Posted: October 23, 2006

Triathlon: Train Smart—Avoid These Key Training Mistakes

From: Jason Gootman, MS, CSCS & Will Kirousis, BS, CSCS
Tri-Hard Endurance Sports Coaching
USA Triathlon and USA Cycling Certified Coaches
Certified Strength & Conditioning Coaches
www.tri-hard.com

As coaches, triathletes often come to us when their training is not going well for them, looking for a fix. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common mistakes, and how you can avoid them by training smart!

Mistake: Cramming for your race.
You turn over the page on your calendar and there it is—the Olympic-distance triathlon you signed up for back in the winter. It’s only four weeks away! You haven’t been doing much training, so you know that you need to get after it right away and get after it hard. So, like that final exam that you left all the studying for to the last two days before, you jump right into lots of hard training and go at it hard for a few weeks, attempting to make up for lost time.

There are major problems with this approach. In the best case scenario, you will race at a performance level that is a fraction of your potential. In the worst case scenario, you will get injured, develop the overtraining syndrome (tremendous fatigue and poor performance associated with too great a workload from the combination of your workouts and other life responsibilities or an inadequate health foundation), and/or get burnt out on triathlon altogether. Doing well in triathlon is a lot like investing for retirement. Steady, consistent workouts, done over time, will create the best performances with the lowest risk. Being inconsistent with your workouts and/or saving all or most of your training for the last few weeks before your race is risky—you are building your ability to perform well on a very shaky platform.

Solution: Give yourself time to train properly.
To reach your potential and avoid ill health, you need to give yourself adequate time to prepare for your race. Frequency, intensity, duration, workout volume, workout load—these are common variables manipulated in a training plan to build your abilities. What you cannot forget is the total duration of consistent weeks of training leading up to a race. This is one of the key factors to your success. Give yourself at least 12 weeks to prepare for your race. To maximize your potential, divide your training up over an entire year using the concept of periodization. Using periodization, your training will be divided into periods, each designed to develop your ability in a certain way and build your ability in a logical manner as you work towards your race.

Mistake: Following your friend’s training plan.
You woke up one day last week and you knew you wanted to do a workout to get ready for your ½ Ironman in a few months. You have a training plan that you made for yourself that you built to address your needs and you believe will work well for you. But you were doubting yourself that day and you know your friend Chris has been doing really well in races the last few years, so you give her a call. She is doing a cycling workout after work—uphill intervals. You think to yourself how good of a triathlete Chris is and decide that doing her workout with her will really help you. You decide to join her. You don’t even look at your training plan to see what you were supposed to do that day. The workout with Chris starts out well and you are really working hard on your first few intervals, keeping up with her, and having fun. But things turn for the worse. As the workout progresses, you really struggle. You are barely making it up the hill. Physically, this workout is too hard for you. Mentally, you are demoralized, and you drag yourself home. The next day you are too tired to do any workouts and skip your planned cycling and running workouts. You had two unproductive days of workouts (the first day when you had a poor cycling workout and the second day when you missed both of your planned workouts). You made a few mistakes. First, Chris had the day before as a rest day in her training plan b/c that is the best day for her to take a rest day. Your next rest day on your training plan was coming in a few days. Second, the day before, you did a long ride—45 miles with the last 10 miles at your goal race pace. The next day, the day you rode with Chris, was supposed to be a swim workout for you. Third, Chris has been doing uphill intervals for six weeks and has gradually been building up the workout you guys did today—you have not. In other words, this workout was appropriate for Chris today, but inappropriate for you. Chris was in a much better position—more well-rested, and simply better prepared than you at this time—to benefit from this workout.

Solution: Follow a training plan that is appropriate for you.
To train effectively, you need to do workouts that are appropriate to your ability level, experience level, goals, personal schedule, and other factors unique to you. Make out a training plan for yourself that addresses your needs and stick to it. Give it a chance to work for you. Trust in your plan. You absolutely can build in workouts with your friends, but make sure that they are appropriate for you in the big picture. Riding 30 extra miles on a given day to get in a workout with a friend, is inappropriate. Joining a friend at the track for a workout of similar length, similarly-paced intervals on a day when you are ready for that workout is appropriate. If you have trouble making a training plan for yourself or don’t feel confident in your own ability to make a training plan for yourself, contact a coach for help.

Mistake: Doing too many training races leading up to your peak race.
You have your big race for the year, an Olympic-distance triathlon, set for October. You decide that to get ready for it, it would be a good idea for you to do another Olympic-distance triathlon, 3-4 sprint-distance triathlons, and a few 5-K and 10-K runs in the 12 weeks leading up to the race. Your training goes well all summer and you are feeling great. You’ve done a few races and raced well. As you approach the last few months before your peak race, you start doing all of these training races. They start off going well and you are racing strong. By the second-to-last one, four weeks before your peak race, you have a really bad day—you just have nothing in your legs. You have another race scheduled for two weeks prior to your peak race that you now decide will help you get your legs back before your peak race. At that race, your legs are dead again. You figure you must just not be as “up” for these races and that you will be fine at your peak race. Your peak race comes and you have a terrible race. You race slower than you were the year before when you were not trained as well. What happened here is you raced too much leading up to your peak race. Races are much harder than training. The environment of a race causes you to push yourself to a level that you just don’t get to in training, even when you are working very hard. And don’t even give us the “I do my training races easy” line. We have a phrase for triathletes that tell us they are going to do a race easy: deluding themselves! Most triathletes are simply too driven to show up to a race, have competition around them, and not push themselves very hard.

Solution: Save your best race for the race that matters the most to you.
Use training races for what they do best. They help you to experience the aspects of racing that are impossible to fully replicate in a workout: swimming with several hundred people around you, doing transitions at full speed, and mentally managing a race. All other physical and mental abilities can be trained in your workouts. For example, don’t rely on sprint-distance triathlons for highintensity workouts. And don’t rely on ½ Ironmans for your endurance-building workouts. You can get these and all desired workout effects from a welldesigned training plan. Use training races leading up to your peak race, but know that a little goes a long way and know that racing can take a lot out of you. Save your best race effort for the race that matters to you the most.

Train smart and always keep your training fun and you will have great success!

To learn more about Jason, Will, and Tri-Hard Endurance Sports Coaching, or to contact them, visit www.tri-hard.com.

Comment on this story.

Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest