Ironman Tips: Training

Bryan’s Ironman Tips

Training

• Relax, it is not that hard. If you can do a marathon, you can do an Ironman.
• Be consistent and train a little year round. Running is the most important. You need to keep your body accustomed to the pounding.
• “Train where your fitness is right now, not where you want it to be.” - Scott Jurek. In other words, don’t increase intensity or volume too quickly.
• Increase frequency before increasing volume. Volume is more taxing on the body.
• Frequent workouts also stimulate more testosterone, insulin like growth factor, and other beneficial products than fewer longer workouts.
• Break your training into 2 weeks relatively hard, then 5 days easy, cutting volume down by 50% with no intensity & no lifting. This will prevent over-training and help your body become stronger.
• Take one day completely off each week.
• If you miss a workout, don’t overexert yourself to make it up. Skip it, you will be doing plenty of training.
• Most all of your training should be aerobic. The Ironman is a long, relatively slow race.
• Sleep as much as possible. Training will break down your muscles, sleep will help them grow stronger.
• Weeks 19-24: aerobic, high cadence, mix in some hills
• Weeks 13-18: heavy weights
• Weeks 4-12: running intervals, long runs
• Weeks 1-3: Taper
• After an Ironman, take 2 weeks completely off.
• At the end of the season take 3-4 weeks off, then 3-4 weeks unstructured fun training.

Training Plan 2012

I have developed my training plan for next year.  It may change a little, but I really want to focus on frequency.  From everything I have been reading the past few years, frequency is the key.  It stimulates more growth hormone/factors, promotes durability and strength, and helps with recovery.  The more my body gets used to cycling and running, the faster I will become.  Long workouts are great for endurance, but endurance is relatively easy to build up.  Speed, strength, and durability take longer.  Long sessions also require much more recovery time.  As a working athlete, I have additional stressors and less time to recover.  Therefore I am going short and freq until 3 months out from my A race then adding long rides (5hr) and runs (2hr).  During my base phase I will be doing 1hr rides with a 2-3 mile run Mon-Fri and twice a day on Tues, Wed, & Thur.  I will swim and lift legs twice a week.  On Sat, I will do a 3hr ride and 6 mile run.  When I start doing long runs, I use the run/walk strategy to speed recovery.  So far I have been doing 8min run/30sec walk.  Bobby McGee recommends 10min run/1min walk, but I want my walk to line up a little better with my gel consumption.