Your Endurance Lifestyle. Redesigned.

A large part of 10Hours training success – for long distance triathletes – is the ability to put in some Big Week training. While a ten-hour week will adequately prepare athletes up through the Half Iron / 70.3 distance, an additional training investment will pay big dividends on IM race day. As I have written before, consistency is the driving factor (here, and here). Consistency will always be the foundation from which your athletic success will flow. But Big Week training will give you the endurance credentials you need to prepare for your race.

Note: As an example of the power of consistency, my regular 10-12 hours of week set me up nicely for IronCamp West Coast where I dialled in 25 hours of cycling in 6 days. I am not saying it was easy, but I am saying that I was able to ride at the top end of my ability and was not limited by my fitness.

Why Go Big?
There are several compelling reasons for including a Big Week of training as you prepare for an IM. First and foremost, you can’t avoid the fact that your race day will be 10-15 hours long. This is mainly a function of the distance you will have to cover. Ten to fifteen hours is a very long day, and it’s important to prepare mentally – and physically – for the continued demand / load that you will place on your body. Training 10Hours will get you fit, but not 100% IM race ready.

Learning to manage fatigue – and the repercussions of fatigue – is a critical element of IM racing success. How will you react when the chips are down? Can you still make the “right” choices when your blood sugar is low? Do you know what to do / eat when all else fails? The best way to prepare for the rigors of the event is to simulate it in a safe training environment. Big Week training will put you face-to-face with your inner demons, it will force you to confront the challenges that will appear on race day.

Developing an appropriate fueling strategy is another critical outcome of Big Week training. Serious training for multiple days puts a cumulative load on your metabolic system. You will learn very quickly (mostly out of necessity) what you need to eat and when you need to eat it – both very critical skills for your IM race.

Note: As an example, I can’t eat a big breakfast before a big day of training. It will just sit in my tummy and cause serious trouble. I do much better with a big cup of coffee and a bagel, muffin, or scone. This way I can get right down to eating at the one-hour mark with out worry of too much feedback from my stomach.

Ensuing you are in the proper positon on the bike, or that you run / swim effectively, are also important Big Week lessons. You might be able to survive a 3-hour tempo ride, but what will happen to your lower back on hour four of your second consecutive day of training? How do your calves feel? Your shoulders? Fatigue is the great equalizer…it will reveal all of your weaknesses on race day, so it’s better to address them before you toe the starting line.

Why A Big Weekend / Big Week?
The biggest reason for scheduling a Big Week or Big Weekend is simply because it’s all you’ll need if you have been consistent with your training. Sure, the allure of many miles and hours spent on the bike is sexy, but it has very little to do with how your race will play out. No one is handing out time bonuses at the halfway point of the marathon to folks who have done century rides every weekend. Very few folks are actually able to handle that type of training, and the resulting injuries and fatigue do more damage than good come race day.

Focusing on a weekend or week makes scheduling that much easier. If you know in January that you need a week in April and a weekend in May, you can “book” this time on your family and professional calendars. You can commit to earlier engagements so that you can be “free” to pursue this crazy triathlon thing. You can bring your Crackberry with you for sure, but you should really avoid trying to work on your division’s annual plan while also setting personal training bests.

Another critical reason to dial in a Big Week or Weekend is that your body can only handle so much. After a while, your technique begins to fail you and your execution falters. You make poor decisions and you bonk frequently. I have seen folks bonk waiting in line at Starbucks for salvation, it can get that bad. Of course, having this happen in training is precisely what you want (so you can prevent it on race day). What you don’t want, however, is to walk this line of perpetual fatigue / overtraining every week. The cumulative effect on your body, your immune system, your ability to work and/or hold a coherent conversation are all compromised. Limiting your training to this concise window gives you a manageable frame of reference as you embark on a training journey into the unknown.

You can read more about how to integrate Big Week training into your time-limited schedule in the free PDF version or by purchasing the full PDF or Book.

Next Post: How To Go Big.

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