Spring is here and with the sunshine and warm temperatures comes the start of yet another triathlon season.  By now, you probably have a solid few months of base training under your belt, you’ve spent the winter months working on your swim technique, getting in those long, easy miles of running and biking, hitting the gym for consistent strength and core sessions, and are now ready to take your fitness to the next level….getting race ready.

Getting ready to race without overtraining can be a difficult balance to achieve.  Many athletes make two crucial mistakes as race season draws near:  They train too much, or they train too intensely.  Jumping from training 10 hours a week to 20, or shifting from winter hill runs to 400 repeats at the track is a sure fire way to end your tri season before it even starts.
  
Ideally, athletes will set up a schedule that gradually increases their mileage, allowing for periods of rest and recovery so that their bodies can adapt to the increases.  For instance, since cycling is less punishing to your body, you can get away with back to back rides that build in length and intensity fairly quickly.  Running, however, needs to increase more gradually, with far less intensity.  One or two intense run workouts a week is enough to increase your speed; your other runs should be recovery based.  The same holds true for your swim sessions; one or two sessions a week of intensity is great, but you also need to add in those endurance and open water swim sessions. Remember – races don’t allow for rest after every 100 meters!

Athletes need to consider their season goals when making these decisions and plan intentionally.  If your goal race is an Ironman-distance event, then running 400 repeats on the track is not only unnecessary, it is also a good way to get injured.  By the same token, if you are a sprint triathlete looking to improve your times over last season, doing all long slow distance training is going to lead to long, slow races.

This is why building a plan that works for you, or hiring a coach to help you build an appropriate plan, and then sticking to that plan is so important.  It is very easy to get talked into a track workout with friends, or a group ride that is supposed to be moderate, but becomes a competition after the first pedal stroke.  It takes a lot of mental strength to opt out of the group workout that is appealing from a social standpoint, or to let yourself get dropped on the hammerfest bike session when your plan calls for spinning up hills. 

In order to build YOUR fitness to get you to the starting line of your race in the condition you want to be in, you need to be mentally prepared to train alone, to train on the rainy days, on the windy days, and on those unbearably hot days of summer and physically prepared for the intensity work that can only happen AFTER an adequate base building period.  So as this year’s tri season gets underway, take some time to develop a training plan that is well-intentioned, well-balanced, and will get you the race results you want.

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