Posted: March 16, 2005

Multisport: Time Over Distance

I am not worried about the distance you cover, but rather the time done working out. I used to get caught up in trying to accomplish a certain distance. This created added stress which I didn't need for my training and racing.

The first few years of triathlon was to just get as much distance in as possible whenever I could. During high school, I concentrated on the sport of choice depending on which season. For instance, the Fall was cross-country running, the Winter was swimming, the Spring was track and Summer was triathlon. I was so busy trying to do an intense get in shape program in three months per sport, that I didn't have time to concentrate on triathlon per se. It was this way in college as for six months of the year, I did swimming. In the Spring I did the Little 500 bike race with three of my fraternity brothers and then during the Summer, I fit in triathlon. Thus, during my educational period, my goal was to train while I could. I never had a set program for triathlon training. This changed when I graduated from college and went pro.

Since I had more time with no school as well as no individual sport during a specific time of year to train, I was able to dictate my training and I did this based on distance. I had no coach at the time so I was flying by the seat of my pants and doing whatever I could read in magazines. I also did whatever I heard others pros doing at the time. I am not saying this didn't work, but it did create additional stress that now I look at and realize was not necessary.

An example of a typical week was to swim 20,000 to 25,000 yards, bike 300 miles and run 45 miles. I would plan out what I would do for the week ahead of time such as: Swim masters M, W, F, S and S. Bike T, W, T, S and S with group rides on T, Th and Sat. (long) Run M, T, Th, F, S and S with long run on Sunday.

On occasion, actually every week, something came up that caused me to miss a workout. This could range from a sponsor conflict, girlfriend counseling emergency, weather or just day-to-day tasks which were postponed until stuff was hitting the fan and it just needed to be taken care of. By the time Saturday morning rolled around, I would check my schedule and see that I still had to swim 10,000 yards, bike 160 miles and run 20 miles....in two days! For an Ironman triathlete, that may seem like a standard two day session, but for an athlete training for Olympic distance races, that wasn't the best training formula. This created too much stress.

Around 1994, I had been training some with the Terminator, Scott Molina. He mentioned how he stopped keeping a training log. He had been training for triathlons for almost 15 years and he felt like he knew what training he needed to do. I liked his philosophy and so I stopped keeping a training log. I felt instance relief of trying to force myself to get a certain amount of distance swimming and mileage biking and running. However, I think that by not having a written training plan, it set me up for a downfall with chronic fatigue two years later.

Thus, I amended the distance training log and the no training log, to a training plan based on time! Time took the pressure off of having to run 14 miles for my long run. For example, if I felt fresh, 14 miles might take 1:30-1:35. If I felt tired, the run might take 2 hours. Hence, if I said I planned to go for a 1:30 run, I ran depending on how I felt. I didn't want to force myself to run 14 miles and thus dig myself in a hole of fatigue.

When coaching people, I base training more on time because the geography and climate of where people train is very different. Doing a 50 mile ride in the flats of Florida is a lot different than doing a 50 mile ride in the mountains of Colorado. The Florida ride may take 2 hours and the Colorado ride might take 3 hours. If I were to tell an athlete to do a 2:30 ride with a protocol of heart rate zones or speed skills, then the athlete can accomplish the same type of workout even if the terrain was different

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