Your Endurance Lifestyle. Redesigned.

I am always being asked about how I can race at a high level given my professional / family commitments. The short answer is: don’t ask my wife about it.    Seriously though, I think that 90% of triathletes out there can do “more with less” if they follow the proper training protocol. Sure, more can be “more”, but typically most of us don’t have the patience to execute this strategy over multiple seasons (athletic ADD) or the durability to withstand all of the work. As a result, most folks want to do more, try to do more, and end up getting less. Here’s how I reverse that curse.

1. Since you can’t go long all the time, we go long part of the time. As an Ironman-focused athlete, this year I only raced once: IMUSA. I used my other “time” to get in several training blocks:  5-days of cycling in Feb, 5 days of triathlon in April, 5 days of triathlon in June.  Otherwise my training bounced between 10-14 hours per week depending on the family situation. I was able to schedule this blocks in with minimal friction b/c I could outperform expectations during other weeks…when “old” patrick would have been gone.

2. Ideally these blocks are 8-10 weeks apart. You need to rest in between them, after all, and this helps everyone else forget you just went away a while ago. If the weeks don’t fit on holiday time, take a Friday/monday off from work so you can have four good days of training.  Go a bit lighter the week before and a whole lot lighter the week after. This type of surge training will have zero benefit for you if you can’t actually absorb it.

3. Be focused with this time. Try to be a training monk and minimize your external commitments. Speaking from experience, it’s VERY EASY to get wrapped up in doing email instead of heading out the door for that long ride/run. Use these blocks to put training first for a change.

4. Track all of your data. You’ll want to know how this bigger week stacks up against previous ones (both for planning beforehand and analysis afterwards). If you don’t track data, you’ll never have this option – and then you are just training for training’s sake…and we don’t do that here at 10Hours!!!  If you have a power meter, dump all your data into cycling peaks. If you use a log, add it all up there…whatever you use, actually put it to work for you here. This will help you identify how much of an impact the training actually had on you!

Good luck! My year has worked out well for me…one race, one good race, one slot to kona.    Now I just have to train for this next race! Still figuring it all out…

Coach P

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