Top Training Tips: 2 Months To Go

Swimmer Tips

It can be hard to assess how your swimming is progressing without doing some form of testing. We use a standard 200m and 400m test known as a critical swimming speed test. This allows us to measure how your aerobic threshold has improved and will ultimately indicate how you will perform in longer distance events.

You can also use other measurements like your times across other distances. However, the big metric that people forget is useful is how hard something feels. This is also known as RPE. You may see small shifts in your speed over the short distances, but if the longer sessions feel easier, then you are making headway, which is important for distance swimming.

Open water swimming isn’t just about how fast you swim but also about making sure you take the shortest possible route! (More on that next month).

Runner Tips

Running has the reputation of being straightforward: a pair of trainers and then get out the door. In the beginning, that is certainly the way it can be.

As you start your challenge, it is useful to ensure that you build good habits. Two of the best habits you can build is a solid warm-up and cool-down protocol. Running is notorious for its high rate of injury, often due to the repetitive nature of the sport and the increase of training volume too quickly. If you are sensible in your training mileage, then putting in about 25% of the time allocated for the run as your warm-up and cool-down, you will find you are setting yourself up for quality over quantity, which in running, can make a huge difference to your risk of injury.

Where possible, add in additional strength and conditioning, this may be strictly following a training plan, or it could be traditional exercises you remember from childhood: bodyweight exercises focusing on your core and balance will go a long way to improving the quality of your running.

Triathlete Tips

Training for a triathlon may seem daunting, and one of the worst things you can do is assume you need to take three separate discipline training plans and create a master plan for swim, bike and run. In fact, the sports complement one another nicely. Almost certainly, coming from a single discipline sport, you will find you are doing more training, and they can overlap. Suddenly, you don’t need as many “long runs” as your cycling more than covers your endurance, running strength work and core built over run training can count for swimming and cycling posture, swimming can encourage better torsional core strength, which is useful in running and cycling and running can work to balance leg strength out.

As much as the compliment one another, they also have different needs. Just because you use your legs in running doesn’t mean that will directly transfer into cycling strength. When people start multisport, they often avoid the sport they dislike and find ways to miss certain sessions. You do need to train all three sports, they work together, and we have often found, by working on your least favourite, you will probably see the biggest gains and get the most reward back!

Swimmer Tips

Aside from the swimming part, open water success is determined more by open water skills than by maximum speed and silky smooth strokes!

You need to train for the type of environment you are racing in and for the conditions it could be. This means to be successful in open water swims; you need to be comfortable in choppy water, poor visibility, swimming in a melee of other people, drafting and being able to use open water tactics to your advantage too.

Before we get too carried away, this has to start with excellent basic skills. How comfortable are you swimming around other people? Can you draft off people? Can you swim in a straight line? You want to be really comfortable with these skills and include them where possible in your pool or open water training.

If you can use these skills to your advantage, you are making the step up from open water swimming completion to open water racing.

Runner Tips

Learning how to manage training load is the most significant step towards a long-term and consistent running lifestyle. Often runners making the step from the first year of run challenges into trying to get a little faster consider what they have done in previous years and just do more. However, the issue is that they are reaching a point where more isn’t always the answer.

Often in running, there is talk about a 10% rule. Where you should increase your running mileage by only 10% each week. The truth is that there isn’t anything proving or disproving this methodology. It also doesn’t take into account the intensity of the run. If you run 10km as a straight run, you may take 50 mins. If you run the same, but as 10x1km repeats starting every 5 minutes, the total mileage and duration will be the same, but you will feel the interval session more. So when considering running load, you have to also allow for the intensity.

Also, the recovery may be as important but different between people. Instead of considering the total weekly mileage or time running, think about it in terms of total load, allowing for intensity and mileage. If you are using our plans or Training Peaks, this is referred to as your Training Stress Score (or TSS).

Triathlete Tips

We need to start shifting our training mindset from general preparation to more specific training for the event with two months to go.

This could mean more brick sessions, grooving paces, intensities or power for "race pace", and being comfortable with your nutrition strategies. Now is the time to start preparing to race.

Some considerations around this are: Are you able to almost automatically settle into your race intensity? Or is it hard to find? Do you have a practised nutrition plan for that race intensity? Have you trialled your race kit/bike/shoes to make sure they fit and aren't too different on race day from what you train on? Can you find hills of similar gradients to the event's and practice going up them to be accustomed to them in the race? All these options help you get more used to what you will face on race day, and if you can start thinking now about the specific demands of the race you have signed up for beyond the demands of the distance, you will start being a more prepared athlete, which is only a good thing.

Swimmer Tips

Training for open water racing is critical. You wouldn’t train for a marathon just by running 100m, and swimming events are the same.

Last time, we discussed the effect of longer intervals in your swim training, but what about swimming in the open water? Drafting and sighting are two skills we talk about often, but there is a lot more to open water racing that can mean a top open-water racer doesn’t have to be the fastest swimmer, just the best prepared.

Racing will nearly always start with a hard effort, above threshold in which swimmers jostle for position and try and get into the front group. Therefore, swim practices should have similar formats to prepare adequately for your event: Try a 1000m time trial, but you have to go faster than threshold for the first 200m and then settle into a rhythm for the final 800m.

Other skills like going with surges, using a change in speed to make a draft, or dropping someone are all skills worth knowing and practising in training. If you want to be competitive, you need to be a tactical open water swimmer. This makes open water swim sessions a lot of fun – how can you use your imagination to make it more “real”.

Runner Tips

One element of running training that triathlon training can help with is the double run day. Often called a Kenyan day, you complete two run sessions in one day.

The training variables are frequency, intensity and duration. Often runners look at the number of miles per week to measure how successful their training is. However, there is a lot to be said about running twice in one day. You can construct the first session to prime the second. It may be you want to hit speed on more tired legs? Or perhaps, you want to hold an endurance effort after some more intensity in the morning? It can also ensure help avoid injury by avoiding adding duration or mileage to “long runs”. By splitting it up, you can increase the duration, but take a break in between and avoid your form degrading towards the end of the run.

Multisport athletes frequently do multiple sessions in a day, and it is something that runners can learn from to gain additional benefits and really target specific workouts. Have a look at your training, and can you reap these benefits?

Triathlete Tips

Did you know that faffing for just 5-minutes at the start of a session could cost you a month in training time?

When we look at advanced athletes, the biggest difference is their ability to be consistent in training and making the best use of their available time. Therefore, you need to ensure that the following two months are spent consistently training and building.

Interestingly, this doesn't mean hitting every session 100%. Sometimes, it may mean reducing or missing a session to allow for recovery and listening to your body. After all, if a missed session, or going easy if you feel off, means you avoid an injury, your consistency and session compliance will be a lot better than if you end up unable to train.

It takes a mature, heads–up training style to do this, but by keeping the bigger picture in focus, you will make bigger gains in a season than bouncing from session to session.