The triathlon space is full of really well-written articles about the concept of Long Slow/Steady Distance training (LSD) as the optimal way to build fitness en route to an Iron- or Half Iron distance event. As convincing as these authors might be, practical experience shows that the sooner you can get faster, the faster you’ll be overall.
For a second let’s depart from the objective data gathered from untrained male subjects in Belgium tested to fatigue in 1998 on rowing ergometers. 
. Let’s take a look at this real world example from the tale of two triathletes.
In November, Timmy and Bobby start training for Ironman Lake Placid in July of the following year. This gives them both just shy of 9 months of prep time. Both train with power and pace (for comparison purposes!), and both start with a Bike Threshold of 220Watts and a Run Threshold (5k) of 7:30/mi.
Timmy trains with Endurance Nation b/c he’s cool like that. Within 16 weeks, he’s riding and running at PR speeds…and it’s March. Bobby follows a more old-school approach, logging z1 and z2 miles with maybe 20 minutes a week dedicated to some kind of threshold effort.
On the bike, Timmy sees the EN average 15% gain (33W) and can expect another 8-10% improvement through race day (22W), putting him at 275W for race day. On the run his 5k pace is now very close to 7:05s, and that will mostly likely not change very much until race day. In comparison, Bobby will be lucky to see an 8-10% Bike Threshold improvement over his whole year, and an even smaller run delta. With five more months to go, Timmy is poised for a great season. By the time Bobby hits March, he’s likely put in a lot more training time than Timmy, but he’s barely seen any of the same performance gains.
If you are really geeked out, you can head over to www.analyticcycling.com and see the impact of Timmy’s additional 33Watts. It’s roughly 1.5mph advantage, which over the course of a 6hour IM ride is about 9 miles or 30 mins. IOW, Bobby has given Timmy a 30′ head start on the run.
This is where the pundits jump in and point out that Timmy is doomed since he can’t sustain that speed all year (or get faster). They continue on to say that Bobby will only get faster up until/through race day. I don’t agree 100% with this view, although there is some merit to it. Yes, as the volume goes up Timmy will not really see that many more gains for his year. Some, but not much. And yes, Bobby, will continue to get faster, closing in on Timmy’s gains.
But this comparison misses the heart of the matter, the real point.
If Timmy hits peak levels in March and races in July, that gives him FIVE MONTHS of training at sustained high levels of speed and intensity…that’s more than 50% of his 9 month training cycle. Bobby, on the other hand, doesn’t hit similar values until early June, just in his last build cycle, giving him about 1.5 months of training at a similar level. Five months vs 1.5 months. That means in any given year, Timmy out trains Bobby by almost 300%. There is no amount of volume that Bobby can fit into his life that will allow him to catch up with Timmy. Sorry Bobby.
We can also use the real world examples from our DataTool, the online resource that our 450 members use to track and manage their critical data. To date we have a team track record of an average change as a result of our 16-week OutSeason Program as follows:
- Avg 10k Improvement: 2:30
- Avg Half Marathon Improvement: 4:47
- Avg Bike Functional Threshold Power (FTP) gain: 15%
- Avg Power-to-Weight (w/kg) gain: 15.7%
- And the Weekly Results are starting to add up…
The flaw with most critiques of training for endurance events using intensity — as we do inside Endurance Nation — is that the critics assume we do the same type of hard work every week of the year. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Intensity is a very important part of how we build fitness and prepare our athletes, but it’s how we put this together over the course of a season that really sets us apart.
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