Patrick John McCrann | Athlete. Author. Coach.

photo credit: Foto43
suffer to win…

With the recent release of Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers (2008), there was a great deal of interest on the part of coaches who latched on to his rule for how people become “great” at something: the 10,000 hour rule. Here are examples from Friel and Couzens.

The simple math makes this 20 hours a week for 10 years, and the premise is that lots of time is required before one can realize their potential.

Gladwell initially applied this concept to what he called “cognitively complex field(s)”. In a recent interview he stated:

When we look at any kind of cognitively complex field — for example, playing chess, writing fiction or being a neurosurgeon — we find that you are unlikely to master it unless you have practiced for 10,000 hours. That’s 20 hours a week for 10 years.

Making the leap to the realm of triathlon is easily made, as 20 hours of training per week is a good dividing line between the hard-core training athletes and those who participate on a more recreational level. While the distinction is easily made, it fails to capture the true essence of what makes a top-level triathlete. Let’s examine what Gladwell’s actual work did –and didn’t–capture.

As further research into the topic suggests time spent at the activity is required to create the conditions for excellence, but it’s not sufficient in and of itself. “The mere number of years of experience with relevant activities in a domain is typically only weakly related to performance.”

In other words: spending time prepares you to succeed, but training hours alone will not work.

I have written many times that at the end of the day it’s not how much work you have done, it’s the type of work that you have done that really matters. Seems like I am not entirely crazy. A study of chess grandmasters in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology found that the best of the best spent significantly larger amounts of time doing “serious study” as related to their chess peers in their formative years.

“…chess players at the highest skill level (i.e. grandmasters) expended about 5000 hours on serious study alone during their first decade of serious chess play – nearly five times the average amount reported by intermediate-level players.”

Similar results have been found in other fields as well, and I want to use this opportunity to really force you to think about how you approach your training. Picking the right type of training, especially in your formative years, is an integral part to putting yourself on the fast track.

Volume Is Easy
Picking a volume-oriented approach, where training load / stress is manipulated by increasing / reducing hours around a fixed intensity level, is a very easy way to get started. The miles are easy to add, and when you first start, the training regimen is easy to accomplish. Of course, after several months of training the hours will increase to a point where they’ll most likely consume all other social activities leaving you with little time outside of training, working, eating and sleeping…and when that ceiling is reached, your ability to create the conditions for improvement significantly declines.

Mileage Is Sexy
Volume is also alluring as it bespeaks commitment and dedication. Volume-oriented plans will have you doing 4 hour indoor training rides in January…which seems cool and serious. You will definitely get some raised eyebrows when you tell your buddies that your A race is 6+ months away and you are already putting in 4-6 hours on a Saturday. You can count hours, add up miles, and generally feel good about the numbers going up each week. If a lot is good, more must be better, and adding up impressive numbers is fun.

Base Miles Are Overrated
From a physiological training perspective, adding volume to your program is very easy to do. Sure a 6 hour ride seems daunting when you are only logging 2.5-3 hours on your long rides right now. But it’s really nothing more than another energy bar, some more water and maybe an extra pit stop. If you pace the ride and fuel properly, your body will quickly adapt to riding longer. Our Tour of California experiences have shown that average triathletes can easily go from 3-4 hours of indoor cycling a week to a 25 hour week of epic cycling with minimal issues. The point here is that you don’t need to start building your ability to handle volume as early as you might otherwise think…waiting until the last 12 weeks prior to your event is more than enough.

Choosing The Right Work
But lest we forget the Grandmaster lesson, we shouldn’t confuse total time spent training with the value of that time. Our job then is to determine the most valuable application of our time, regardless of ability level, that will point us towards achieving our goals, optimal fitness and race day excellence. Sounds like a tall order, but most of the heavy lifting has already been done.

Start Benchmarking Now
Regardless of your ability, you can start testing and training your fitness right now. Forget adding up miles; more miles doesn’t mean you are fitter, it just means you did more miles. But if you ran a 25:00 5k in Week 1 and just ran a 23:45 eight weeks later, then you are fitter…and that’s what we want to track. This information will give new depth and perspective on your current fitness, and can be easily used across a season to see if you are on track (or en route to over training).

Here are some sample tests. Note that with all of them, you should try to pick a relatively flat course that you can access repeatedly.

• 5k Run For Time (Pace)
• 40′ TT on the Bike (HR)
• 2 x 20′ (2′) on the Bike (Power)

Get Intense Today
Intensity is a great choice (yes, I am biased) for endurance athletes looking to improve their fitness. Most athletes default to endurance workouts, so-called base miles, but these are the easiest miles to add. Working on your bike and run threshold, however, is incredibly hard work requiring tons of recovery. The hard work will pay off, however, especially when you add more miles later. Imagine taking your bike speed during the test from 17.5mph to 19mph in 12 weeks…now your easy riding pace is 17.5…your prior threshold! Hold that across 56 (or more) miles and you’ll see some significant race day return on your training investment!

Get Specific Today
It’s the second part of Step One: “start testing and training your fitness…” We train to improve the run and bike TT times because these are the critical numbers that we’ll use to both guide our fitness now, but to determine how we’ll race on race day. Testing allows you to measure your fitness (now) against your prior fitness (old), with the delta giving us feedback on exactly how our training is working. Taking a test every 4-8 weeks that measures your 5k pace, but then doing completely different training isn’t really appropriate…one doesn’t measure the other. This is very commonplace in the triathlon space; don’t let testing in a vacuum deceive you.

Get Realistic Today
Your body only responds to increased training load; without more “work” it will default to being as lazy as possible. It’s that kid in the back of class with the headphones on staring out the window (nothing personal). Adding more and more volume at fixed intensities adds stress, but causes serious lifestyle turmoil. Take your training to the next level by leveraging intensity to increase training load. Your race times and day-to-day life will thank you.

Have More Fun
If I can earn the same training stress in two hours on the trainer that I can cruising around on my bike in zone 1-2, why on earth would I want to stay on the bike for an additional two hours? When I have six months prior to my A race?? When Saturday is my family day??? Spend your time wisely and you can get fitter and have more time for the other important stuff in your life.

And let’s not forget the obvious…going fast is just plain fun.

So when you start thinking about training hours and critical volume, remember that there’s more to the numbers than simply adding them up. It’s how you use them that matters.