental focus. Asking you to sustain that focus for longer than 16 weeks is typically too much; the further away your race is, the more this is true..

Improvement in the off season is important for long-course athletes, but like anything else in life, too much of a good thing can be not good at all. A typical error folks make at this juncture is to look back at their fitness 16 weeks ago, draw a line to where they are today, and assume that further improvement will maintain the same trajectory. Instead of waiting for the inevitable drop off / plateau / break to happen, we preempt it by building in set aerobic periods. In the off season / after a big race this is called “Transition;” during the IN season we encourage you to use Big Weekends or Big Weeks to “pay for” the low-volume, high-intensity approach of our training model.

Deconstructing the Off Season
People generally view in-season and off-season as two big chunks of a year. For our athletes, it’s more a function of managing two distinct, recurring work periods across a season: Intensity Focus and Aerobic Focus. The intensity focus fits your real-world life and racing goals, while the aerobic focus helps you adapt to the specific demands of long-course triathlon. These demands include managing nutrition, flexibility, strength of core/lower back/neck/triceps, ability to sit and ride, ability to pace effort over longer course.

• Within the EN system, no work phase lasts longer than 16 weeks.
• Each Work Phase targets an event.
• Length of a Transition period should be 1 week for each 4 weeks of work.
• IN season aerobic periods are self-selected according to athlete’s schedule.

Transition Goals
The overall goal of Transition is to set things up so that you emerge ready to train again. The last thing you want to do is realize mid-season that you are burned-out and need to back down. To be more specific, you need to be ready to tackle another 10 to 16 weeks of work (depends on how far away your next A race is). If you can’t talk yourself into the next work cycle, you just aren’t ready yet.

Transition is little more than a basic week you can execute as long as needed until you are ready to start hitting it again for your next race.

Transition Week Template

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Workout 1:	Day Off	Bike, self-selected intensity	Swim 2-3k, technique and moderate speed focus.	Bike, self-selected intensity	Swim with an Endurance Focus; 3-4k including drills and long sets.	Bike	Long Run
Workout 2:	Day Off	Get It Done Run: brick, PM, whatever, just keep frequency	Run 45′ including 30′ @ top of Zone 2 for distance.	n/a	Just run, max of 45′.	No Saturday run, be a human for 21-22hrs each weekend day	n/a

Note: The schedule listed above is specific to Half and Full-Irondistance athletes, short course athletes can cut back if necessary.

Other things to do during Transition include:

• Focus on nutrition / body composition — it could be hard to change nutrition back to “civilian” levels.
• Invest “extra” time in flexbility and core strength work.
• Line up things for your next block (equipment, nutrition, holidays, etc.).

InSeason Overview
InSeason starts when the weather and your life says it should. That said, it’s very important that you choose early season races commensurate with your training time available during the OutSeason. You New England April Ironman Arizona athletes know what we’re talking about!

The snow melts, the sun shines again, and TeamEN athletes all over the country emerge from their Pain Caves to rip the legs off their base-training competitors (see results above). Volume goes up because it can, not because it has to and largely levels out at a volume that is repeatable and manageable, week after week.

General Preparation Phase, or Training to Train
The themes are:

• Continue to build FAST.
• Integrate FAR into your training in a manner that is manageable and repeatable, week after week. Don’t burn the SAU’s you’ll need later!*
• Continue to address body composition, flexibility or core strength issues, etc.
• Goal is to get all your homework done so we can enter Race Prep ready to rock and roll.

* SAU = Spousal Approval Unit

Quality still trumps Quantity
You will get to ride longer as your season progresses, but we still demand hard work and keep the sessions shorter than your local tri-geeks will like. Again, in our world we don’t do volume for the sake of volume. Any training session is nothing more than an opportunity to deliver a training stress to your body. If we can deliver a vanilla 4hr training stress with a focused, 3hr ride, then why would we waste an hour of your time. More importantly, that 3hrs is more repeatable, week after week, and doesn’t burn the SAU’s in March you’ll need in July. Time efficiency, ROI, always.

Days Off and Recovery
Minimal days off in your plan and not so much recovery “weeks” as recovery “days”. Why?

1. Over the years and through our experience we’ve crafted schedules that build recovery into each training week. Monday flows into Tues flows into Wednesday, etc. Our athletes’ first steps are often to scan the plan for the weekly day off and the recovery week in Week 4. When they tell us they don’t see it, we ask them to take the plan for a spin and get a feel for the rhythm of the schedule. One consistent comment we hear from our athletes is how well thought out everything is and how, just as they feel like they’ve been brought to the brink, things ease up at just the right time.
2. We feel that that “need” for a recovery week is a symptom of ineffective scheduling, a combination of doing too much too soon and paying more attention to the details of the workouts than to the recovery between sessions. In fact, as coaches, we spend FAR more attention considering how to schedule recovery between sessions than we do to the nuts and bolts of the actual workouts. Therefore, we feel if we can build recovery into every week of the schedule, then we can eliminate or reduce the need for a recovery week. Rather than a scheduling a light week, we have you rest hard on the front end of the training week, retaining your key sessions of the week, and therefore 25% of our key session for the training month. This is huge.

That said, if you feel the need, at any time, to take a day off, go for it. This is a static plan and there is no sense following it into a brick wall. At best, any training schedule is merely a suggestion that you back up with your common sense, your experience, and the support we can provide for you in the EN forum.

Testing
We don’t do testing for the sake of testing. Whenever possible, we encourage you to extract objective measurements from your testing (watts and pace) and use these in your training.

• Heart Rate Athletes: You may find you need to do two tests in the first 8 weeks of your program, particularly if you are beginning the program with a low level of fitness. Your body will adapt very quickly which will usually change your LTHR and the PE associated with your heart rate training zones. Once things stabilize, there is no need to have you hammer yourself just to confirm that your LTHR is, still, 175bpm!
• Power Athletes: 1-2 Functional Threshold Tests (FTT) on the front of your plan to establish your baseline. We then encourage you to the data analysis tools explained in the Wiki, the Power Webinar, and in the forum to extract your FTP from the data rather than formal testing.
• Pace Athletes: A 10k road race, time trial, half marathon or similar activity is an excellent opportunity to extract a new VDot score and recalculate your training paces. We’ll cover this in much more detail in the Training with Pace chapter of the Wiki.

Race Preparation Phase, or Training to Race
We’d like you to think of Race Prep as beginning with the “It’s On Day.” This is the day on the calendar that marks the transition from training to train to training to race. From a mental relaxation about training to now it’s time to get serious. You’ve finished all of your homework: you’re at your goal training weight, you’ve had your bike fit addressed, you’ve taken care of any nagging injuries, etc. You’ve prepared your family for the shift in your focus, which we only ask you to keep for 7-11wks. Hopefully, in February, you put some epic training weekends on the family schedule for June or July and have been diligently racking up the SAU’s for months and months. Time to cash them in.

But wait…there’s no need to go crazy. On a week to week basis, you’re only going to ask for about an additional 2hrs of training, as an extra hour tacked on to the weekend rides. Everything else stays relatively the same and we use the tool of Epic Training Weekends to really boost your fitness in small but effective and time efficient chunks.

Other Race Prep Items:

• Positional and Nutritional Fitness: what you may hear referred to as “race specific” fitness, we prefer to think of as Positional and Nutritional Fitness. That is, the ability to ride at your race pace and fuel yourself in the position you’ll use on race day. This is definitely a consideration for a successful race day and so in Race Prep the road bike gets put away and we lock ourselves into the aerobars as much as we can on every ride. Rich likes to specifically strain his neck and lower back by forcing himself to look far up the road, even have training sunglasses with a thick frame that he has to look over or under.
  

• Big Weekend/Week Training: We’re not 100% against big miles, low-intensity work. There is a time and a place for it, however, and how you use this focused volume is largely a function of your race day goals. We offer some basic guidelines on how to implement this work here and here.
• Race Rehearsals: These are critical parts of your Race Prep, as the work you have been doing during the year has made you into a lean, mean, racing machine. And that’s NOT who you need to be on race day. These rides are the only time of your season that you want to emulate Waiting Walt; steady, smooth, and well-paced as you ride well and prep for the run. To learn more about our Race Rehearsal Protocol read on in the EN Library here and here.

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You’re almost there! Almost ready for that moment, 30′ into the bike, when the chaos of the swim is over, you’ve got your legs back and now it’s just time to go to work and get it done. No more thinking about the race, no more planning, no more tomorrow. Your entire world extends only about 20′ beyond your front wheel. Live in the now, just get it done!

In this chapter we will discuss:

• Peaking
• Race Week
• The Endurance Nation Four Keys of Ironman Execution
• Race Prep and Tactics
• Race Day Checklist

Peaking

We are often asked about the proper long-course peak, or taper. Athletes want to know how much to decrease their training, where to continue working to stay sharp, etc. Ultimately they want a formula, some kind of random “X hours times Y effort divided by D discipline ALL multplied by a percentage of total V volume for that given week” which will somehow yield the appropriate amount of training to be done. There are some serious problems with this taper assumption, and they are important to cover quickly so that you know where we are coming from:

1. Most Folks Don’t Have A Plan In The First Place: You know these folks well. They are the ones who either (A) do whatever it is you do that weekend, kinda just tagging along and then copying your workout. These folks are easily identified as they are always asking, “Soooooo, what are you up to this week?” The second type, (B), just do the same thing week after week. These folks will do the same century ride, every weekend, for three months (ouch), usually followed by some sick 10-mile run. Then they’ll run the next day just to “practice” running on tired legs (don’t even get us started on h that one!). Not only is the lack of creativity enough to crush you mentally, the fact that there is no real recovery means that most of these athletes will have no race in their legs – regardless of the taper – by the time the big day arrives.
2. A Formula Would Assume That We’ve All Done The Same Work Thus Far: Even with the athletes we coach, for the same event, there is such a huge disparity in the VOLUME of work done as well as the INTENSITY of the specific work that if we were to just assign a general protocol for tapering, everyone would lose out. Think about it. When’s the last time you completed all your specified training in a given week? To the letter; right to the intensity specified? You know, where family, work, weather, landscaping, darkness, or some other factor didn’t interfere? That’s what we thought. Most IMers just want that security for themselves as they prepare. Which leads me to my next point…
3. A Huge Desire for a Special Taper is Usually Linked to an Underlying Concern For The Event: In other words, folks who really want a taper, really badly, are simply expressing their concern that their training, up until now, has been ineffective and maybe, just maybe, this magical taper protocol will help them to salvage their race day. If we had any marketing savvy, we would spend all my time/resources on just selling taper plans instead of coaching athletes for 6+ months. Folks are so nervous at this point that they are renting Zipp 808s for race day (even though they’ve never averaged faster than 18mph in training), buying supplements they’ve never tried before, checking out aero helmets online, even posting to forums about whether or not they should shave ALL their body hair for race day (yeah, getting that bit behind your elbows / right below your triceps makes a killer difference in the aeroposition).

If you find yourself in any of these places, it’s time to take a deep breath and relax. Your work is done. Repeat after me: My Training IS Done. There is, seriously, no tangible performance benefit to be gained from any last killer workout in the final three weeks leading up to your IM race day. Sure, depending on your strengths/weaknessess, fitness level, and race day goals, there might be a few key workouts left to do, but in general you can do more damage to your race day now than anything else. In our five + years of coaching, we have seen it all, from athletes crashing their bikes, to breaking a collarbone or elbow, tweaking a tendon or calf muscle, even doing some ridiculous carbo-loading protocol that led to them looking more like a cheese-puff than a triathlete.

Just Do the Plan

As for workouts, in the last three weeks, just do the plan! The workouts in the last three weeks of your training plans have been tested over 1000 athletes. Trust the plan, trust your fitness, do the plan. Now is not the time to make up any homework you missed.

From our perspective as coaches, we have three distinct goals for our tapering athletes.

1. Mentally Prepare Them To Execute On Raceday: There are a lot of important elements to executing your race well. Mess up any of these (pacing, nutrition, gear, focus, etc.) and your day can be done before you know it. As most athletes have been training 6+ months for this event, during the taper period we really try to help them learn their race plan. We write it to them. We talk about it. We have them repeat it back to us. We call them two days out and we discuss it again. There can never be enough conversation about the plan, and the “newer” the athlete, the more important these discussions are. An appropriately paced bike at IM Wisconsin (say 6:45) despite all the fast bikers, led one of our athletes doing her first IM race to pass over 800 people on the run as she ran a 4:30. 800 people. If we could tell you how to pass almost 50% of the finishing field on raceday, you’d listen up. Well, it’s called having a plan and sticking to it. Check it out.

2. Physically Prepare Them For Raceday: Yes, this part includes some workout stuff. But first, it’s more important that folks have the right gear for race day. Racers should pack every tri thing they own to bring with them, including stuff for rain, cold, heat, etc. They should have their bike overhauled two weeks out so they can test it. They should check their run shoes at six weeks out to make sure they are in good enough shape for race day. They should be doing their final tune up rides/runs in raceday gear with all the stuff on their bike so they know what does/doesn’t work. They should be rehearsing their transitions (at least once physically) so they can execute without freaking on race day.

3. Impart A Sense of Perspective: This is the most important thing we can do. Without this perspective, folks can really get themselves out of wack. They can get uptight, angry, twitchy, mean-spirited, carried-away, you name it. Here’s the deal. You are going to do an weronman. You are physically-able to swim bike and run. You have the support of your family and friends. You have the money to be able to buy the gear you need. You have the job that allows you to take time off to travel and race the event. You have the means to buy the food you need to eat, etc. You are an incredibly fortunate person.

The Endurance Nation “Four Keys” To Ironman Execution

Here is the Endurance Nation no-nonsense look at long-course racing. While the essay below is intended for athletes racing iron-distance events, the lessons are applicable to the half-iron distance as well.

1. Execution, not Fitness. All you’ve done for 9 months is build a vehicle. Ironman racing is about how you DRIE that vehicle, it is not about the VEHICLE ITSELF. The majority of athletes on race day are fitness-focused (look at my T-shirt, look at my abs/veins/etc, look at how fast we can go in the first hour of the bike, etc.). As coaches we can make you stronger, but we can’t fix stoopid if you decide to race your own way.
   
2. The Line. Nothing on race day really matters until you reach The Line on the run. The Line is the point at which continuing becomes very, very difficult. You define success as simply not slowing down at The Line. EVERYTHING before The Line is simply about creating conditions for success for when the Line comes to you. Additional Kool-Aid flavored thoughts we’d like to put in your head regarding this point are:

• • A successful race = a good run. There is no such thing as a good bike followed by bad run, period. In our world, if you showed up with solid run fitness, had a “good” bike and a poor run, we will ALWAYS assume you boogered your bike pacing unless you are missing a limb or are in the ICU with an intestinal parasite.
  • If you think you can ride faster than we’re telling you, prove it by running well off the bike first (preferrably not attempted for the first time on IM race day).
    
  • Ride your “should” bike split vs your “could” bike split. Your Could split is what you tell Timmy you could ride on a good day, when you’re out together for your Saturday ride. If you say you “could ride a 5:50,” your Should split is likely 6:00 and defined as the bike split that yields a good run (see above).
  • Don’t eat the paste. Ironman in general, but especially the bike leg, is at best a special ed class: you only have to show up with your C game to be at the head of the class. If you find yourself doing the opposite of everyone else, you’re doing the right thing. If Jimmy and everyone else is in the corner eating the paste, don’t join them! Sit down, do what we’re telling you, and don’t eat the paste! Lots of people passing you in the first 40 miles? That’s good, don’t eat the paste. Going backwards through the field on a hill? That’s good, don’t eat the paste.
  • Think you made the mistake of riding too easy? You now have 26 miles to fix that mistake. Make the mistake of riding too hard? That mistake now has 26 miles to express itself, to the tune of X miles at 17-18′ walking pace vs X miles at 8-10′ running pace. Do the math. How is that bike split going to look as you are walking/shuffling the last 10 miles of the run?
  • Every time you feel yourself about to get stupid, look at where you are. Are you at The Line? No. Then sit down, shut up, do what you’re told and don’t be stoopid. Please.
    

3. The Box: all day long you are going to race inside a box defined by what you can control. Ask yourself “What do we need to do right NOW to create the conditions for success at The Line? wes what we’m doing right now counter to this goal? From what we’ve seen first hand on the IM courses this season, we believe you should ask yourself “Am we participating in some short-term tactical masturbation?” If yes, STOP!!

On the swim, the Box is the space your body occupies in the water: focus on your form and the rest will come. On the bike, the box is probably about one aid station long. On the run, the box begins as 2-3 aid stations long but often diminishes to “from here to the next lampost/manhole cover/mail box.” Regardless:

• • Keep the box as big as you can for as long as you can.
  • Keep in the box only the things you can control. Let go of the rest.
  • Exercise this decision-making process inside your box (the “OODA Loop”): Observe the situation, Orient yourself to a possible course of action, Decide on a course of action, Act.
    

4. The One Thing. If you swallowed the Kool-Aid we’re serving you here, you will show up at the Line, in your Box, ready to git’erdun and simply not slow down. But we’re not done yet. There is still some psychological stuff you need to address.

During the course of your race day, expect your body to have a conversation with your mind: “Look, Mind, you’ve had me out here slogging away for 132 miles. This is really starting to get old and very painful. You need to give me a good reason to keep going forward. wef you can’t give me a good one, we’m gonna slow down and you can’t stop me!” Before the race, you need to ask yourself “Why am we doing Ironman?” In other words, you need to determine what is the One Thing that put you in this race? To finish in the daylight with a smile on your face? To run a 4:10? Whatever your One Thing is, be absolutely clear and rehearse your mind/body debate beforehand. But be warned: your body can be a helluva good negotiator at mile 18, especially if your mind hasn’t prepared its rebuttal arguments beforehand.

Unity of purpose creates clarity of focus, yielding breakthrough performance.

What have we not talked about so far? The things you are likely most torqued about: heart rate, pace, speed, watts, how to eat, what to drink, etc. We believe that if you can keep yourself focused on the Four Keys above, the rest of the day is relatively simple and you don’t need to worry about these relatively small details. wen other words, all the whiz-bang guidance in the world can’t help you if don’t have your mind right about the Four Keys above.

But because you’re a Type A Triathlete and you want the details, here they are:

• The Swim: Swim only as fast as your ability to maintain form. When you feel your form go, slow down. Counting strokes is an excellent technique for bringing your mind out of the race and into the Box of maintaining your form.
• The Bike: JRA (Just Ride Along) for about 45-60′. Then shift from JRA to Easy (5:45+ should split) to Steady (sub 5:45 could split). Gauge how well you’re doing by how well you’re NOT doing what everyone else is doing. REMEMBER: You only need your B-game to excel here!
• The Run: Jog for 4-6 miles, with a jogging, do-no-harm pace and heart rate cap. Jogging is defined as a pace you could sustain for hours if we kept feeding you. After 4-6 miles, shift from jogging to “running,” running comfortably, getting what you need, and preparing yourself for the Line, where things become very uncomfortable. At the Line, typically mile 18, just suck it up and giterdun.
  

Conclusion
That’s it, that’s as complicated as racing Ironman needs to be and we can’t say it any more simply. We’ve basically given you a Vegas betting strategy, having managed and observed many rolls of the dice. wef you do what we have outlined, you will have a good day. The more you stray towards the Ricky Racer side of the execution scale, you begin to rattle the dice.

Athlete Feedback on Four Keys
The results and feedback of our athletes speak for themselves:
“First, the things Rich and Coach P preached were a lot of common sense, but somehow they seemed to hit home.

1. There is generally not failure to train, but failure to execute an effective race plan. Test your plan prior to race day, know it, use it.
2. Don’t get caught up in other people’s “stuff”, e.g., trying new things 24 hrs before the race. Do the things you have tested long before race day
3. Race your race. wef the other guys want to blow past you on the bike, let them. You WILL see them again. Know your training data and use it.
4. Prepare yourself mentally for the arguments your mind and your body are going to have toward the end.
5. Swim: only as fast as form stays good.
6. Bike: pace within your ranges (power/hr) ignore “speed”
7. Run: start SLOWLY, you don’t want to have to walk 26 miles,the real “race” starts @ mile 18
8. Enjoy what you’ve worked for and know that while you are suffering Rich and Coach P are somewhere sucking down a Starbucks!!”–Gina

“I passed 20% of the field in my first Ironman marathon, and I am far from being an elite runner. I credit the EN masters with allowing this to happen. Simple, repeatable concepts & key words helped me to remain patient, focused, and detached from other competitors. Look out, ‘cause we’m taking another sip of their Kool-Aid in ’08.” — Dan

“Pre Kool Aid – I had completed 3 previous IM without Kool Aid. They were each about survival rather than completing the event with confidence. I walked the majority of the marathon in each of these events. I honestly thought that maybe I wasn’t cut out to run the weM run. Post Kool Aid – An hour run PR. I ran the whole run. Finished with confidence and absolutely “flew” on the second half of the run. Thanks to the EN pacing guidelines, I ran a 10 minute negative split. It seemed surreal, to think I could actually enjoy the IM run. What an incredible experience! More coaches need to preach execution just as much, if not more than the training phase.” — Alex

Now that you have a sense of how we’d like you to execute your race, it’s time to cover more salient details…such as what you need to pack! When preparing for a triathlon, regardless of the distance, it is important to make sure that you have everything you need (and more) as there is almost always something extra needed. Here is a checklist to help you prepare yourself for a triathlon.

Pre-Race

• All race documentation (in case they do not have you as a registered athlete)
• All hotel documentation (same deal as above)
• USA Triathlon Membership Card (or $10 for race day license)
• Map and directions to the race site, race host hotel and to your hotel (wet will only add stress to your race if you get lost the day before the event)

Race Equipment

Swim: Wetsuit, Goggles (tinted?), Skin lube to prevent chafing from wetsuit

Bike: Bicycle (wet’s been forgotten before), Helmet, Bike shoes, Floor pump, Race belt for number (or you can use provided safety pins), spare tubes, CO2 cartridges + adapter, multitool/allan wrench set, sunglasses, arm warmers, light gloves, vest.

Run: Running shoes, Shoe inserts (if you wear them), Socks (optional for bike, mandatory for run), Hat/visor, Hydration belt.

Nutritional supplies: Bottles, Bars, Gels, Salt tabs, Race numbers, etc. from checking in at the host hotel (Don’t forget to do this)

Other: Sunblock, Sandals (post-race “friends” for your feet)

Transition wetems (not all for weM events): Beach towels for ground, hand towels to wipe feet off, garbage bags + tape to cover handlebars overnight.

Night Before

1. Have a good, sensible meal. Now is not the time to try some magic elixir or anything else funky.
   
2. Put this on your mirror: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast. An action performed smoothly and deliberately is faster than an action that is forced and rushed. All day, especially in T1, take a few seconds to gather yourself then go about the task at hand. Chances are you will make fewer mistakes and be faster in the end.
   
3. Go to be bed early.

Race Day

1. Wake up early.
   
2. Read mirror: Everything today is “Slow and Smooth.” Relax, take deep breaths, make slow deliberate movements. Get into a rhythm and let it carry you to the race.
   
3. Have a large breakfast, 600-800 calories. You want to replace all of the calories that you burned while you were sleeping. If you think you will be nervous and unable to eat a big meal, either wake up early, eat, and go back to sleep, eat less, or maybe use a meal replacement drink.
   
4. Plan your morning so that you get to the race very early. You can fix a lot of problems if you have time to fix them. Show up pressed for time and you’ll just be rushed.
   
5. Set up your transition area and then ask someone to take a look and offer any suggestions.
   
6. Check to make sure your bike is in the proper gear.
7. Do powermeter offset, pre-ride flight check, etc.

Start time minus 40-50 minutes

1. Go for a very short run, specifically to accomplish the following: View the transition area, from swim entrance to your bike, then from your bike to the bike exit. Know where your rack is, how to get there, and where to head once you have your bike. Also, walk from the bike entrance to your rack, so you know where to go when you come in from the bike.
   
2. Find the entrance to the transition area from the bike course. Walk it and look for hazards or landmarks. Don’t rely on course markings or workers to tell you where to go. Learn it yourself. You are responsible for knowing where to go.

Start time minus 20 minutes

1. Take one last look at all of your gear: the essentials are helmet, sunglasses, shoes (bike and run), bike in proper gear.
   
2. Put on your wetsuit, spray the legs with Pam, don’t get any on your hands.
3. Take a gel with lots of water to top of your glycogen (optional).
   
4. Suggestion: wear your race singlet under your wetsuit (trying to put on lycra over wet skin is a disaster).
   
5. Walk to race start. When you get there, ask someone to zip you up.

Start time minus 10-15 minutes

1. Get in the water and warm-up.
   
2. If navigation looks like it might be tricky, get in earlier. Specifically, pick out navigation markers above the horizon, and try to get a view of the exit from the water.
   
3. If it is an ocean swim, practice 2-3 surf entries and ask the lifeguards if there is any current. You may want to adjust your start location or planned line.
   
4. Get out of the water 3-5 minutes before start.
   
5. Self-seed: if you know you are a strong swimmer, get in front. wef a weak swimmer, get in the back or to the side. Use common sense here.

Swim

1. If it is a large, mass start, expect to be knocked around. wet helps to keep your head down.
   
2. Unless you are a very strong swimmer, avoid the temptation to sprint at the start. Conserve your energy and be patient. The purpose of the swim is to get you on the bike. Just relax and concentrate on technique and on being as efficient as possible.
   
3. Things to help you relax: focus on breathing, make sure to exhale continuously between breaths. Count your strokes. Try to ignore everyone else.
   
4. Navigation: lift your head to sight every 6-12 strokes. wef you know that you tend to swim to one side, put someone on that side.
   
5. Drafting is legal, use it to reduce how hard you work and for navigation.
   
6. When you are 200-300 yards out from shore, begin to kick more and think about what you are going to do when you exit the water.

T1

1. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Slow, well-rehearsed movements, rather than rushed, inefficient movements.
   
2. Expect to make mistakes. wef you do, fix it and carry on.

Bike

1. Expect your heart rate to be very high: you have no blood in your legs and now you are asking them to work. They need some time to get started. You can help this by spinning at a low to moderate effort.
   
2. Make an effort to go slow the first 5 minutes: spin, breathe deeply, let your heart rate settle in.
   
3. After 5 minutes, shift gears and start racing!!
   
4. Race hard and smart: best strategy is to negative split the bike, second half faster than the first half. Consciously hold something back the first half, then turn it up the second half.
   
5. Try to relax, have good cycling form, and use every opportunity to conserve your energy.
   
6. Obey all race rules: safety first.
   
7. For a sprint race, you should really only need to drink maybe a half bottle of water or sports drink. Regardless, practice in training first.
   
8. 1-2 minutes out from the transition area, it’s time to quit racing on the bike and time to start preparing for the run: get out of the saddle and stretch, especially your calves and hip flexors.

T2

1. Same drill as T1: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
   
2. Expect to make mistakes and if you do, fix them and carry on.

Run

1. Expect your legs to feel very awkward: take short strides and conserve your effort so that your body has some time to adjust. wet usually takes about 5-10 minutes to feel as “normal” as you are going to feel.
   
2. Negative split.
   
3. Don’t forget to smile for the finisher’s photo!!

Popularity: 17% [?]

We hope that Chapter One gave you a broader perspective of the sport. Let’s now begin to dive into the nuts and bolts of the Endurance Nation Long Course Training Method.

In this chapter, we will:

• Present our Five Keys of Long Course Training
• Explain each of these keys in detail
• Compare our model side by side against the more traditional model currently in the tri-culture.

The fitter our athletes become, the more other athletes want to know about our endurance training protocols. Some of these emails come from athletes outside the EN system, looking for a magical way to get faster. Others are from folks inside the system, usually commenting on their fitness gains and better overall results on fewer hours of training. The best part? Our approach is simple to understand, even easier to implement and backed up by science.

The way we think of training isn’t that different from the “regular” version of periodization that has permeated multisport. We do, however, have a real problem with the visual representation of periodization as a pyramid — and the misconception that one needs to “graduate up” from stage to stage to have optimal performance. There are many coaching practices that uphold the idea that there is an aerobic debt that needs to be paid before one can be successful at long-course triathlon. This is simply not true, and our athletes are living proof that there is another way.

The Five Keys are entirely a function and the need to both maximize and reserve your training time investment for as long as possible to meet real world constraints.

Everything we do, the workouts, the structure, everything, flows backwards from the fact that you are a real world age group athlete. Period. The fact that it also happens to follow the science is an added bonus. However, we feel very strongly that any discussion of how to train that does not begin, in the first sentence, with defining how much time you have to train, is largely invalid. We can’t talk about what goes in your training box without first talking about how big your box is. LIFE — not a spreadsheet, not a coach, not a book — dictates the size of that box. This is an absolute, do not pass go, thing you gotta get through your head. This is all just a game and it MUST fit within your life.

Use the Five Keys to put together a plan you can do week after week, holding off on cashing in your SAU credits (Spousal Approval Units) for as long as possible.

That’s it. You could close your browser right now and have 90% of what you need to be a successful Long Course athlete. Success in this game, in the long term, is about getting your head screwed on straight regarding where you should be spending most of your time (not training) and how to maximize your ROI when you are training.

Let’s now discuss each of the Five Keys in more detail:

I. Real-World Volume
Any discussion of training protocol MUST begin by defining the time available to train. Period, do not pass go. 95% of triathletes have jobs, families + commitments that limit training time; our approach reflects this reality. Any attempt to define what to put into a training week without first quantifying the size of that training week is inherently flawed. We discount or ignore any coaching protocol that is either not framed in this perspective from the start, or is framed from the perspective of 18+ hours per week. That is not the real world.

II. Maximize Return on Time Invested
What activities will yield the greatest fitness and performance returns for the time you invest in training? If you can achieve the same results with a 1:30 ride as you can with a 2:30 ride, why waste an hour of your day? More importantly, why would you want to compromise the more important parts of your life (work, family, etc) when you don’t need to in order to reach your race day goals?

III. Fitness = Ability to Perform More Work
The measure of your current fitness is the ability to do work: to move the mass of your body through space, via wheels, water, or shoes, at pace/speed/watts X for distance/time Y. “Fitness”, as you know it, is simply your body’s ability to perform work at a specific work rate. Your body is very efficient and will only adapt itself to the stresses that you place upon it. Any training session is nothing more than an opportunity to load the body with a “training stress/” The cumulative effect of this stress applied over a week, a month, a training period, etc, is that your body is forced to adapt to this ever increased stress. The expression of this increased adaptation is the ability to do more work. You call it becoming more fit. However, in the current endurance training world this loose definition, “fitness,” opens the door to a variety of interpretations. Namely, that there are different flavors of often mutually exclusively fitness: aerobic fitness, “go fast” fitness, etc. This is a myth. The fact is that all exercise longer than about two minutes (?) is almost 100% aerobic and there really are no different flavors of aerobic fitness, other than “fast” or “slow,” we suppose!

In our world, it’s very simple:

• Fitness is the ability to perform more work.
• My body is currently adapted to perform work at a specific work rate.
• I introduce my body to increasing levels of stress and it adapts.
• The expression of this adaptation is the ability to perform work at a higher work rate, ie, I go faster for longer

In other words, WORK WORKS!!

“Race specific fitness,” the ability to exercise and maintain your body at effort level x for time y…yes, we will address these issues later, not now.

IV. Intensity = Most Flexible Tool to Manipulate Training Load:
The vehicle in which you do this work and apply training stress to your body is your training week.

Weekly Training Stress = Frequency x Volume x Relative Intensity

• Frequency: number of swims, bikes and runs per week. Largely dictated by your real life and is relatively static. You can ride three times, run four times and swim four times in a week because life SAYS you can! Once you reach the frequency that life lets you have, you’re done.

• Volume: the length of these sessions, measured by time. Total volume becomes relatively fixed, as determined by real world commitments, climate, need to preserve your head across a long season, etc.
• Relative Intensity: my hard is my hard, yours is yours and to each his own. Intensity is infinitely more flexible and therefore becomes our primary tool for manipulating the training load of each workout, of your entire week, of your training program.

You may hear that our program is an “intensity-focused” program, that we have our athletes doing a lot of intensity. It is and we do. We are focused on intensity in that it is, again, the primary tool we use to force an adaptation. Why? Because it’s the best tool for the job for the age group athlete!

V. The Best Predictor of Performance is Pace/Watts at Functional/Lactate Threshold
You’ve probably heard the term Lactate Threshold. As exercise intensity increases, lots of things start to happen. At some point our blood chemistry changes. With testing we can identify this point as a marker, from which we can infer other, more difficult to measure, things are happening.

At Endurance Nation we prefer to use “functional” metrics. We are interested in how much work you can DO, not what happens to your body while you’re doing it. How fast can you run a 10k? How fast can you swim 1000m? How fast can you ride up that hill? What are your average watts for a 60 minute time trial? Remember, in our world fitness is work and “how fast can you go/how much work can you do” is a direct and functional definition of your fitness.

Training to lift your Functional Threshold – or your ability to work at Lactate Threshold - also lifts all paces and intensities below that threshold. Imagine, for a very brief moment, that you’re weight lifter and your current bench press is 200 pounds. You want to get stronger and eventually lift 250lb. You go to the gym, put weight on the bar that is some percentage of your current strength of 200 pounds, and then you LIFT IT. You don’t take your heart rate, you don’t “think” it’s 150 pounds. You put 150 pounds on the bar and you LIFT IT. You progressively add weight, your body adapts and before long you can now bench 250lb. Two things here:

1. At 200lb, 170lb was still a pretty big deal.
2. At 250lb, 170lb is cake and you now “idle” at your old 200lb.

In our world, whenever possible, we use the same tools: put a measurable amount of work on the bar and LIFT IT. Currently run a 10k at 9′ pace? Structure your training in relation to that 9′ and you will get faster. Currently ride 20mph/200 watts for one hour? Measure your training relative to those objective data points and you will get faster. Very simply, if you want to swim/bike/run fast, you need to swim/bike/run fast.

The critical point here is that fitness itself can be quantified, measured, and tested over time. Traditional endurance training places a significant emphasis on building “endurance” by spending lots of time swimming, biking, and running at low intensities for long periods of time. Fitness in this case is merely a bystander; it may or may not improve based on the workouts being completed. Without a diverse and challenging program, complete with benchmarking and repeated testing, athletes (and their bodies) training under the traditional paradigm learn to swim, bike and run at an endurance pace. These folks are essentially exercising themselves into a rut.

It may be helpful if we put the two side by side and compare:

Endurance Nation vs the Traditional Training Model

Problems with the Commonly Accepted Endurance Training Paradigm

Our issue with the mainstream isn’t that it doesn’t work. It’s that much of it is has been sunk into the concrete of an endurance culture that confuses anecdotes and voices from the mountain top with science. Mainstream training methodologies for long course triathlon are founded upon a murky combination of heroes, hype, and history. When you really take a hard look at it, when you dig deeper into the 7th article on base training you’ve seen since November, much of what is written is by a guy who read a book by a guy who read a book, who…and when you find the “source” of this training model, it turns out to have no basis in what has been proven to work in the lab. We know because we used to be “that” guy until we scratched our heads, began to look around us and dig a little deeper. This opus is largely us sharing with you lessons we’ve learned training real people in the real world and actually questioning the way it’s supposed to be done.

As a grassroots sport that’s suddenly all grown up, our sport is rife with stories of epic training and racing that still hold relevance years later. To this day, you can find elites and age group athletes alike putting in mega-hours and performing special brick workouts that are reputed to hold the key to getting faster. Common themes among these approaches include the assumption that more is better (more time, more miles, etc.), the assumption that speed will come from working at predominantly aerobic or steady levels of intensity, the assumption that a massive personal sacrifice must be made in order to achieve one’s utmost athletic potential.

Our biggest “beef” is with the pro-turned guru. The mega-volume and long hours worked for him, right? What you don’t realize is this guy was able to put up that volume because he so tightly control all the variables in his life that all he had to do is eat, train and sleep. If you sit on a bike for 15hrs, run 60 miles and swim 20k per week guess what? You’re gonna get faster! But to apply those training ideas to the life of an age group athlete, averaging 8-14hrs per week, is just ludicrous. To sentence that same athlete to 3-5hr trainer rides in the winter so they can “build their engines” is simply negligent.

• On Mileage: From our perspective, longer isn’t better, it’s just…longer. More time on the bike, on the road or in the pool just means you are spending more time training. It doesn’t mean you will be faster. Consider this: if you only ride at 18mph, even for hours and hours, what makes you think you will ever be able to ride 21mph comfortably? To return to our weight room analogy, you KNOW that no amount of lifting 100lb will make it any easier to lift 250lb. Or rather, the amount of time you’d need to spend lifting 100lb is so huge that it makes no sense. Why should endurance training be any different from your experience with any other physical activity?
• On Duration: Via the commonly accepted endurance training paradigm, shorter workouts are considered short cuts. Give me 45′ on a trainer, I’ll show you how “easy” going shorter can be.

• On Base Training: Base Training doesn’t have to be focused on in huge blocks of training every year in order for Aerobic Fitness to exist, to grow, to improve.
  • It is developed annually w/ each year of training / racing
  • Its development is a lifetime in the making, starting in childhood w/ youth sports
  • Huge chunks of aerobic training time are not a prerequisite for racing success
  • Aerobic Base is the last element of your fitness to disappear

• On Sacrifice: Quality training takes focus and discipline, but true sacrifice should never have to enter the equation. No athlete exists in a vacuum; our balanced approach included room for spending time with your friends, family, etc. Excellence is not an all or nothing proposition.

Finally, consider this: if your primary means of increasing training load and forcing your body to adapt is training volume…where does it end? 15hrs/wk the first year, 18hrs the second, 22hr the third…? Seriously, think about that. Just how much volume can do before you’re living in a cardboard box under the freeway?

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We’ll post each chapter here and on the blog as we finish the drafts. We’ve got a guy on the wiki and are nown driving the ball forward. Please subscribe to the blog for latest updates and feel free to forward the entries to your friends and/or encourage them to discuss these chapters here in the forum.

Chapter One: Lifestyle and the Cool Stuff Vehicle

Before we begin to deliver to you the nuts and bolts of how we do our long course thing, we wanted to share with you some broader themes and insights. We are leaders, often with a thirty thousand foot view of the long course athlete and what it means to many to compete at the Ironman distance. Our positions as mentors and guides to long course athletes of all abilities, backgrounds, and life situations creates a unique perspective that we’d like to share with you.

The most common theme we see with long course athletes is that of using the finish line to mark a transformation in their lives. The modern world presents us with very, very few physical challenges we can use to really “test what we are made of.” Few of us face the extraordinary or even routine physical struggles that our ancestors did. It is human nature to want to test ourselves. Triathlon, and specifically Ironman, is often viewed as an extreme sport and otherwise normal people are attracted to the allure of earning a title that is widely recognized as the “real deal.” We’ve seen many, many athletes draw a line in the sand 18 months away, and use the process of moving towards that goal to create magnificent change in their lives.

Our athletes begin this transformation from many different starting points. Some, at the very beginning, see an Ironman finishline 18 months away and focus on that goal from day one. Others are lead to that line through an almost natural evolution of the endurance athlete: increasing fitness creates a demand for ever increasing distances and challenges until, one day, they are hitting the submit button on an Ironman registration. And so the journey begins, usually with faces buried in the trees of training schedules, training zones, gear, gadgets, and books. So much to learn, so much to get done and only so many hours in the day. However, one key transformation that happens with 95% of our athletes is this: fitness ceases to be something they do and becomes what they are. They begin to live fitness as a lifestyle.

And so, as your coaches, we would like to begin our journey together by sharing with you the vision we have for you at that finishline:

Your Fitness Is A Vehicle For Doing Cool Stuff

As you wake up and, in your quest for that finishline, and just get it done, day after day, we encourage you to never forget that you are creating a vehicle for doing cool stuff. Aiming for a really big goal is inspiring at first, but since we are humans, even the most amazing of challenges can become mundane at some point. Never lose sight of the fact that the fitness, confidence, skills, and self-knowledge you are developing on the path to your race can all be applied to doing other cool stuff and even boring, every day real world stuff!

We hope you find Endurance Nation to be a place where you can learn, share, prepare, and network with other athletes who share your passion for doing cool stuff.

To hear more about our perspective on the sport, please visit the Endurance Nation Beginner Triathlete Project and listen to the Chapter 1 podcast.

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