Triathlon Books and Training

I've been reading two excellent triathlon books: Going Long by Joel Friel and The Perfect Distance by Tom Rogers. Going Long is about ironman distance races and The Perfect Distance is about half-iron man. While my goal for next year is to do an Olympic Distance race, I like the idea of focusing training on a longer race.

Here's some of what I have learned:

Friel says the heart of your training is one long slow run, one long slow bike and one long swim a week. He says don't do the run and the bike on consecutive days. One should be midweek, the other on the weekend.

Long runs begin at 90 minutes, long bikes at 2 hours and swims are 4000 yards (not all at once). Runs should get up to two and a half hours and bikes to five to six hours. Once your runs are getting up there, you can start to increase the length of the 2nd run. Two medium long runs are better than one superlong run.

You should swim at least three times a week. Focus on technique until you can go at a certain speed, and then you can work on swimming harder.

Both books list sample training programs for novices, which they define as someone with only a couple years triathlon experience.

Friel breaks down the athlete's goals and I clearly fall in the train to finish category. Train to complete rather than to compete. For me that means, all my emphasis should be on building endurance.

If you are older, you should stay in the gym during triathlon season to maintain stretgth and muscle mass, where if you are younger you only need to weight train in the offseason.

I also read an article on long running on the Runner's World web site and they suggest that you do one long run every two weeks, increasing by 10 percent, while running two other times a week for a half an hour to maintain conditioning.

So ideally, this seems like a possibly practical plan for me:

One long run every other week. One long bike every other week. Increasing by 10 percent each time. My current long run is 6.2 miles. My long bike goal will be 18-24 miles to start. I reserve the right to do a long run or long bike every week.

Run three times a week, at least 3 miles.

Bike three times a week 9-12 miles.

Swim three times a week, including one mile straight swim a week.

Lift 2-3 times a week.

Eat well.

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