Plan your season

The ground may be snow covered and your season is still 5 months away but now is the time to plan your season.  Believe it or not many races have already filled up or will be filling only a few days after registration opens.  However, getting into the right races is not the only reason to plan your season. 

You need to plan your season so you can plan your fitness.  Let’s say you are gearing up for two Olympic distance triathlons this year and you would also like to hop in a few sprint distance races.  There a many ways to plan this type of season but only a few ways will allow you to reach the highest level fitness for your key races.  Ideally you would separate your two key races by 6-8 weeks.   You could then do a couple shorter triathlons 3-5 weeks before your first race peak to check your fitness. So instead of only racing for the fun of racing you can now use smaller events before your first race to determine weaknesses, training needs and still have fun.  Because you hold on to your highest fitness for about 3 weeks you could plan up to 2 more races during the immediate two weeks before your major races.

When racing and ironman distance event, having a well thought out race schedule can really help with your preperation and enhance your ultra distance experience.  For starters, I like athletes to have a 1/2 ironman distance event about 6-8 weeks before an ironman distance.  This allows for an athlete and coach to check form and adjust training, nutrtion, rest etc... to account for any areas that need improvement.  A lot of people ask if it is OK to do a 1/2 ironman 2-3 weeks before an ironman distance race.  I say yes, but as long as 80% of the race is done at your goal ironman distance pace.  This will allow your 1/2 ionman distance race to be a great final big workout before your ironman distance race.  Racing short course is also a great tool to improve long distance success.  Short course racing should be mixed into your schedule so it does not interfere with you long course training.  Strong short course racing will help make your lower intensity longcourse training and racing seam that much less stessful.  This type of training will also raise your lactate threshold and resistance to fatague.  Some people do really well with a short course race the week before an ironman distance event however those who do not recover as fast will do better with more time between.

Here are some more thoughts on how organize you’re successful season.

1.       Use events to help you prepare – you don’t have to be in the best shape all the time.

2.       Plan you key workouts way ahead of time so you don’t end up with schedule conflicts.

3.       Do not plan a race a couple of weeks after a family vacation – the last thing you need to be thinking about is training anxiety when enjoying your family should be the major focus.

4.       Work form you race backwards when planning important training sessions.

5.       Evaluate less important races and modify your training to address areas of concern.

6.       Look back a successful seasons in the past.

By Jared Berg

Date modified: 1/25/2006