strategizing

Tonight I laid out the first 8 weeks of my official Ironman training program. After going over a number of sources and thinking about how my training has gone in the past, I settled on a plan out of Matt Fitzgeralds book Triathlete Magazines Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide. All of the research I read pretty much pointed me in the same direction, being that the key workouts are your long efforts.

The plans out of this guide are very specific and written out day by day. It follows a building progression through several distinct phases of training and incorporates races as workouts -which I love. The plan I'm working off of uses 9 workouts per week. It works in three phases of 8 weeks each: Base, Build, and Peak - which are then broken down into four week blocks with which there are three "on" weeks and then one recovery week. To me it's a very logical progression. It's a structure that I am very familiar with through coaching rowing. When applied correctly I believe that this type of structured training is the only way to effectively peak for one sole event and be at ones best.

Other than the above state reasons, I'm choosing this particular plan because I think it is very manageable and gives me the best chance to be successful on my long workouts. When I was training for Gulf Coast this past year, I chose a more aggressive plan that incorporated 10 workouts per week. I struggled to stay on course with it and was often exhausted for my key long workouts. Most of my recent reading gave me a new perspective on what the most important workouts are when training for an Ironman and how to approach and manage them so that I gain as much as possible from them. I guess the theme here would be quality, not quantity. Any numb skull can go out and destroy themselves with a bunch of mileage - been there done that! I'm going for the right workouts at the right times done at the right intensity. Above all I need to develop a keen sense of recovery to gain the most out of the long efforts.

The 24 weeks to glory kicks off on January 11th! I can't wait! Until then I'm using the marathon to maintain general fitness and hopefully improve my long run pacing and training tactics. Bike and swim workouts are building to develop base fitness in all three disciplines until I go full on in January.