• 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

Register & you’ll receive:

• 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!

photo credit: piermario

Every January is a special time inside the world of Endurance Nation, as we release the next version of our Ironman and Half Iron training plans. While the members of Team EN always get the latest and greatest versions as part of their membership, each new generation of public training plans is also updated. 2011 is no exception, as we’ll be pushing out version 8.0 of our long-course plans, with revised workouts, online support in the “living library” that is the EN Training Plan Support Wiki, and our latest addition: Season Planning Guidance — we have captured our season planning methodology, in written guidance, spreadsheets, and screencasts, so you have the tools you need to adapt your EN training plan(s) to YOUR race schedule.

Why Include Additional Guidance?

EN athlete is essentially a self-coached athlete. In our world, we have found that the most successful age group athletes, across the entire spectrum of age, experience, etc., all share one common thread: self-sufficiency. Among other things, these athletes understand how to adapt their plan to their racing schedule.

Putting our season-planning methodology on paper not only forces us to be crystal clear (no magic coaching wands here!), it also empowers the other 1,000 members and training plan customers to do a better job of helping themselves and each other. Now that we are all on the same page, we can begin to truly connect and move forward as a community. The Season Planning Guidance is simply the next installment of this commitment to advancing the self-coached athlete.

Stacking EN Training Plans Across Your Season

A full season inside EN consists of four (4) parts: the OutSeason, Transition, General Prep and Race Prep. You can read about each in more detail in the FREE Online EN Training Manual, but we rank them in order of importance:

1. OutSeason — 20 weeks — The biggest bang for your buck. The OS is our best tool for making you much, much faster than your former self. With no volume goals, we can hit you with lots of intervals and redefine what you consider “work” to be. Best part? You get it all done in 6-8 hours a week, leaving you plenty of time to be a rockstar at home, on the job, and elsewhere.
2. Race Prep — 12 weeks — This is where we take that Fast you built in the OS and add race-specific fitness and execution skills on top of it.
3. Transition — 1-2 wks — Somewhere during your season, you will need to stand down to be able to ramp up to maximal race fitness. We recommend after the OS, as it’s 5 months long. This is a period of relatively light, unstructured training. More here.
4. General Prep — 4-8 wks — As the weather begins to warm up, you have more hours of daylight, and we begin to build Far on top of Fast. This option fits in between the OS and your Race Prep should your season and A race give you enough room.

Please read this post that Rich wrote a few months ago about how to stack the plans above across your season. The Season Planning Guidance, now included with all of our training plans, captures this guidance in a suite of tools, allowing you to do our season-planning-smart-guy thing yourself.

No other Half and Full Ironman training plans in the triathlon coaching space include such a comprehensive suite of tools to help you adapt your training plan to any combination of races. Period.

And the Season Planning Guidance is parked within our Training Plan Support Wiki, a growing library of resources to support your training plan, yet another EN training plan exclusive that sets us apart from the competition.

Ready to start training and planning the EN way?
Go here to purchase an Endurance Nation training plan, on sale for 30% off Jan 3-9th, 2010.

–or–

Create a Five Day Trial Membership:

• Gain open access to our entire suite of training plans.
• Access hundreds of members-only podcasts and videos.
• Receive 24/7 support from the coaches and the team in our members-only forums.

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

As such, this is a great opportunity for us to reflect on the year with you, our ENFans and TeamEN members, to share with you our lessons learned from 2010 and preview what we have in store for you–and the greater tri world–for 2011.

In Part I, we’ll talk about where we’ve been and where we are today. In Part II, we’ll reveal some (but not all) of our plans for next year.

1. The Waiting List
It started in May of 2009, but really took root in 2010. Closing registration to the Team, a potentially risky move, actually created a few opportunities:

• Focus and Efficiency: The waiting list allowed Patrick and I to focus 100% on our members during the time when they need us the most: the Ironman race season. Between supporting the team in the forums, travel to races, creating content for them, and much more, we just didn’t have the bandwidth to spare on what we felt would probably have been a trickle of new members joining in the heat of the racing season. Instead, we just closed the doors and locked them. However, we were surprised when the waiting list exploded eventually building to over 400 athletes multiple times by the summer of 2010.
• Filters: TeamEN–the community–belongs to the members, not to us. We just can’t describe to you the depth of the community that our members have built for themselves within virtual walls of EN. Going to a waitlist meant that the people who were invited really wanted to be on the Team, making adding new folks a much more seamless experience.

2. Re-Investing in the Team

1. We repaid our existing, longest serving members by offering to them a heavily discounted rate, for life. This core group of over 150 athletes has been with us since the beginning, through several iterations, and gyrations, of service delivery and pricing model. We sincerely appreciate their loyalty (sniff).
2. We created a partnership that allowed us to build our own proprietary membership and training plan platform focused on what we feel are the most important elements of the coach/athlete relationship. In short, “Here is my training plan. Right next to it, easy to find, is the content I have created to accompany each week of your training plan. If you have questions about THIS week, ask here; about your SEASON, ask there. Connect with your fellow teammates over here.” We are continually improving this interface.

Training Plans
Listening to feedback of the Team and applying our own observations, in August ’09 we completely rewrote our OutSeason plans, and created brand new podcasts and videos to accompany every training week. We ran a very successful OS training plan sale in September and many of these training plan customers decided to join EN in November after our offer of a training plan credit applied to membership.

We repeated this rewrite process again in December, this time to our entire suite of half and full Ironman training plans, and recorded new podcasts and videos to accompany the new plans. We applied a sale to these plans in January and February, and brought in a few more members in March through our training plan credit opportunity above.

2. New OutReach / Education Initiatives
In keeping with our progressive outreach through free eBooks and social media, we decided to compile some of our most precious resources into more digestible and exciting formats.

Virtual Seminars: Related to our filter and screening ideas above, we decided to create a series of “virtual seminars,” to deliver to the tri world our thoughts on OutSeason and Long Course training, and Ironman race execution. (links to all). We were successful in delivering our message to more athletes, identifying potential members for TeamEN.

100% FREE Tri Rallies: A  free training camp for our athletes and the general public, hosted by us on a couple of the Ironman courses. We hatched the idea while riding off the IMUSA course during our June ’09 camp and decided to focus on IMUSA and IMWI, the courses we are most familiar with.

Our first Tri-Rally was on the IMUSA course in June 2010. With only word of mouth marketing and RSVPs taken on Facebook, we truly had no idea what expect. We were very pleasantly surprised to have over 60 athletes attend the Rally and, though the weather didn’t exactly cooperate, I was still able to deliver about 3-4hrs of instruction and introduce many athletes to TeamEN. It was also a ton of fun and this was duplicated, with a few refinements, on the IMWI course in July, where over 70 athletes joined us.

ENFan: Our next to last epiphany of the summer was that we were under-serving all of the people who had connected themselves to our brand. Whether by downloading an ebook, taking one of our virtual seminars, purchasing a training plan, following us on Twitter, fanning us on Facebook, or attending a Tri Rally or Four Keys talk, these athletes had told us they were interested in hearing what we had to say and in connecting to Endurance Nation in some fashion. So we fired up ENFan, giving away our Four Keys DVD and a 10% training plan discount code. The response from you, our ENFans, has been incredible

3. Improved Race Weekends
Huge, huge, huge and, more importantly, incredibly fulfilling for us as coaches and founders of a community. An opportunity to meet our athletes again, watch them on their big day and be there for them and their families at the finishline.  The numbers:

• 20 at IMSG
• 24 at IMCDA
• 30+ at IMUSA
• 20 at IMLou
• 13 at IMCA
• 38 at IMWI

At each of these races we delivered our Four Keys talk to 70-120+ people — the Team and general public. And as we better leveraged our word of mouth networking tools the number of people present at the start of each talk (ie, a measurement of how well we had gotten the message out there and convinced people to actually put us on their calendars) dramatically increased.

By September of 2010, we sensed that we had finally reached a tipping point of awareness of EN and our race execution message as we received MANY props on the course, in coffee shops, and shouted through car windows by our fans.

4. Two Week Trial
Now for our final epiphany: as good, unique, valuable and amazingly cool we think TeamEN is, it’s hard as hell to explain to the public what is actually going on inside. Instead, we were expecting you to sign up on a waiting list and then sit by the phone waiting for us to call to join the team, which you only got to see and witness after paying us. Even with a 30-day money-back guarantee, we’ve realized this isn’t the most efficient scenario for you or for us.

On September 17th we invited our ENFans to create a two week trial membership. Nearly 420 athletes responded by creating a trial. Close to 100 of these ended their trial early, within 5 days, to start their season with the Team. By the time the dust settled on October 1st, a total of 155 new athletes joined the ranks of TeamEN.

Endurance Nation is now a team of over 525 Ironman and Half Ironman athletes. Next we’ll share with you some of our ideas and plans for 2011.

Interested in Joining TeamEN?
Become an ENFan to receive a FREE Four Keys DVD, and an invitation to our next trial membership opportunity, expected to take place near the end of October, 2010.

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

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

We get email and Twitter questions regarding our training plans all the time. We strive to answer each one, and it occurred to us that maybe sharing this information could be good for other self-coached triathletes out there. Enjoy!

Rich and Patrick

This could be a flexibility or strength related issue (or a combination). I suggest two approaches.

#1, work on hip flexor flexibility. Consider doing some lunge stretches, where you really push your hips forward to open them up. Perhaps even consider arching backwards to really do a number on your hips. You can also do this as you stretch your quad on that side. Holding your heel to your butt, stand erect and push that hip forward as you hold the stretch. You’ll feel it!

#2, work on strengthening the area. The hip flexors and psoas muscles can be a bit weak and fatigue easily, especially if they are tight. Once you have started stretching, consider adding in some cycling-specific strength work. I prefer to do single leg pedaling while on a trainer at about 60-70 rpms. Load the wheel up to the point where you really need to slow down – but not so hard so as to put undue strain on your body. Work on a smooth transition from 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock. As you build up confidence and skill, add more speed (less resistance). Do this each leg for 45-60 seconds, alternating sides. So six minutes of that plus 4 minutes of regular pedaling with both legs as recovery, done a few times a week, should help you out!

Keep us posted!

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

This is what it's all about

The Endurance Nation Tour of California is four years old. Endurance Nation itself will mark it’s three year anniversary at Ironman Couer d’Alene, born over coffee, beers, and brainstorming between Patrick and me in 2007. The two have grown together to become two very, very cool halves of the same coin.

The Tour of California Training Camp is probably the coolest training camp you can do. Some camps offer more volume and cater to an “elite” crowd. Other camps charge you a ton of dough to train on your Ironman course or to teach you skills. This camp, by contrast:

• Is an all abilities experience, with campers ranging from 15hr+ to sub 10hr Ironmans.
• Let’s you experience the incredible variety of terrain and riding that California has to often. The pictures speak for themselves.
• Puts you on a pro tour course, 2-3 hours ahead of the race, complete with sprint towns, KOM’s, and cheering fans.

There is just no other camp like it and we are proud to offer this as a natural step in the evolutionary progression of our athletes.

As a three year old long course triathlon team, we have seen many of members progress from wide-eyed first timer to veteran Kona qualifier or “I want to do something cool with my fitness.” The Tour of California is the ultimate definition of cool stuff.

The net is that our Tour of California has assumed it’s place on the top step of many members’ goals, right up there with qualifying for/racing Kona. For our 3+ Ironman finisher athletes looking for the next challenge to experience with their Team, ToC is it.

And it really is about the Team. As the primary organizer and leader of the camp it was very powerful to be able to say “I’ve coached, trained, and formed friendships with every single one of the campers getting in the vans with us in Sacramento. These are great, great folks and the people in the camp are truly going to make the camp for the campers. The riding and training will be bonus.”

For many of the campers themselves, ToC was a reunion with old friends. For others it was a chance to add a physical dimension to the internet friendships they had shared for years. And that’s exactly how it all worked out — the people made the camp. Overhearing the conversations and watching friendships made and strengthened on the bike, over dinner, and in the vans, was the highlight of the camp for me. I’m already looking forward to next year’s tour and we are scheming to bring our stoopid-logistically-challenging-training-camp expertise to bear to create similar camp opportunities for our members and the public.

The lesson is this:

Your fitness is a vehicle for doing cool stuff. Build that vehicle, put cool stuff on the calendar, find cool friends to do it with you and call it training.

In a couple days on I’m on a plane to Lake Placid to offer a free training camp on the course to our athletes and the public. Just another example of how we do things differently in here.

–Rich Strauss

The Endurance Nation Tour of California is a members-only event. Please join our waiting list to receive an invitation to join TeamEN as space becomes available.

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

With our Four Keys DVD, Ironman Course Talks, Power Webinar, TriathlonExecution.com, and a TeamEN coach at every US Ironman, Endurance Nation is widely regarded as the go-to resource for Ironman race day excution guidance.

We’ve taken all of our experience and packaged it into an 8-lesson detailed online course. This is a more detailed version of the system outlined in the Four Keys DVD. Participants will receive email installments that include:

• Four Keys DVD Installment
• Ironman Race Guide, one for each US Ironman
• An instructional article from the coaches, with accompanying podcast.
• Seminar Curricculum:

• Lesson 1: Overview of the Four Keys of Ironman Execution, yours FREE to preview and decide if the full course is for you!
• Lesson 2: Ironman Swim and Transitions
• Lesson 3: Bike Pacing and Hills
• Lesson 4: Run Pacing and Mental Strategies
• Lesson 5: Race Day Nutrition
• Lesson 6: Race Day Logistics
• Lesson 7: Race Week
• Lesson 8: Wrap Up from the Coaches, including their Notes on Every US Ironman

In short, this 8-lesson course will teach you how to race Ironman, saving you years of experimentation and $$$$ in boogered race fees!

Click here learn more and register today!

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

photo credit: akunamatata

In a previous post we outlined our recommended means of building run fitness across a triathlon season by emphasizing the importance of building fast over far. If you read that article, then you learned about the hidden cost of volume, velocity vs volume, and the importance of benchmarking. Or perhaps you have reviewed our online training manual (free, here) and seen how we build a season.

And if you are a follower of our blog, then you know we think running a marathon in the off season is one of the biggest multisport sins an aspiring triathlete can make.

This raises the inevitable question: At what point in your year can you actually go long with your running to get better?

Here are some macro level pointers on how we suggest you proceed.

1 — Separate Running from Your Triathlon Training

You can’t just add more running your triathlon training program and expect to see results. You’ll see change for sure, but most of those improvements will be short-term. Other deltas will most likely include sub-par cycling performance and increase levels of mental and physical fatigue.

Start the cycle off right by taking a training break before becoming a runner. Starting a major run block just two weeks after your last race is a recipe for trouble.

At the same time, we encourage you to leave the “Fast then Far” mentality behind for this run focused block. As you’ll only be running, you’ll have plenty of time to rack up the miles and hours. More time spent training means the intensity must come down if you are to absorb it all.

Instead of two hard runs (out of four) in a week, this might mean cutting back to just one short interval run at threshold pace (5 x 3 minutes at Threshold with 2 minutes of rest after each, for example) with the remainder of your runs done in zones 1 and 2. Or perhaps you hold the intensity for the latter stages of your program; maybe you skip it entirely. Only you know what’s best.

2 — Define Yourself As A Runner

Part of the separation process listed above is about finding your own identity as a runner. The running game is different than triathlon in that the type of recovery required is significantly more intensive. The fueling needs are different, both within your workouts and across your day. Take the time to find this niche, as what you think you’ll need (when you start) will ultimately be different than what you’ll actually need (as you evolve).

You should also consider a review of your running technique. After all, if you are going to spend 100% of your exercise time doing one thing, you want to be good at that thing! There are tons of resources available online, from clinics to coaches, from DVDs to mp3s. Explore what resonates for you and spend some quality early time building your new skill sets.

3 — Conservatively & Consistently Conquer Volume

A mouthful for sure, but if you can remember the mantra you’ll be much better off. As a “new” runner the temptation will be there to cook yourself. Road races outnumber triathlons as much as 8:1 in most areas, meaning you’ll have weekday and weekend options to put the hammer down. Resist.

Start your new program with the same number of runs you’ve been doing as a triathlete. Add time to each run then condense that time into a new daily run; then repeat. Good running form is like wine, the longer you give it, the more robust it will be. Once you have been at the new running game for 6-8 weeks, you can begin thinking about doing some longer runs. By longer I mean anything over 90 minutes.

Try not to go crazy. The average triathlete, regardless of goal race distance, spends anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a week training across all three disciplines. By comparison, a high volume running week doesn’t take a lot of time, and it’s tempting to add more to the mix. For someone who averages 8:30/miles, putting in a 50 mile week is only a seven hour undertaking.

4 — Pick A Goal, Not A Race

It’s easy to drop a marathon on calendar in five months, it’s another thing to train for it. All of a sudden you’ll have a goal time and a goal pace. Next thing you know, you are measuring every run against those metrics. Before too long you are burned out and the run project’s a bust.

Instead of just racing, choose non-performance related goals that are consistent with your new approach to running. Maybe aim for a 30-days/30-runs challenge; or maybe try to run a set number of miles for a set number of days (8 miles a day for 8 days). Perhaps there’s a local hill you want to conquer or maybe you want to explore every trail option in the nearby state park. Whatever your goal, make it both challenging and fun.

There’s nothing to stop you from jumping into a race on short notice should things work out, but don’t let it be the carrot/stick that gets you going.

Here’s a quick snapshot of how an Ironman athlete might proceed with a four month run-focused block of training. In this case the athlete builds from four weekly runs with a max duration of 60 minutes for the longest run up to six weekly runs topping out at 2 hours and 20 minutes. It’s assumed that the individual runs will increase in duration each week, save for every fourth week where the volume cuts back a bit to allow for some recovery.

Per the guidance above, this runner doesn’t get really serious about long distance work until after 8 weeks, and any major volume goals (or racing) wouldn’t really happen until that last block.

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

photo credit: benjami

We get email and Twitter questions regarding our training plans all the time. We strive to answer each one, and it occurred to us that maybe sharing this information could be good for other self-coached triathletes out there. Enjoy!

Rich and Patrick

Last opp to ride is next monday, could run or swim however. Just training and resting up – is it okay to pimp my plan for this week? Any advice – sea swim newbie, hilly 70.3 coming up so thought this ideal to do a big tri week in the sun.

Thanks, Dave

First, course, the customary word of caution: don’t over do it here. Your goal race is a half and you have some key workouts coming up in the next few weeks before you taper. Not to mention you just raced (nice work!). The goal here is to place an additional aerobic load on your system that won’t take away from our typical intensity-focused training. In addition to Mondays swim only day, you might have to take Tues / Wed off as well; if so then you should aim to pick things back up by the scheduled Thursday long run.

Thursday as Run .5 hrs, Bike 2.5 hours. Run early, maybe do some light stretching afterwards. All easy w/ high cadence. The ride is on rolling terrain. Very aerobic zone 1-2, goal is to negative split the ride by coming back home just slightly faster.

Friday as Run .5hrs, Bike 1.5 hrs, Swim 1hr. Easy AM run followed by a Solid Hill ride. Roll over to that 4 mile hills and do 4 repeats climbs, each with at least 5′ of rest afterwards. #1 is done steady at 95 rpms; #2 at steady at 80 rpms; #3 is steady at 90 rpms but include a 1′ acceleration every 1/2 mile (ouch!); #4 is whatever you can do. Easy PM open water swim.

Saturday as Bike 2.5 hours, Swim 1hr. Nice easy aerobic ride, last hour is steady zone 2-3. Easy PM open water swim.

Sunday as Run .5hrs, Long Bike of 4 hours. Get the easy run done first, eat up, then put in your longest ride of this block. Ideally this will be done as easy out, steady back, with the hills in the first half, flats in the second. This way if you fade early, you aren’t done for in the hills.

Monday: Swim 1hr Pack up and get out of town…nicely done!

Good luck!

Coach Patrick

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

By now you’ve likely heard about our Beginner Open House, this April 13-18, 2010. We’re excited to have you come inside our Team to check out our resources, support, and especially our members. We’d like to take a few minutes here to discuss what TeamEN has to offer the beginner Ironman athlete.

You have a lot of time and money invested in your Ironman, and you have a LOT at stake in this once-in-a-lifetime, life-changing event. You paid over five bills, a year ago, to register. Factor in $$$$ spent on gear, plane tickets, bike shipping, hotels, etc. To this, add the dollar amount to your training time: X hours per week for months and months (How much is your time worth, anyway?). Lastly, don’t forget to add the time cost of your family. They’ve done a LOT to support you, and your training time has been spent away from them. What was the cost of being late to that soccer game or waking up at 4am to run so you could get the kids to school?

Triathlon is expensive in many, many ways. Here is what Endurance Nation brings to the table to help beginner triathletes…

TeamEN Training Plans vs the Others
Our training plans are the foundation of our coaching. These plans are in their seventh generation of continuous improvement, honed through the experiences, results, and feedback of over 3000 athletes. When you compare us to the other guys, ask yourself:

• Do I even know who wrote this plan? When? Has it been touched or revisited, applying the lessons-learned from the athletes who have used it…or the increased knowledge of the coach?
• What results have the users of this plan achieved? Can I find any testimonials?

Rich Strauss & Patrick McCrann vs Other Coaches
Perhaps you want a bit more than a training plan and are looking to hire a personal coach, maybe even a coach local to you. We have been coaching half and full Ironman age-group athletes exclusively since 2001 and 2003 respectively, with over 600 individual Ironman finishers — first-timers, podium, age group winners and Kona qualifiers — between us. Over 3000 athletes have used our training plans. We ourselves have nearly 25 Ironman finishes between us, including Kona.  Google us and you’ll find our training articles featured on Active.com, Xtri, TriFuel and many others. Over 8000 athletes subscribe to our newsletter to receive quality, Ironman-specific training and racing tips.

In short, we challenge you to find two more experienced, Ironman-specific coaches working together in the tri-space. And, yes, Ironman coaching is most definitely a specialty in the field of triathlon coaching, significantly different from coaching local athletes to sprints and Olympic distance races.

When you compare us to other coaches, ask yourself:

• How does this coach’s Ironman coaching and racing experience compare with Rich and Patrick?
• Where are the results and testimonials of his/her athletes? Can I talk to them about the coach?
• Has the coach produced any content (written, audio, or video) that allows me to learn more about their coaching knowledge, the instruction style, etc?
• Will my coach teach me how to race Ironman? See our DVD, Four Keys eBook, and IM Course Talks.
• Finally, what is my monthly fee? TeamEN athletes pay, at most, $99/mo for membership. What does your coach offer to command a 200 to 400% markup?  Our athletes save $3600/yr vs paying for a one-on-one coach. That’s a new bike…a powermeter…a family vacation…you get the idea.

Support and Community
Perhaps you’re considering using an inexpensive training plan and a free forum as support. The training plans used by our team on our proprietary platform are accompanied by nearly a dozen ebooks, dozens of instructional videos, over 100 podcasts and a living online resource wiki. Ask a training or racing question in our forums and you’ll receive an answer from the Team in minutes; from the coaches, in threads we have created for exclusive athlete-to-coach feedback, within 24 hours. Most importantly, EN is a paid community led by experienced Ironman coaches. Everyone has skin in the game of creating value for the community, by providing each other with quality, correct, and polite feedback.

Most importantly, this support and these resources are provided within the framework of a unified coaching methodology. In short, you won’t have to wade through incorrect, conflicting advice in our forums to get the help you need.

When you compare TeamEN to other internet resources:

• Are members paying to be there? We’ve found that the dollar is a pretty powerful filter for weeding out people not willing to contribute.
• Are members required to use their real names? TeamEN athletes are First Name, Last Name, period, no exceptions. No hiding online, and besides, when we meet at a race or a free camp, it’s just better to know who you are!
• Post a question. How good and how prompt is the feedback? Do you receive consistent feedback or does your thread become a debate, with you as the referee to decide who is correct and what advice to use?
• Will the forum have a presence at your race? Rich and Patrick go to EVERY US Ironman. TeamEN will have 35-40 athletes at EVERY race. Our Team dinners are attended by 50+ athletes, friends and family. What’s it worth to introduce your wife and 3 kids to another family and have them taken care of by the team while you race?
• Is there a training camp on your course? Uniforms? Options for your family to hang out while you race?

In summary, the quality of our training plans and the experience, support, and knowledge of the coaches and Team will bring you several years up the learning curve. You’ll do everything right, the first time, without wading through several years and messed up races as you try to figure it out on your own.

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