I’ve been asked to help out with training a female athlete who has competed in a sprint triathlon before, but wants to compete in a full triathlon in May.
This is a foreign sport to me as far as training, competing, etc goes. I did however help her out with training prior to her first sprint triathlon-- she only had ~5 weeks to train prior to the race and still won her age group, placed 14th I believe out of 87 or so women that day also.
Her strengths are on the bike, then swimming, then running- in that order. I don’t have the split times on me for reference but I do know that the running portion of her race could definitely improve.
She enjoys training with weights so no problems there, has a solid grasp on technique also. No lack of motivation. She’ll be traveling to Australia in late December to Early March for Study Abroad program through our university. She’ll be staying in Adilade (spelling?).
Any tips for structuring training from January to March? She is open to train while she is over there, however I’m not sure about access to facilities, what she’ll be able to use for training, etc.
Tri’s - big hrs of training there.
1 - She needs to be able to do each “event” at least individually before the race
2 - she needs to practice Transitions. Coming from swim “upper body” to bike “lower body” creates a lot of pain, lactic acid and confusion, esp when not practiced.
3 - when it comes to the run - sometimes its due to riding too hard gears on the bike, you get off the bike, and move like a robot. Your legs get insainly pumped up - its even possable to be a good runner, infact running is your best singular event, and come off the bike leg in a tri and not be able to move - at all, let alone run… Takes lots of practice - bike set up (seat height, fore afte, handle bars etc).
There is a tonn to look at. Your best bet might be to google a good quality training group - find who the coach is and find out if they have made a Book on the subject.
bold,
thanks for chiming in. I appreciate your input with your background of endurance training.
I was thinking of using a very similar hi/lo set up as per CF. I used this with her with the 5 weeks we had, worked out well, even with a few missed training sessions.
I was thinking the first initial 8 weeks will strictly be GPP, as she has not done much training since her sprint triathlon in October. She is fairly de-trained so it will take some time to get back into shape. I’d like to incorporate all 3 events in the GPP, but I don’t know for sure if she’ll have access to a bike overseas. So she may just have to stick to running and swimming (again not sure about the access to weights just yet).
I’ll also have to find out how many days she can train/week… Lots to find out before planning.
i have found, most of the CF ideas can be transplanted across to the distance fray.
Speed work - imagine if her best 1k split is 3min - how much easier would holding 4min per 1k be for her than if she could only run 3min 45sec 1k??
Tempo = just more klm volume
Easy = Low Heart rate, around 65% of Max - esp long slow distance efforts that need to be done 1x wk.
Technique, hip height, cadence, hip rotation all make the same diff in distance as it does in sprints
High / low days are a must
The only thing with her swimming, is its way cold down the bottom of Aust, esp if swimming in lakes or beachs. Wetsuit will be a must.