Endurance Nation | Triathlon Coaching, Ironman Training, Half Ironman, Beginner Triathlon » 70.3

The Ultimate Winter Training Guide for Triathletes

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:53:42 +0000

Every year we watch thousands of athletes compete on the Ironman and 70.3 race circuit — after all as coaches we travel to most of the major events on the race calendar. Race day is special not just for what happens, but because it’s the culmination of months of training and focus.

While race day is all about execution, all the training leading up to this point determines the nature of your race. Speed isn’t something magical that shows up, it’s earned. And no part of your training is more speed focused than what you do in the winter.

You Will Plan A Full Season

The first thing you should do is sit down and create a roadmap for your full season. This will be your overall guide to building fitness and allowing you to peak for your A race of the year. Using the Endurance Nation approach to seasonal fitness, you will incorporate time for building your fast in the OutSeason and follow that up with ample time to add far in the Race Prep phase. Here are two articles that look at the season planning process in more detail: A Season Map and Season Planning Case Studies.

You Will Select Appropriate Activities

The hardest part of the wintertime siren song of volume is the true variety of options. Outside of the usual triathlon disciplines, you can ski, skate, hike, ride cross or MTB. You can look outside of aerobic work and find yoga, crossfit, core strength, weight training and much more. Before you know it, you could easily be singing up for the same amount of training time you did in the winter!

Instead, you’ll drop the swim workouts unless you average slower than 2:00 per 100 yds in the pool. You won’t lose that much swim fitness and it only takes a few weeks get it back (here’s another article where you can learn about our no-swimming policy for the winter).

If you want some diversity in your winter training cycle, you can pick one or two outside activities to complement the work you are doing to build your fitness. An example would be skate or crosscountry skiing that you did once during the week and once on the weekends. We vastly prefer you picking one additional activity to replace swimming, something that you pursue in-depth, as opposed to filling your calendar with too much.

You Will Skip “Base” Work, Focusing on Fast Instead

Your competition will break out the fixed gear bike. Could be there’s a big marathon that everyone in your hood will want to do…like Disney. Whatever the endurance challenge might be, let your them do it. The more time your age group competition spends in Zone 1 means less time they’ll actually be building speed or getting faster. They don’t know any better, because they are doing exactly what the elites and pros do — pile on the miles.

The unspoken challenge of a volume-oriented approach is being able to do enough miles in zone one. If you take a look at the average pro triathlete training schedule, they are riding 15 to 25 hours a week at that level. Then you add running and swimming to the mix. Sure the volume works; the only problem is you can’t have a full-time job, family, or other responsibilities if you want to get the full benefits because you simply can’t do enough training — and recovery from it — for it to work. In other words, one five-hour ride a week simply won’t cut it.

Focus on Training ROI

As a savvy age-group triathlete, there are many other things weighing on your mind outside of trying to log more hours than anyone else you know. The winter is an excellent time to focus on excellence in everything you do outside of your regular in-season training: you have work, social and family commitments that can use your attention. You do this now to earn the right to take time in the summer for your training and racing.

Instead of just piling on hours, you will focus on improving the critical metrics of threshold power (bike) and pace (run). This means hard interval training in both sports, three sessions each a week, with workouts limited to about an hour. That’s right, a baseline of about six total hours of training.

This gives you plenty of time to recover from each workout, and to dominate in the other areas of your life that matter. After three to four months of this focused training, your bike and run fitness will be at season peak levels. You’ll be ready for a short break and then it’s time to turn your attention to adding some volume on top of this newly created speed.

Conclusion

A lot of what you’ve read here runs contrary to traditional triathlon training. Don’t let that deter you; we have put over 3,000 triathletes through the OutSeason since 2007, and the data and testimonials don’t lie. So before you fall inline with your training partners, remember that the only “foundation” you need in the winter is speed related.

After all, as an Ironman or 70.3 triathlete, the actual race-specific training of the final twelve weeks is more than enough time to ramp up your endurance. It’s time to break with tradition and find some new fitness…good luck!

Want To Learn More?

Please take the Endurance Nation FREE five-part “Rethinking the OutSeason” Email Seminar. We’ll cover these topics above in much greater detail while also teaching you the basics of training with power, pace, annual scheduling, and much more. Join the more than 5,000 athletes who have benefitted from the EN approach to winter training!

Visit Endurance Nation to create a FREE Five-Day Trial or Shop our Triathlon Training Plans!

Endurance Nation’s Triathlon Fundamentals

admin — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:53:35 +0000

It’s Time to Go Back to Tri School — You Ready???
photo credit: mueritz

We initially were going to title this post something like: “Everything I’ve Learned About Triathlon Has Come From Coaching Over 5,000 Athletes, Not From A Random Book” But that wasn’t as catchy and we’re pretty sure no one would read it!The reality is, there’s what you learn from books and then there’s what you learn when you apply that book stuff to your own training (25 IM finishes, including Kona, between us) and the training of thousands of real-world, age grouper long course triathletes. There’s what you learn when you coach 15 people at a time…then there’s what you learn when you guide 500+ athletes per year to Ironman finishlines around the world.

So put down that TriRag with all the sexy models, bling components, and the latest and greatest way to lose 20lbs while training to qualify for Kona in just 12 weeks. Do your best to quell the urge to pull out your wallet and spend your way to triathlon success.

Just because you have a full-time job doesn’t mean that you need to spend 10% of your annual salary in order to be competitive. In fact, as you’ll see below, there are plenty of things the average person can do to improve their fitness, strength and ability to race that don’t involve tons of money or time.

1. Work Is Speed Entering the Body (aka Go Fast to Get Fast)

As a triathlete, you move your body down the road, either by running or cycling. Your body has mass and by moving it at a certain speed/velocity you are performing work.

You and I weigh the same and we run the same three mile course. I average 8:00 miles and you average 9:00 miles. I’ve moved the mass of my body (the same as yours!) over the same distance in less time. I’ve done more work than you. Lets call it 300 units to your 200 units.

All things being equal (conditions, our fatigue level, etc) the reason why I can do 300 to your 200 units is because I’ve forced my body to adapt itself to be able to support a workload of 300 units. Your body will only adapt itself to the workload that you expose it to, nothing more. Doing more work forces your body to adapt. So how do you develop the ability to go from running 3 miles at 9:00/mile pace to running at 8:00/mile pace like me? You need to do more work.

The most time-efficient way to do this is to spend more time running at / under / near 8:00/mile pace: half-mile repeats, mile repeats, pick ups, etc. Hard work plus recovery will make you stronger, eventually enabling you to reach your 8:00/mile pace goal.

A well thought out and proven training program will prescribe work that’s appropriate for your level of fitness, turning the dial up and up, and then backing off a bit just when you need it.

Most importantly, work is measurable. You can measure watts on a bike, or pace on a run. You can quantify the % of level effort you are able to sustain, and then improve upon it on a regular basis. Leave the thoughts of just adding volume or training for 25+ hours a week for your single friends or those TriRag profiled athletes. As an age grouper with a job, a family and other responsibilities, doing more “work” in your training is the most direct way to see improvement.

To put it another way, if your primary definition of “more work” is “more volume,” turning up the dial so that a 12hr week becomes 14hrs becomes 18hrs becomes 20hrs…becomes what? Where does it stop? When you’re divorced, unemployed and homeless?!

We’ve learned, through experience, that our primary tool to impart greater and greater training stress to our athletes is to manage the intensity of the workouts first, volume a very, very distant second.

Weekly training volume for the average grouper is largely fixed by life, family, job, life and life. However, the intensity at which you do workouts within that fixed volume is infinitely flexible. This is why intensity, not volume, is the primary dial our age group athletes use to adjust training stress within each training week.

2. Fast Before Far (aka Volume is Easily Added)

Since 2007 we have been teaching our “fast before far” approach, where we use the winter months to improve our athlete’s speed and strength at threshold. We can afford to do this higher intensity training because in the winter there are no volume demands on our training schedule and there are plenty of opportunities to recover from the hard training.

The net is that our Endurance Nation OutSeason plan has between six and eight hours of weekly training — total! — across four or five months of the year.

So in the winter, roughly October/November through February/March, we drop the volume dramatically, turn up the intensity…dramatically…making our athletes much, much faster. The average Endurance Nation athlete improves his/her Ironman or Half Ironman race pace on the bike by 1.5 to 2 miles per hour, and over a minute per mile faster on the run…often making them 30 minutes faster than last years version of themselves, long before they have even started to ride longer than 90 minutes.

Once the weather turns and we can add volume without burning the athlete out on a trainer, we drop the intensity and add more miles. Spring is our favorite time of the year, when we unleash the Team on their training partners and hear the stories about dropping the pack, putting the hurt on, and leaving lots of folks scratching their heads.

Triathlon training culture and old-school coaching books continue to sell the need for many long, aerobic miles before speed can be properly added. The result is snow-bound, age group athletes doing 4-5hr trainer rides, and 12-15hr training weeks in February, months and months before their goal race. Not only is it an inefficient way to train, the mental cost to the athlete is off the charts. Since we all live in a world where 5-7hrs per week in the winter — when it’s cold, dark, and months and months from goal race — is simply more appropriate, our training approach shifts to low volume/high intensity because it’s simply the best, most time efficient way for real world age groupers to train.

3. Volume is Race-Specific

Just because volume isn’t the means by which we build your fitness over the season doesn’t make it any less important inside Endurance Nation. In fact, we provide multiple options for our Team to put in some epic training: our annual Tour of California Cycling Camp, various Triathlon Rally events on IM courses, member-run camps across the country, and even members-only plans for big bike and big triathlon-specific training weeks.

Each of these different opportunities shares a single common thread: they are all focused opportunities ranging from three to seven days in duration. They are structured to have an impact on your actual race performance, with the timing of the Texas Rally, for example, set to approximately 4 weeks prior to the event.

We’ve found that these relatively short volume pops are a much more time-efficient way to dramatically boost endurance — assuming, of course, that you have the time to do them. Rather than requiring them to nickle and dime their families for multiple 5-6hr training days every week for months and months, we work with our athletes to put a Big Bike or Big Tri Week/Weekend “X” days out from their race.

With your Fast already built, it’s easy to add Far to the equation because volume isn’t actually that hard. If you and I were planning on a 2.5-hour ride, but I rolled up and said let’s go 3.5-hours, it ain’t no big thing. You wouldn’t tell me that you have to train more before you could ride another hour with me…you’d simply go get another energy bar. Done.

It’s not the individual dose of volume that can be damaging, rather it’s the cumulative effect of repeat days, weeks and months of such training that can cause serious issues such as injury and over-training.

For the average age-group triathlete, the weekly volume of training required to complete an Ironman or 70.3 is at or above the basic level of time they can sustain.

By leveraging intensity early in the year and then dialing the focus over to volume as race day approaches, Endurance Nation takes a season of massive training hours and boils it down to a four- to eight-week focused exercise.

Remember, the reason why the Endurance Nation athlete doesn’t do months and months of 5-6hrs long rides, 3hr long runs, 2hr brick runs, isn’t swimming 3x week in January for a race in September, or spending 2hrs/wk in the gym is because Rich and Patrick have learned better through their own training (aka School of Hard Knocks) and through coaching thousands of age groupers just like you. We have done the 3-hour tempo runs, the back-to-back to back 120 mile cycling days for weeks on end, the 25-hour training weeks until implosion.

We’ve learned what works and what doesn’t–through our own extensive training, racing, and coaching experience–so you don’t have to experiment and, frankly, make the same mistakes we did.

4. Race Day is about Execution not Fitness

Conversations in the triathlon space are dominated by discussions on how to train and what $$$$ aero widget to buy. How far/long/hard/often should I bang my head against the wall each week and which $150 bottle is going to save me 15 seconds on race day?

We’ll say it again because it bears repeating: we’ve raced over 25 Ironmans between us. We’ve brought thousands across finishlines in the last decade. TeamEN has 20-45 athletes at every US Ironman. Either Rich or Patrick has been AT every one of those races to support the Team, for years. In short: we’ve made, managed, or observed more rolls of the Ironman racing dice than probably any two coaches on the planet.

Our Number One Observation is that race day is about execution, not fitness. Regardless of how they got there, how they trained, etc, 95% of Ironman athletes at the starting line are very, very fit.

What separates people at the finishline the most is how they drive that fitness vehicle on race day. The race course is littered with the bodies of very fit guys and gals…who just don’t know how to race.

Therefore, we view proper race execution as free speed and about half of our members-only resources are dedicated to teaching everyone on the team how to race with the collective experience of 1000’s of Ironman finishes — an extensive Ironman How-To, webinars in swim, bike, run and nutrition execution, power and run pacing calculators, threads to collect sneaky speed tips on bike set up, gearing, and much more.

It’s important to remember that there are many different ways to get stronger and faster as a triathlete. Endurance Nation’s approach focuses exclusively on the age-group athlete who has real-world constraints and commitments, but the lessons we have learned above can help anyone looking to seek improvement. And who knows, your family might just enjoy being on the sidelines watching you execute the perfect race!

To learn more about Endurance Nation, our triathlon coaching and triathlon training plans, please visit us online at www.EnduranceNation.us.

Visit Endurance Nation to create a FREE Five-Day Trial or Shop our Triathlon Training Plans!

Beginner Triathlon: Avoid These Five Mistakes

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:00:57 +0000

Triathlon’s popularity has exploded in recent years. From single-sport athletes looking for a new challenge, to non-athletes interesting in using the sport as a vehicle for lifestyle change, every race sees first timers standing at the starting line next to veterans with years of tri-experience.

As coaches of a 500-member triathlon team, with nearly 20 years experience between us…we’ve seen it all. Rich is a former Team in Training head coach and the founder of the Pasadena Triathlon Club. Patrick started by leading triathlon classes at the local HealthWorks gym and running Masters Swim classes. In short, working with beginners was the foundation of our successful coaching careers.

We’d like to share our experience by telling you what NOT to do, and then offer you a free opportunity to jump several years up the learning curve.

Mistake #1: Investing in Gear, not Yourself
Three sports, each with its own complement of whizzbang expensive gear. Shiny magazines full of ads trying to sell you the latest carbon aero widget or supplement. For whatever reason, triathlon has a culture of buying speed rather than learning how to train and race more effectively. At the end of the day, it’s about the engine (YOU), not the $$$ parts hanging off of your bike. Invest in yourself, your tri-education and your fitness early on; Save the whizzbangery for later.

Mistake #2: Thinking the Swim is an Exercise in Fitness
You’re fit (or not), you can ride a bike and run (or not), so why is that 12-year old girl in the outside lane swimming laps around you?! Because she’s been swimming 1-2hrs per day, 5-6 days per week since she was six. She has the technique…you do not.

For you, swimming is not a fitness exercise, it’s a skill, like learning to play a musical instrument. Rather than just banging on the keyboards for an hour a day, with no idea what you’re doing, invest in quality swim technique instruction to maximize your time in the water.

Mistake #3: Waiting to Get Faster on the Bike
In our experience the bike is a very low risk activity: assuming your bike fits you, and you don’t crash, you’re just not going to injure yourself by riding too hard. There is no need to wait to begin getting much faster on the bike.

If you want to ride faster you need to ride faster and the time to begin is a soon as you throw your leg over the saddle and clip in. Work as hard as you can for as long as you can…then recover and repeat.

Mistake #4: Bringing a Running Plan to a Triathlon
It’s very common for new triathletes, especially those coming from a running background, to insert a run-only training plan into their weekly triathlon training schedule. If not that, then most try to hold on to the running schedule they’ve done for years, but now with the addition of cycling and swimming.

This approach is a surefire way to overtrain and risk injury. You’re training for a triathlon, not a 5k, 10k, or marathon. Ignore the addition of cycling and swimming into your training week at your own peril.

Mistake #5: Forgetting to Have Fun!!
Three sports, three sets of gear, how do I fit X number of workouts into only 5-6 days per week?! It’s very easy to get caught up in how much there is to learn and master, and to get stressed out and often obsessed with your first race.

We’ve got news for you: this is all just a game and it’s supposed to be fun.

Invest in your head, delay $$$ investments in gear, expect to make a LOT of mistakes in your first few races (you won’t be disappointed) and promise to laugh at yourself when you do!

For many triathletes, our multisport passion and pursuit of fitness merge into a singular pursuit: fitness as a lifestyle, not simply an exercise activity. Rather than meeting the boyz at the bar at 8pm on a Thursday, you now look forward to your Saturday ride or Sunday group run…your new social activity where you share your fitness lifestyle with like-minded adults.

Interested in learning more, in skipping several years up the learning curve, and in saving solid buck$ on high-dollar race entry fees?

We invite you to register for our latest FREE seminar: The Beginner Triathlon Seminar

Nine seminar lessons, each with written, audio, and video content.
“Bonus” material: ebooks, webinars, and more
A 10% discount on any training plan.
Finally, a FREE Four Keys of Ironman Execution DVD, a $37 value! While you’re not yet an Ironman, you WILL turn a ton about triathlon race day execution…and did we mention that it’s FREE?!

Register today!

Visit Endurance Nation to create a FREE Five-Day Trial or Shop our Triathlon Training Plans!

Five Common Half Ironman Mistakes

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:28:45 +0000

It’s no secret that Ironman racing (the 140.6 mile version) has become crazy popular, with races selling out a year in advance, often in only minutes. As a result, Ironman-focused conversations dominate the triathlon space. Yet probably 90% of these Ironman triathletes race one, two, three or more half Ironman events enroute to their full Ironman distance event. Our combined 20 years of coaching and racing experience has shown that the 70.3 distance is a different race entirely from the Ironman. If you want to be successful at the half iron distance you’ll need to bring more to the table than your Ironman fitness and some good luck.

Are you an Ironman athlete racing a half or two in route to your A-race of the season?
Are you a half Ironman athlete looking to maximize your race day potential?
Are you stepping up to the Half Ironman distance after having focused on sprint and Olympic distance triathlon?

Below are the five most common mistakes made by Half Ironman athletes:

Mistake #1: Getting Overwhelmed by Endurance Training Lingo.

The Half Iron distance isn’t a walk in the park by any means, but it certainly doesn’t require that you buy a Thesaurus for your training plan. Aerobic, anaerobic, lactate threshold, aerobic threshold, ventilatory threshold…the list goes on. Your training only has be as complicated as you make it…and we suggest you keep it simple. Your fitness is nothing more than the ability of your body to perform work: to swim at pace X, pedal a bike at speed Y, or run at pace Z. Focus on the WORK, do progressively more of it, and the fitness will follow.

Mistake #2: Making Training Overly Complicated.

Swim. Bike. Run. Eat. Sleep. At least that’s what the t-shirts say. So why do so many triathletes spend their time concocting unique brick (bike + run) workouts; trying out the latest gadgets (fist gloves anyone?), and swamping their lives with countless hours of training? Your guess is as good as ours.

It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Create a training week where Monday works with Tuesday works with Wednesday, etc. A week that fits within your personal / professional / social framework, a schedule that you can execute easily week after week. Then manage the details of each individual workout, letting training volume take care of itself.

Mistake #3: Using a Half Ironman as an Ironman Prequisite or Race Rehearsal.
We’re behind the finish lines of every US Ironman, every year, catching our athletes. We have yet to see a WTC official checking to see that IM finishers have had their tickets punched at the HIM distance. The fact is you do NOT need to complete an HIM before your Ironman, and an HIM is very poor race rehearsal for a full Ironman race.

Mistake #4: Bringing an Ironman nutrition plan to a Half Ironman.
The Half Iron distance is just long enough that you need a nutrition plan, but short enough that using the traditional Ironman fueling strategy can be a recipe for disaster. After all, the race plays out differently: your swim is only half as long, you bike with significantly more intensity, and your run is entirely different. They don’t hand out medals for calories consumed per hour…we know from experience!

Mistake #5: Pushing Your Physical Limits Before the Run.
The 70.3 distance is a great event to test y0ur fitness, but execution still rules the day. Lining up a strategy that mimics a Sprint or Olympic-level effort will leave you far short of T2 with the prospect of a cramp-filled, sufferfest of a run. Learning how to pace the swim and bike will prepare you to run closer to your true potential and dramatically improve your finishing position.

Scared Yet?

You should respect the race, but you don’t have to worry — Endurance Nation has your back. With a squad of over 500 full and half Ironman athletes, many of whom race 2-4 Half Iron race per year, we have a HUGE data set of what works… and doesn’t.

We want to teach that to you in our latest FREE seminar: The Half Ironman

Four seminar lessons, each with written, audio, and video content.
“Bonus” material: ebooks, webinars, and more
A 10% discount on any training plan.
Finally, a FREE Four Keys of Ironman Execution DVD, a $37 value!

Register today!

Visit Endurance Nation to create a FREE Five-Day Trial or Shop our Triathlon Training Plans!

Five Ways To Build A Breakthrough Triathlon Season

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:31:41 +0000

the possibilities are endless
photo credit: cassicat4

Every year people just get faster. Equipment gets better, technology improves, finish times seem to get faster…it’s all part of that seemingly inexorable march to a bigger better (faster) world. But at the same time, we know that nothing is guaranteed. All the fancy equipment in the world won’t put you ahead of someone who has out-trained, out-prepared and/or out-raced you. So shop all you want, but know that if you are truly going to be a better triathlete next season, you are going to have to raise the bar in many areas of your athletic life.

With a combined 20 years of coaching experience, and a toolkit developed from leading a Team of over 500 athletes, we have seen almost every possible combination of money, time and effort in the quest for a personal best. Whether you are racing for Kona, out to set a new benchmark time or just looking to finish, you can benefit from our list of refined tips. Nothing is easy in our sport, but with the proper preparation and focus, almost anything is possible. So without further ado..

#1 — Pick One Race, Just One

It’s really tempting to have a season full of activity and racing. From the perspective of your comfy armchair, all snuggled up with a laptop, a hot chocolate and your credit card, you can easily sign up for a ton of races. And you’ll feel good about it until, say, halfway through your season when you all of a sudden need to do some serious triage — work, injury, family, will all combine to take your pretty spreadsheet schedule and tear it to shreds.

We suggest that you pick one single A race for the year. This is the race that you are training towards; it’s the sun around which all your other races orbit. When you need to make sacrifices and changes, they are all done from the perspective of making this one race be your best. This isn’t to say you only do one race, or sacrifice everything else, just that there is no doubt in your mind or heart which race matters.

Some folks like to schedule “back up” events, should the former not happen or not go as planned. If you can afford it, the secondary option is a nice-to-have, especially since so many races sell out months in advance.

Side Benefit — Keeping your racing limited, or at least focused, is a great way to save a ton of cash. Triathlons aren’t cheap, and the associated travel, lodging and food costs can make even a sprint triathlon run well over $500 when the books are done.

Train Fast to Go Fast

While everyone wants to get faster, there seems to be some serious confusion in the triathlon space around how exactly that final speed can be attained. Legend and old-school coaching books continue to sell the need for many long, aerobic miles before speed can be properly added…which is all well and good if you are a PRO with 25 to 30 hours a week to train. Since we all live in a world where 14 hours is more attainable, our training approach has to shift if we want to see the same results and keep our jobs, stay married, maintain relations with our kids, etc.

Since 2007 we have been pushing our Fast Before Far approach, whereby we use the winter months to improve our athletes speed and strength at threshold. Once the weather turns and the need to add volume hits, we drop the intensity and add more miles. The net being that the average Endurance Nation athlete improves his/her Ironman or Half Ironman race pace on the bike by 1.5 to 2 miles per hour…often making them 30 minutes faster than last years version of themselves, and we haven’t even started to ride longer than 1. 5 hours yet. Spring is our favorite time of the year, when we unleash the Team on their training partners and hear the stories about dropping the back, putting the hurt on, and leaving lots of folks scratching their heads.

Learn All You Can About the Course & Racing

One of the biggest advantages that the members of Team EN have on the competition is that we have raced just about every single endurance event in the US. Learning about a course, conditions, equipment needs is only a search away for a race report. Some folks take it a step further to learn about lodging, family activities and more…whatever your focus, the more you can learn about your A race the better off you’ll be from a mental and physical standpoint.

Actually training on the course itself is another critical advantage. There is no substitute for actually pushing your bike — or your body — over the race course. From turns to bumps to visual landmarks, you can really build out an understanding of the event that will pay huge dividends on race day.

If you need to, organize your own training weekend on the course. You might consider attending one of our free Triathlon Rallies, or perhaps you’ll be on site to volunteer on race weekend and sign up for the next edition of the race. Maybe you’ll consider one of our Course Talks. Whatever you decide, know this should be high on your list if you have high expectations for race day!

Be Miserly With Your Time

Being serious about triathlon requires a significant time investment on your part. Early morning sessions, juggling multiple schedules, handling fatigue at work and home, these are all part of the race experience that few discuss. You might not notice the difference, living at the center of your own personal storm, but your friends, family and co-workers most certainly will notice the change.

Do yourself (and everyone else!) a favor and really examine your training before you start executing it. Odds are if you are following an old-school program where miles and time in the saddle are the main focus, at very low intensity levels, then you’ll start by putting in 14-16 hours a week. 4-5,000 yd swims, 3 hour bikes and 2 hour runs will be the norm and the numbers will only go up over the course of your year, but with little tangible benefit for your overall fitness (or race performance).

If you can save time by training smarter, go for it. Inside Endurance Nation we do this by leveraging intensity in our training plans to make sure each session is effective and as time-crunched as possible. We’d much rather have you on the start line healthy, happy, and ready to execute than have you show up mentally wasted, physically unstable, and emotionally burnt out from too much training.

Spend Your Money Wisely

Between racing, travel and equipment, the average triathlete can drop a ton of money into their passion. There are many things that money can (and can’t buy), but know this for sure: everyone knows that triathletes have money to spend. You will find coaches out there who will charge you more than $1500 a month (with a six month minimum) for coaching services…for comparison, the annual total is more than tuition at a good community college…all for your hobby!

In our experience the fastest athletes, coached or not, where the smartest and hardest working folks we know. Paying for someone else to do your thinking matters when your input matters little, say for your taxes. But paying someone else to take charge of your passion and dream is another story altogether…and that decision shouldn’t be made lightly.

Instead of buying someone else, consider investing in yourself. From getting leaner to improving your diet and recovery, there are countless ways to spend money that improve your overall performance and well-being. In a shameless plug, we can tell you that our training plans are in their 8th generation, refined annually by the Team and contain access to our online library of learning resources, including podcasts. These plans are on sale January 3 to 9th, 2011 – at 30% off! Learn more in the EN Store here.

At the end of the day, your overall race day performance is the result of countless decisions. If you can get the big ones right, the little ones will fall into place…good luck!

Visit Endurance Nation to create a FREE Five-Day Trial or Shop our Triathlon Training Plans!

Team EN: The Week in Twitter (8/9)

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:00:25 +0000

Every week TeamEN members and ENFans connect online via Twitter by including the hashtag #workworks to highlight their tweets. Feel free to join in and stay up to date or just review the highlights below!

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_noodle_: 9weeks post hip surgery and managed to land a 2nd AG finish at the St. Paul run with the celts 5k. #workworks

Kefrazier: Rockin the WI course! Great town Madison! http://tweetphoto.com/39024562 #workworks

hellyeah1979: 17:29 at the Adel 5k 3rd OA, likely won AG I only had 3 miles on the garmin still good race humid #workworks

jhansen21: 1.2 mile OWS done early this AM. Gearing up for another 100 mile ride w/ @mancona. Now where’d I put my big boy pants? #workworks

teamEN: FYI- Harrods Creek Bridge reopening next week- IMLOU bike course reverting back to old ’08 course (yah!!) #ironman #workworks

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Team EN on Twitter

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 17:26:27 +0000

Here is another weekly installment of updates from our Team members who use Twitter. If you’d like to be considered, be sure to write really cool or witty stuff and include the hashtag “#workworks” into your tweets! Go Nation, Go!

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Jim Hansen: 82 mile ride @ .79 IF & 260 TSS in 4 hrs followed by 3 mile run @ 6:30 pace. Took in 160 oz fluids & still lost 7 lbs! #workworks

Team EN: Blog: #Ironman Wisconsin Tri-Rally – Coach’s Epilogue — reflections on 10wks on the road supporting the team http://ht.ly/2cBCv #workworks

Team EN: Added IMWI Four Keys, Adv Racing Topics, P’s IMUSA Overview podcasts to Wiki: http://ht.ly/2c5iK

mancona: Done pretending to be a cyclist for the weekend. 20 hours, 355 miles, and 16k feet climbing over 4 days #workworks

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Train Different

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:00:54 +0000

photo credit: doug88888

There is only one thing can think of that’s worse than training the same way, year after year. That would be doing the same training over and over again…but hoping for different results.

Sounds simple enough, I know, yet tens of thousands of triathlete are guilty. When things don’t go right on race day, the typical answer is “train more.” But at some point “more” becomes impossible. Maybe you have maxed out your training time; maybe you just don’t want to be there anymore.

But you can always train different.

Yes, there is precious little room at the top of any mountain you seek to climb. But there is more than one way to get there. Don’t settle (again) for the status quo; go outside your personal comfort zone to identify new ways to get fit, get fast and stay motivated.
If it’s not working, more might not be the answer.

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Train Like A Beginner; Don’t Think Like One

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:01:34 +0000

This post is part of a new series of articles exploring core elements of the Endurance Nation team and training concept. With over 400 members from all walks of life and levels of experience, Endurance Nation has a veritable repository of triathlon training and racing experience. Our goal is to highlight common elements we all share as triathletes, as well as place the spotlight on some of our most powerful member groups such as our 50+ “boomer” clan and of course the incredibly powerful women’s vibe.

If you’re a beginner to the sport triathlon, you’ve likely caught the bug and you’re excited about training. Welcome. You have found a community of athletes that embraces new folks and has an incredible way of helping people rise in the ranks and achieve everything that they wanted — and sometimes even more than they ever anticipated. The journey is a long one and there will absolutely be challenges on the way. But know that the only thing that can stop you from realizing your tri-potential is you…stopping yourself. Which brings us to the second point: train like a beginner but don’t think like one.

Start small. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Take incremental steps, keep the volume low at first, make it fun, and pick cool events.
Don’t over-reach and sign up for an Ironman in your first year.
Keep it social and have fun with the sport.
Grow with the sport as your physical abilities develop.

But whatever you do, don’t THINK like a beginner.

You don’t need to handicap your own development by putting yourself in a special wave. Other triathletes certainly won’t treat you as second class, and your new experiences and fresh perspective will do a lot to improve the game of everyone around you. You aren’t a liability; you are an asset. You don’t need to be coddled right now; you need to be challenged.

You can think like a veteran out of the gate.
You can strive to have the best transition in the world.
You can have a pro bike fit, or at least a really solid bike.
You can build a great training schedule.
You can start riding with a local group of roadies and develop an “A” cycling game.
You can bring incredible focus to nutrition and recovery.
You can train with intensity, or power, and start getting stronger and faster today.

Most importantly, you can skip several years down the path to realizing your tri-potential by avoiding all the mistakes your fellow triathletes have made. There are no rewards for following previously blazed paths. No merit badges for making the same mistakes.

This is perhaps the most powerful element of Endurance Nation; the ability to share with — and learn from — your triathlon peers. But it’s not something we own or have copywritten; there are awesome triathletes willing to connect with your right in your own neighborhood…you just have to find and engage them.

There are so many different components that make the sport of triathlon highly personal. There’s how to train and what to race; there’s what you wear and what you eat. There’s what you are good at and what you need to practice. You will rise to each challenge along the way, in your own personal way, as part of your journey. In other words, we’ll all cross that finish line at the end of the day, it’s more a function of how you get there than whether you’ll make it or not.

If I could go back in time to my early days in the sport, I would give myself two pieces of advice:

Take better care of your body and set reasonable expectations on it’s ability to progress; and
The more you think and behave like a smart veteran triathlete, the sooner you’ll actually become one.

Good luck!

Coach Patrick

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The 21st Century Triathlon Rockstar

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:51:44 +0000

Time for some Intervals, baby!
photo credit: yngrich

Every year triathlon coaches begin to recycle the advice not to be a “winter” rockstar; someone who trains hard in the Winter only to peak and fade long before the season even starts. Instead of working out so hard these coaches suggest you begin laying the foundation for a great season by “training to train,” something that involves putting in many hours of “base” work on the trainer, treadmill and in the pool.

Unlike these coaches, we have spent the last three seasons being rockstars. In fact, we have worked to build a team of rockstars who emerge from their winter “pain caves” stronger and fitter than ever before…and proceed to have breakthrough seasons. We are here to tell you that these triathlon coaches are sadly mistaken in their approach, and that there’s a better way to train that makes you fitter & faster, takes up far less time during the dark, cold winter months, and will utterly transform you as a triathlete.

Are you ready?

Contrasting Approaches
These coaches stack hours of aerobic volume into crammed winter schedules, recommend 3-5 hour trainer rides over 8 months away from your “A” race and sprinkle swim workouts in just because you’re a triathlete and should be swimming. Doing strength work is a good idea and Bikram Yoga is really hot right now, so why not add those too? The net is a typical triathlon plan for an Ironman or Half Ironman, in January looking towards a June/July/August race, will have you logging 14-18 hours of training time across all disciplines.

Contrast this with Endurance Nation, where our typical OutSeason plan contains 4-6 hours of training time in a week, with two whole days off. We don’t recommend swimming or strength training as both have a relatively low Return on Investment for triathletes. Instead of logging time and miles in the winter, EN athletes focus on boosting their power at threshold (bike) and improving their vDOT (run). Even though they log less than 50% of the same training time as their training partners, these EN athletes emerge fitter and faster? How is this possible?

Understanding The Triathlon Season
It helps to begin with the end. In triathlon it’s important to note that our peak, race-specific effort is ludicrously aerobic. We “fly” around the Ironman and 70.3 race courses in zones 1 and 2 (maybe some zone 3 for Half Ironman). We train all season to peak at an effort level where most athletes feel like they can go all day as long as someone feeds them. In other words, it’s not that hard.

Those last twelve weeks leading into your race are the most critical in terms of how you will race, so everything is race specific. You swim, bike, and run some of the biggest miles and weeks of your season here, just before tapering and heading into your race. Again, these aren’t hard training sessions, they are volume-oriented workouts designed to prepare you for the rigors of a single-day endurance event.

Everything before these last twelve weeks, then, is simply preparing you to train for this critical phase. The training you do at this time isn’t really race-specific, and traditionally it’s structured as easier than what your body will endure for the final build up to your race.

I call this traditional approach “Triple-E” for Easy, Easier, and Easiest:

Go easy — but long — as race prep.
Prepare to go easy and long by building up your long at an easy effort.
Build a foundation for your season by logging easy miles and hours so as not to arrive at the prace prep phase in an overtrained state.

But at what point are you actually pushing your fitness? Your body doesn’t know better, it only responds to progressive overload. Based on the above schedule, there are only 9 weeks out of 52 — a full year — where you are adding miles and training hard. What then, exactly, are you doing with the rest of your time to improve your strength and overall speed?

Getting Out of the Volume Game
Following the traditional triathlon approach, most triathletes are de-training–yes I said losing fitness–even though they are working out year-round. Congratulations on logging that three-hour fixed gear rides in the dead of winter dodging holiday traffic! Since it was all zone 1 work, however, you could have ostensibly done no training or an easy 45 minute spin inside on your trainer and achieved the same effect without risking your life or losing an addition 2:15 of your day.

Fortunately there are different ways to create the progressive overload that will lead to increased fitness. Traditional proponents hold that building your training load by manipulating volume (adding more miles at the same intensity) is the best way to go. But this takes 14-16 hour winter sessions into 18-20 hour spring weeks and 20+ hour race prep weeks — an overwhelming amount of time spend training across a season for an “easy” day.

Inside Endurance Nation we create this training load by recognizing the fixed nature of your volume and time constraints in the winter, and instead manipulating intensity (doing harder work for a shorter time). Our OutSeason plans are chock full of hard work, precisely because you can’t do this type of training when building up to your race. The fact that it fits into your overall life is really just a bonus.

The Season:	Off- or OutSeason (No Race Focus)	General Prep (20 wks to Race)	Race Prep (12 wks to Race)
Old School:	Easy Winter volume, Strength Training, etc.	Add More Volume as Weather Improves	Add Even More Hours, Filling up your entire weekend and weekend life. The hardest part of the season.
New School:	Build Your Fast; The hardest part of our season.	Add Far to Your Fast	Focus Fitness on Race-Specific Volume

Go Fast to Get Fast
In order to build your strength and speed you need to actually train them. No amount of riding 18mph will prepare you to ride 20mph on race day. To make this leap, you need to train at these faster paces and harder efforts when you don’t have competing demands to build race-specific volume. The winter is a perfect time to accomplish this, hence the structure of the EN season as outlined above (and in our online manual).

With the last twelve weeks so focused on race prep, there are minimal fitness gains made. Three plus years of tracking athlete data has shown that critical benchmarks of threshold power and pace don’t change during this phase. Spending a lot of time riding, running and swimming will certainly make you fitter (important for race day!) but it doesn’t make you any faster. The increase in volume and time across all three disciplines really limits your body’s ability to adapt and get stronger/faster…that really only happens once in this cycle when you taper to race.

The Siren Song of Volume
The lure of training more, of making life and work sacrifices to achieve our triathlon goals is appealing. It’s part of the cultural fabric of our sport; it’s how the men and women who are our triathlon idols live their lives. It’s also easy. Easy to coach, as all you have to do is add 10% more to each week with every fourth week being a bit lighter. Done. Easy to train, as your body can adapt quickly to more time at a light intensity, with the only hard part being where to fit your workouts into your schedule. Easy to follow, as in block out all other important things that don’t fall into your tiny triathlon world.

But it’s certainly not better. We’ve been there and are sharing our story so you don’t have to make the same mistakes. Patrick has logged 25+ hours of training during a 60+ hour work week, getting up a 4am to ride the trainer for three hours, sneaking Coke onto the pool deck to avoid falling asleep during lunch swims and running at night in the dark. Rich has ridden back to back 150 mile days on the bike, putting up 1500 miles across 10 days and more…and neither one of us improved as triathletes. We got really good at training a lot, and a lot fitter, but no faster.

Finding A Better Way
It wasn’t until we condensed all those easy hours into a challenging, yet effective schedule that allowed for progression, recovery, and kept things FUN that we began to see the results we wanted…the results of all our hard work. Now that we’ve emerged on the other side, it’s our mission to make sure that triathletes like you don’t simply “opt-in” to the volume because it’s the only way to go. There is another way, a better way. But we can only show you the door; you are the one who has to walk through it.

To learn more about how we recommend you reconstruct your season, consider registering for our FREE email seminar on Rethinking the Off Season or check out our OutSeason training plans.

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