A typical training week

I intended to do more posts over the last couple of weeks but I have been busy! As mentioned in my last post I will go through some further details on planning a typical training week (micro-cycle) which builds on the previous posts details of structuring macro and meso-cycles in relation to a periodised training plan. First though a quick update on what has been keeping me busy!

Training over the last couple of weeks

Well truthfully the last couple of weeks have been challenging! The beginning of week 4 was all about adaptation and recovery after a high volume week followed by a weekend where I completed a 150km ride followed by a half marathon the next day. My legs were very sore after this weekend so Monday's workout was a 45min recovery spin on the turbo, light gears, 90rpm in heart rate zone 1. Tuesday was a technique swim with lots of drills. I self massaged and stretched a lot and got a few good 10 minute stints on the Power Plate massaging my legs, which I find to be very effective. When recovering I tend to have a couple of smaller extra meals/snacks to maintain a calorie requirement about 20% higher to assist with muscle repair. I also consume anti-inflammatory foods as well as those high in anti-oxidants. I will talk much more on recovery methods and nutrition in future post as these are HUGE topics. Anyhow by Wednesday my legs were coming good and I was able to put in a good interval run session and normal training resumed. A couple of note worthy sessions were my Saturday ride where I completed a session I call five, fives. This is where I do 5 repeats up 5 separate hills of varying gradient and length with each hill being around 10-20km apart. This session builds strength and will start to prepare me for the hills of Lanzarote. On the Sunday I completed my first 30km run which I enjoyed despite cold wet weather. The photo is me on the kitchen floor after this session - the wife won't let me any further in the house until I have stripped off and put the kit in the washing machine!

The next training week was the really challenging one. I was away with work all week staying in a hotel. I had access to a pool and gym so all was good there but I had to forfeit my biking which is frustrating as I don't like riding gym bikes.  Additionally I had evening work which left little time for anything other than eating, sleeping and training, however these are the real challenges of an amateur. I focused on what I could and did some extra gym & run sessions. The weekend was another 150km ride which was my favourite ride of the year. Ten or so degrees, light wind and the sun was out! It felt tropical compared to the weather we have had recently. I rode well at a good solid average around 31km/h. Afterwards I drove down to Brighton for the half marathon. Unfortunately I got food poisoning after a pub meal, at 04.00 it was coming out of both ends and I thought that was that! Around 07.00 I started to feel better and had a small amount of yoghurt with some gluten free granola which stayed down so I made a last minute call to run the half. This mean't a mad dash to get to the start line on time. I did manage to make it but I could only squeeze in to the 2hr -1hr 45min section before the gun went off. Nightmare! I had a really hard time the first few miles a) not throwing up b) battling the tired legs and c) weaving around other runners to try and find a space where I could get into a rhythm. I managed to get round but needed the help of a Lucozade at about mile 8 or 9 which I clutched for dear life and sipped all the way to the line. I crossed the line shot to bits in around 1hr 37mins which I was pleased with considering. I can say that was the closest I have ever come in training to feeling like I do at the back end of an Ironman marathon. Low blood sugar, dehydrated, with incredibly tired legs! I considered it to be good training! Please take note though I would not advise doing what I did and running if you feel poorly. I do know my body well and was confident I would not make matters worse. If I had felt I was doing more harm than good I would have walked off. Post half marathon I got some good calories in via fluid and I must confess some nice cookies from Ben's Cookies in the lanes! A sound sleep and I felt great on Monday. Legs were only slightly sore, much better than 2 weeks before where I did the same session sequencing; a 150km cycle followed by half marathon the next day. The low fatigue/soreness levels are a very encouraging sign that the body is adapting and that the base training is working. I am looking forward to the build phase in a few weeks now where I will inject some more strength and pace work! Lastly I have stepped up my endurance swim to a main set of 3x 1500m with a 90 second rest. I am completing this comfortably now at a steady average of pretty much 24min per 1500m. So although time has been tight due to travelling and work I have made the steps forward as planned and am feeling confident. The next 3 weeks of base will be about progressing the long endurance cycles up to 200km and the runs up to 35km. Ideally I will have a couple of each under my belt by the end of the base period. With regards to the bike, the weather and my mental capacity to suffer out in the wet, wind and cold will determine if this is achieved!

A typical training week

A tip I picked up a few years back from the book 'I'm here to win' by Chris McCormack 2x Ironman World Champion is to have a skeleton weekly plan based on key sessions that are must do's, the bare minimum you would need to make some form of progress (link for book below).

These are my key skeleton sessions.

• 2x swim - 1x endurance session, 1x interval session
• 2x cycle - 1x endurance session, 1x interval session
• 2x run - 1x endurance session, 1x interval session

You will see from this I factor in 6 key skeleton sessions. Basically an endurance and interval session from each discipline. Here are a few reasons I see them as key for me. Endurance sessions stimulate adaptations in many systems of the body; the myo-fascial system (muscles and connective tissue), nervous system, cardiovascular system (heart, blood vessels and blood) and the respiratory system (lungs). Many of these adaptations take years to build and gains can obviously reverse in off season. The endurance sessions allow me to build mental stamina, develop connective tissue strength, build movement efficiency along with increasing the ability of the muscular, cardiovascular and respiratory systems capacity to deliver and extract oxygen for energy burning! My view is the more years you have had in the sport the less of this you may be able to get away with. This does of course depend on your physiology. I consider myself to have relatively few years of endurance training under my belt and even less at Ironman. I have raced triathlon for 9 years and Ironman for 6 years. This may sound like a lot to some but I have no background in endurance sport. I played basketball as a kid but I was no swimmer, cyclist or runner so do not have the years and in many cases multiple decades of base some might have. If you consider a guy like Chris McCormack he has a background in endurance sports that stems right back into his early teens.  A training partner of mine was a national swimmer and as such has years of base as a swimmer. Because of this I consider my endurance sessions vital, particularly to progress year on year. Each year I have noticed improvements in my endurance which have allowed me to tolerate more volume and intensity. This has been reflected in my race schedules. When I started racing Ironman I only raced one a year, then I stepped up to two a year and now I do three a year. 

Interval sessions will build tolerance to the by products of hard work, increase capacity of muscle fibres to produce more power and increase 'engine size' i.e. the capacity of the heart and lungs. To get faster interval sessions are a must. 

In short. Endurance sessions are about being able to go the distance efficiently and with a high propensity to avoid injury and intervals are about developing speed capacity. The achievement of both equals a faster athlete. Many achieve this but they increase too quickly and get either injured or burnout due to either not enough endurance at easy intensities or too many hard sessions. 

So these are the reasons that these are my key sessions. I fit other important sessions in around this skeleton plan. Here is what an ideal & realistic week looks like for me as an amateur. 

Ideal training week

You will see from this the additional sessions are:

• 2x conditioning workouts. Typically these are gym based where I focus on 'core' or TRX at home. Again I will expand on this in future posts. 
• A technique and drills session for swimming.  Given that swimming is the most skill based sport, I work at continuing to improve my stroke. 
• An aerobic interval session for biking and running. These sessions tend to be moderate in duration/distance where I juggle between heart rate zones 2 & 3. Work rest ratio's tend to be around 1:1 as not much rest is needed if you are predominantly aerobic. These sessions add additional base. 

You may also notice that Monday is a very low intensity day. This is to allow me an opportunity to recover from the volume at the weekend. If fatigue is really high I may drop some sessions on the Monday and Tuesday and or switch the run interval sessions over. I call this 'rear loading'. By this I mean I rear load the week with the tougher sessions, this gives my body a chance to adapt in the early part of the week. 

I had a really good question on Facebook regarding my periodisation which asked: Do you factor in rest weeks? My answer was, I used to. Typically I factored in a rest week every 4 weeks and when I started to handle the volume and recover quicker I put a rest week in every 5 weeks.  Then I moved to no rest weeks and adopted the 'rear loading' technique. I would recommend that anyone starting Ironman Triathlon who is increasing their training load does factor in rest weeks, particularly if they have a demanding job and don't get much sleep due to life demands such as children. It is worth mentioning that when I say rest week this does not mean no training, simply less, around 50% less to be precise, and less intensity. This gives the body an excellent opportunity to adapt and you more time to get some sleep in and perhaps catch up on things you have had to sacrifice for your training. Based on this I personally prefer to call them adaptation weeks. Now I put in adaptation weeks by 'feel' if I am feeling excess fatigue, this takes confidence to alter the 'paper' training plan which I know many struggle with and feel guilty about thinking they are being 'weak' and that it will harm their results. Ironically it is often the opposite, for a committed athlete sometimes that hardest call is skipping a session and or taking a few days to rest when you need to. 

Training Log

To monitor my daily sessions I use Polar watches and bike computers and the accompanying Polar precision software. Below is a screen shot from a cycle workout from a while back. I am a bit of a geek so I love reviewing the data from my sessions and seeing my average heart rate, average cadence/stride rate, average speed, calories burned and altitude etc. Over time reviewing this has allowed me to Plan, execute and evaluate sessions very successfully so I get the most out of each. At present I am closely looking at cycling altitude data, meaning metres climbed. My focus with my rides is starting to turn to getting in as much altitude as I can. Lanzarote has 2551m of climbing so I am trying to use my base miles to scope out and produce rides that will get close to achieving this so I can hammer them in the build phase. It's not easy to get a good amount of altitude in a ride if the terrain you readily have access to does not have much, sometimes it means doing smaller loops of hilly sections which is what I will need to do. 

In the next post I will start to talk on designing specific sessions and the elements I factor in. Right time for a foam roll and bed!

To follow me on twitter: @ironman_JW

A periodised training plan

Wow - 3 weeks of the 18 week training plan have blown by! 15 weeks to go until Ironman Lanzarote. In this post I thought I would share some details about how I design my training plans along with an update of how the last few weeks have gone.

Designing a training plan

The first step for me in designing a training plan is deciding on 'A' races I would like to do.'A' races are races I want to peak for, where I intend to 'give everything' aiming to break personal records.  In essence they are the reason I train - the ideal is nothing is left to chance at these races, everything has been tested, practiced, and I go into the races rested and highly charged! I take into consideration the date of the race and will not enter unless there is 16-24 weeks for me to get in shape. Given my 6 years experience racing Ironman I have found that I can prepare in 16 weeks, I would not typically recommend this duration to someone new to the sport or someone stepping up to this distance unless they have a solid foundation in endurance racing.

Once 'A' races have been selected, I enter them as soon as I can so I am committed. With Ironman branded races most sell out the moment spaces are released so typically I am entering 1 year in advance.  Once races are entered I then select a date that is my 'official' start date for a regimented training regime. When selecting this date I consider life! So for example this year I started my 'official' training on the 14th January after a ski holiday and the festive period. For me it would be too difficult to stay committed to my training, nutrition and sleeping over this period and whilst skiing. I consider the festive period and ski trip opportunities to spend time with friends and family and have a break from the relentless focus of training for an Ironman.

Once I have my 'A' race date, in this case 18th May for Ironman Lanzarote, and start date -14th January (giving me a period of 18 weeks to train which is referred to as the Macro-cycle) the next step for me is to split this training into a number of phases (Meso-cycles). This process is often called periodisation and although there is lots of terminology around this, I keep it simple. For anyone wanting to know more on periodisation for triathlon, one book I would like to mention/recommend that has a good section on periodisation, is Joe Friel's triathlon training bible (link at the bottom of the post). The key sections I split my training into are base, build, peak and taper (there are others I use such as recovery post race if I am going to build back up to another A race). For Ironman Lanzarote I am doing an 8 week base, 6 week build, 3 week peak and 1 week taper.

During all phases Training load is subjectively considered: Training load = volume x intensity. Training load is key to understand as it gives a good indicator of the amount of stress you are placing on yourself. It is well documented that it is not smart to significantly increase volume and intensity at the same time, I have found this to be true with myself.

Base is where I focus on the volume side of the equation. High mileage at low intensities, coupled with plenty of technique work - long swims, bikes and runs along with conditioning exercises, typically high reps to build local muscular endurance. By the end of the base period I aim to be swimming 4km with relatively less effort. Biking up to 200km feeling controlled and measured and running 35km steady controlled and measured - of course there will be some fatigue after these sessions but it should only be mild and last only a day or two, if it is longer more adaptation is required which suggests volume has been increased too quickly or I am not recovering well which is most likely to be down to not eating and/or sleeping well. It is worth mentioning during this phase the mind adapts also and my goal is to get into that place that only really Ironman recognise when you say in response to the question; what training are you doing today? "I'm ONLY going out for 150km!" I understand this sounds insane to those that do not do this type of training but honestly when you are doing rides of 6hrs+ regularly a 5hr, 150km ride does feel short to the mind, a 1hr, 40km ride hardly seems worth doing! It's quite funny because my Wife Laura has clearly adjusted her mindset to this also and often responds "Oh, only 150km, I thought you were doing a long session today!" When I hear it back it makes me giggle at how ridiculous it sounds. I should say here that I do include some speed/interval work during a base phase but it is typically 1 session a week or fortnight from each discipline. Often I include some single discipline races such as a half marathon which serves as a good intense session, these I call 'C' races, I do not taper for these, I am not that bothered about my times, they are training as opposed to races really. For example I ran Watford half marathon this weekend after riding 150km on Saturday in high winds. My legs were tired on Saturday, at present 150km is still quite a long ride as I have not been tough enough to brave longer in the recent weather. Anyhow I posted a 1hr 34min half marathon time on a lumpy course with tired legs.  This is a long way from my PB half marathon - it was pleasing though to post this time at this stage in my training and this actually gives me more confidence than a fast 'fresh' time.  You never get to run 'fresh' in an Ironman, to me running fresh feels nothing like running in an Ironman and I have found little correlation between my fresh time improvement and my Ironman running.

After base comes build. The focus here is to maintain a high volume but build in more intensity work -this may include some race pace time trial efforts, another interval session for each discipline. Higher heart rates are achieved and sessions start to 'sting' a bit!

No doubt you can guess that peak is about intensity.  Volume is reduced slightly to give more recovery time from more intense sessions. If I have to skip a session or adjust it to be a recovery, in this phase I am okay with that as the sessions need to be of good intensity.  Sometimes in this phase I may put a 'B' race in the schedule, such as a local half iron distance or olympic distance race. This depends if there is one that is on a suitable date and if I need to test something like a new nutrition strategy or bike set up under race conditions. Leading up to Ironman Lanzarote I do not have a B race planned but I do have a 4 day training camp in Lanzarote with a training partner - this is ideal as we will smash up some solid sessions whilst getting a good feel for the actual course and conditions, ideal really.

Lastly then is taper.  This is all about letting the body recover.  You can't just do nothing here though as the body can de-condition very quickly and start to 'glue' up.  Weight can also go on quickly as the big appetite from burning 15,000 extra calories or so per week does not subside once the training load goes down so you have to be careful here! This phase is very subjective and I typically go by how I feel. Short, quality and non fatiguing swims, bikes and runs to maintain fitness and confidence are done.

To give you a visual representation here is how it looks in diagram form.

Of course there is more to it than this but this is the blueprint, in my next post I will talk about micro-cycles which for me are a week. I will look at the number and types of sessions as well as how I structure a week.

Hows the training been going up to week 3 of 18?

The first 3 weeks have been challenging but I have seen lots of progress. The biggest challenge has been the snowy, wet, cold and windy weather. This has made it hard for me to get out for good quality long rides. That said I did manage to get my maiden ride in on my new Cervelo S2 road bike, I covered 150km and loved every pedal stroke, the bike is awesome. Most of my riding has been on the Tri bike which is set up on the turbo. I have done quite a few 3hr sessions and feel really good on these, I have increased a few gears for particular sets and can feel my legs strengthening.

I have been increasing my run volume each week and have a couple of 25km runs under my belt now plus a half marathon. By the end of Feb I aim to have a couple of 30km runs done plus the Brighton half marathon which I am confident I will go quicker on as the course is flatter plus I am getting stronger each week.

Swimming is going very well, I am putting in some big endurance sessions around 5km. One session I do is 4x 1km with a 90second rest, this is becoming much easier now and I am finishing it feeling good, I plan to progress this to 3x 1.5km soon.

I have managed to steadily lose weight whilst getting enough energy in to perform and recover well - this is a tricky balance. My start weight was 158lbs and I am now down to a good weight of 152lbs. I aim to get to 146-148lbs, which is my racing weight, I can achieve this without compromising power.

Right for now it is time for me to start to prepare dinner and get ready for bed as I have a 5km swim session in the morning and a 3hr turbo with some strength sets in the afternoon! As mentioned in my next post I will look at how I plan a week of training - what is called the micro-cycle in periodisation terms.

You can also follow me on twitter: @ironman_JW