Tuesday, 30 July 2013

Training for the European Triathlon Championships



Training for the European Triathlon Championships

Over the next couple of weeks I intend to blog about my training and some of the great support and advice that I have had along the way. I will also talk about the trials, successes and failures of trying out some of these ideas.

Background

I am thinking about participating in 2014 ETU Triathlon European Standard Distance Championships (Kitzbühel, Austria June 19 2014 - June 22 2014) by competing in Anglian Water Standard Distance Triathlon - 22 September 2013. I have competed in Triathlon before: in 2006 I was capable of completing a Triathon in 2hours 3mins, but 8 years later I am aiming for an altogether slower time, but which may possibly more challenging to achieve!

Advice I have received

Mike Gratton, former winner of the London Marathon once told me running twice a day is better than running daily. I recently saw an excellent article in Runners World explaining this. (See Link 1)

Dan Halksworth, pro-triathlete and winner of UK Ironman suggested with 8 weeks to got to bin the swim drills and start work on speed. Reps of 25, 50 or 100, or also 400’s. He for example will do warm-ups and then 8 x 400, or 40 x 100 before a warm-down. Whilst I’m not that good the principle seems sensible.

Mark Nicole, fab triathlete suggested that I reduce the volume (I train 19 hours per week) and aim for speed. This is consistent with Dan’s comments. He also suggested I focus on better nutrition including fuelling during training to be able to train harder, faster better.

Advice I tried so far

I keep my training log on-line (see Link 2). Today my swim comprised 400m warm-up then tried 10 x 100 in 1:35 pace off 2:15 (provided there were not slower swimmers in the way!) I managed 8 x 100 before I got tired and slowed to 1:40 pace. I then rested and did 200 cruise before doing the final 2 x 100, but now was tired and only managed 1:40 pace. I decided to stop then, rather than practice going slow!

This evening I my run session was 1 mile repeats: Run Interval1 1.8 miles 00:08:00 warm-up Run Interval2 1 miles 00:06:20 effort against wind Run Interval3 1 miles 00:05:55 effort with wind Run Interval4 1 miles 00:06:05 effort against wind Run Interval5 1 miles 00:05:40 effort with wind Run Interval6 1.8 miles 00:08:00 warm-down Run Total 7.6 miles 00:06:40 avg.

Comments

I think this structured approach may be just the right thing for the next 8 weeks!

Link 1

Link 2


If you have any comments or advice either for me, or others reading this blog please do get in contact with me

Tim HJ Rogers

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