Posted: March 28, 2005

Multisport: Indicator Workouts

by Dan Empfield (www.slowtwitch.com)

Yesterday we published an interview with Brad Kearns and Andrew MacNaughton. These are two fun guys, and I knew when I held the interview I was going to get a dose of mirth, some elucidation, but certainly not the whole story as to how and why these guys shot to the top in such a hurry.

Then Brad wrote more to me later in the day, after he'd seen the interview published on the site—especially after reading his friend's comments (I interviewed them separately). I felt that through Brad's subsequent comments a layer had gotten peeled back, and I included his words as an addendum (if you've read the interview and it didn't include this addendum, it's worth going back and reading it).

Brad hinted that the real reason he and Andrew shot to the top in such a hurry was that they experimented with just how far they could go in their training. So many triathletes did that back then. They increased their training with a fearlessness I don't often see today. Brad writes of often riding 200 miles in a day. Brad wrote that the two of them would do, "...mile repeats on the track in sub-5 and kill each other. Or swim 6,000 yd workouts with swim team till arms fall off."

They weren't the only ones. I know that Mike Pigg had a 180-mile route he'd do on the bike, and he'd have to get up well before dawn to complete it. I remember calling Ken Glah once at 9PM, about three weeks before Kona. I was ready to apologize for calling so close to his bedtime, but an out-of-breath Glah answered the phone, just in from a 130-mile ride followed by a 17-mile run.

Kearns wrote about his own experience of preparing to face an unbeatable Kenny Souza in the Desert Princess race, and of riding a balls-out 140-mile ride, in which he cycled, "...the last 30 from Adelanto to Barstow in one hour—with a slight tailwind. When I got off the bike in Barstow I was certain that I would win."

Tales of Scott Molina's training are legendary, and have been written about on Slowtwitch elsewhere. Paul Huddle and Mark Allen would go on 150-mile rides. Paula would hang on Mark's wheel for dear life the whole way, one of them training for an 8-hour Ironman, pulling the other to a sub-9.

I watched my own wife do her signature "Double De Luz" bike rides—120 miles over 12,000 vertical feet. Her other favorite pre-Ironman indicator workout was to run 16 miles to the Carlsbad pool, do the master's workout, and then run 16 miles back home. Then she knew she was "ready."

Are the athletes of today—at least the long-distance athletes—doing these kinds of workouts? On the whole, I don't think so. Most all are coached, and the coaches—even the Paul Huddles and Roch Freys of the world—are unwilling to experiment with the huge over-the-top workouts that got them very fit in their era, yet at one point or another plunged them over the abyss and into a deeply overtrained state.

As a result, I don't think the athletes of today go as fast as they did ten or twelve years ago. Consider, for example, what technology has meant in the hour record on the velodrome. Elapsed times over a given distance have cascaded, and the distance traveled in an hour has skyrocketed, and that's since the era of the tri bar. Yet only Peter Reid and Luc Van Lierde have been able to register times in Kona that approach or equal those of Mark and Dave, and I think that's largely because these two have engaged in training that is fearless to the point of almost reckless. Yes, both have therefore suffered from pushing just a bit too hard. Yet it must be said that just hearing the tales of their training is enough to curl your toes, and that's a large part of how they got to the top.

Both the men and women of what I consider the magic era of long distance racing—1987 to 1993—represent the best (as a whole) that our sport has ever seen. I believe they got that way because they were willing to do more work. The question is, how do you do that work without falling into an overtrained state, and doing damage to your body that will last for years?

I think the secret is in realizing how much good a really, over-the-top workout—or an over-the-top week—can give you, and to know how to do these workouts without throwing yourself into an overtraining tailspin.

Purely on the basis of observing the improvements and setbacks of world class triathletes over a 20-year period, I think the hazards of overtraining are fairly well known and I spell them out in the overtraining article series on Slowtwitch. In short, I think the dangers are in:

• Extreme miles without rest over weeks and months
• Too many high-intensity efforts in a given period
• Too many long or hard efforts in thermal weather

The fact that many of today's coaches—Paul Huddle, JulieAnne White, Jeff Devlin, Mike McCormack, Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Scott Molina—were themselves very good long distance athletes means they've experimented with extreme workouts, have paid the price, and so are to some degree reticent with those in their charge. Yet the value in the indicator workout remains.

The goodness in these workouts is threefold. First, these workouts are just fun. There is something that appears to be hardwired into a triathlete—a desire to see how far one can go. Starting off on a training day that'll be so long you've got to push off in the dark, for fear you won't be able to finish before it's dark again, is scary. But it's thrilling at the same time.

Second, there is the training benefit. We all know of the Nietsche remark: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." The trick is to make sure you don't kill yourself in these workouts. If you survive them intact and uninjured, you've done yourself a world of good.

The third benefit is in knowing that you've done something as long or longer than the race (or the section of the race) you're shooting for. It's nice to know when you've got a 112 mile ride in front of you that you've gone 120 or 140. It's also nice knowing that your competitors probably haven't.

I described some of this when I wrote about long training weekends in You can train like a pro. I believe I write (in there somewhere) about the "credit card tours" I used to do with friends of mine. We'd go off on our bikes with a credit card, and clothes waiting at strategic locations. Over such weekends you're an athlete, an explorer, and a tourist all in one.

I call these indicator workouts (which might describe one workout or a week of workouts) because of what they seem to mean to those who've done them. I hear over and over again the phrase, after such a workout is completed, "Now I know I'm ready." Yes, that's the case with shorter-distance athletes as well. I've heard of middle-distance runners doing a set of repeat miles and uttering the same phrase. But for a medium- or long-distance triathlete it seems losing a race is rarely an issue of oxygen consumption or maximum speed, but of just running out of gas in some way or another. The indicator workout lets you know you can go the distance, and it helps prepare you for the distance, all in one fell swoop.

The trick is in going where you haven't gone before, while at the same time knowing your limits. I've heard the best Ironman athletes say that the reason it takes a while—like five years—to get the hang of the Ironman (especially the Hawaiian Ironman) is not in figuring out the tactics of the race. It's just that you have to train to be able to train for the race. In other words, when a pro tries to emulate the hard 120-mile rides Jurgen Zack does three days a week prior to Kona, it's just not possible. It doesn't work. That's because it's taken Zack many years to get himself to the point where his knees, his butt, his organs, make Zack able to train like Zack. I remember talking to Tim DeBoom just before his breakthrough third place finish in Kona three years ago, and he said it had taken him years of training just to make him able to do the training he needed to do to turn in a podium-worthy performance.

What I'm trying to say is, your indicator workouts must seem a little scary to you, but just a little. You've got to expand your horizon in steps.

There's no way for me to write down how to gauge how much is too much for your indicator workouts. The best I can offer is to say that these workouts ought to be incrementally longer. That is, if your longest ride ever is 80 miles, try one that is 90, then one that is 105, and so on. Treat these workouts with respect. If they seem scary to you, it's for good reason. The secret is not in doing these workouts hard, but in just making the distance. The distance will make them hard.

I would do these workouts slowly—low effort, low heart rate—and figure out a way to stay out of bad weather, especially hot weather. When a pro athlete looks back at the workout(s) that damaged him or her—the one's that didn't make him faster but, following Nietsche's model, really did kill him—these are often the long, long workouts that took place under a baking sun.

I'll ask the reader to just imagine all the caveats and warnings I might give: "Don't try this at home." "Workout performed on a close course, by a stunt driver." At some point, though, you've just got to go for it. Yes there's a little danger, and a little risk, but that's inherent in our sport. So go out there and do something a little wild and crazy. Not stupid. Just wild and crazy. Hopefully the reader can comprehend my nuance, and incorporate the appropriate respect for the sort of workout I'm writing about.

I feel I need to write a little about the "encleve" and that not to do so would be to omit an important part of the story. As would be the case in any milieu—politics, science, education, industry—the best runners, cyclists and triathletes often get better because they goad each other into doing more and more outrageous things. Boulder, Eugene, San Diego, and a dozen other locales aren't magically able to imbue fitness. Rather, they're just places where good athletes gather. Someone is going to run the idea of an outrageous workout up the flagpole, and all you need is one other to salute it. The encleve doesn't spawn fast athletes. It spawns indicator workouts, and such workouts appear a lot more attainable if you've got a buddy or two with which to do them.