Triathlon Training Fast and Easy

If you don’t get tired, you go faster and farther. That’s about all there is to success in any endurance sport. If you are the type of person that can follow directions from a simple statement, that’s about all there is here. That’s what this book is all about. Thanks for buying it and now you can go out a be faster because you know the secret. If you want a little more, read on. We do various exercise and training techniques based on personal experience, research and stories. Going faster and farther are relative terms. Speed and time are pretty individual. You don’t race on someone else’s stories and you shouldn’t train from them either. Make up your own. It’s your story. EXCESSIVENESS DOESN’T WORK If you really want to do a run across the Sahara, the Seattle to Acapulco swim, or low crawl the China Wall go for it. But I’ll continue to say this until I drop. A successful exercise plan should enhance the rest of your life, not take away from it. The sport of Triathlon continues to grow and it’s great to see that. And I also think overall, the outlook has become healthier. We know more about training and for the most part I’m seeing much smarter training. But not always. Triathletes still tend to take themselves pretty seriously. Just keep in mind that if you don't earn your living at it, then you do it for fun. An age group placing or even win has the shelf-life of a sliced apple. The person most aware of that victory is the one right behind you. The rest of the world goes on. What matters is that you get faster or feel better and you know it. There is much new information about how to train more efficiently. The sport of triathlon and multi-sport training have provided researchers with a whole new arena of investigation. Although exercise physiology is still a young science with much to learn, one conclusion keeps coming back. We can make substantial fitness gains from less time than we used to think necessary. FAST IS FUN The effects of training are obvious. You can do more or go faster and you don't get as tired. Your fun factor gets a lift when these things occur. So the objective is combating fatigue. And while we know more and we think we’re getting pretty smart, our knowledge base is still like the ocean or space. There is still a whole lot more that we don’t know. The training system in this book takes aim at what we’re learning. There are some basics to help in understanding how this whole system works. The principles are supported by numerous and consistent studies. We’re lucky because more current research is supporting that of the past. What was revolutionary and doubted twenty years ago, is now mainstream and accepted. You're just going to have to trust me on the details, because we won't get into all that. There is nothing like the mystery of a juicy slice of a research journal to cure insomnia. There are as many training responses as there are people. But there is one thing that applies to everyone. No matter what you want to do—run faster, juggle balls, cheat at cards—you need to practice that skill. Your body will respond to the training you give it. The response reflects the input. To go faster, you need to increase your training tempo. Increasing your pace for shorter distances will also generate pronounced fitness gains. Do less, gain more. It all sounds like a great deal. It works, but as we all know, there are no free rides. The last one ended with the housing boom. You need to learn to build up both the intensity of training and the time you train at higher levels. The key factor, however, is that time increases of only a few minutes transfer into big performance gains. Just like anything else, you can't do it all at once. That's good in a way, because it can give you years of continued improvement. To a point. When I wrote Time Saving Training for Multi-sport Athletes in 1997, I hadn’t yet confronted the reality of age. What has happened is that I’m still coaching some of the same people and using my principles all of us without exception are slower. Yes, as we approach Social Security and Medicare not only are those things looking to go away, so is speed. And with a training focus, still we can beat times from a few years ago. Has the harder training slowed the aging process? That will the the area of research to come. But there is no question, that people who continue to train hard are getting slower, slower. They are doing pretty well at maintaining performance into their sixties and seventies. I’ll write the next book after I’m eighty and give an update. With this type of training, you spend less time overall but more time going faster. Intensity base training works by building speed in small increments and working up. So the first element in saving time is building an intensity base. This will involve some adaptations in both your aerobic and your anaerobic systems. It is not a matter of how much you train, but how you train. To go faster which we know means not as tired, which also means it’s easier means you have to get tired in training. Sounds like nonsense. To go fast you have to be less fatigued, but you have to get fatigued to get there. You have to train your energy systems. Train them fast and easy.