By Rich Strauss
Endurance Nation
As an adult living and working in the real world, you know that time is your most precious commodity. You can make more money, you can buy more stuff, but there is only so much of your time to go around. Once you spend it, it's gone forever. From this simple fact we draw three time investment principles to help guide your training.
Time Investment Principle #1: Any discussion of how to train must begin with a discussion of how much time you have available to train.
Triathletes are predisposed to frame most training discussions around volume: how much, how far, how long should I train? We also tend to look to two primary sources for training advice: the former pro turned coach, or the local fast guy. But before you listen to the advice of either, ask yourself one question: "Does this person's lifestyle and available training time, closely resemble my own?"
The Former Pro: His job was to train, eat, and sleep...nothing more, which gave him the ability to train 30 or more hours per week. If that former pro can't step back from his or her perspective, and frame the training discussion around your constraints--busy age grouper with a fixed and limited amount of time to devote to training--we advise you to significantly discount or ignore their training advice. Quite simply, your life conditions are very different so your training solution must be different.
The Local Fast Guy: Again, ask yourself if their life conditions resemble yours. If yes, they may be a valuable learning resource for you. But if they are single, self-employed, don't have kids, enjoy limitless time to train, and they are not able to frame their advice with your training constraints in mind, you should discount their advice as well.
Time Investment Principle #2: What is your return on investment (ROI) on race day for every training session (and dollar) invested?
Your time is limited and we've told you to discount much of the advice you hear, so what are you left with? The same principle you likely use to make a lot of decisions in your real life: Compare your ROI for each choice and make good investments.
Before you ride six hours on a Sunday, invest two hours of training in a masters swim session or weight room visit, or drop big money on a carbon aero widget, just ask yourself: "What is this time or money investment going to get me on race day?"
Good Investments Vs. Bad Investments
High ROI:
•45-90 minutes of hard interval training per week on the bike
•Well-planned tempo running intervals
•Running frequency
•1-on-1 swim lessons, especially with underwater video
•Training with pace (ie, purchasing a GPS or training on a measured run course)
•Aero helmet
•Training with power
•Bike fit
Low ROI Investments:
•Weight training
•Swimming year round
•Race wheels, especially a rear disk
•Easy cycling volume
•Long, slow, distance running, to the exclusion of tempo work
Time Investment Principle #3: Training time cost is variable across seasons.
Your primary training input is time: time on the bike, time packing a bag, driving to the pool, swimming, showering, etc. Principles 1 and 2 help you decide how and where to apply these time inputs across your training week, but the final piece is understanding that not all time is created equal. Your time can be more or less expensive depending on the time of year and your lifestyle constraints. Let's discuss two typical examples:
Inexpensive Time: 3.5-hour weekend ride in June
The sun rises at 5 a.m. You can be on the bike by 5:30 and home by 9:00 with time to shower, put on your mom or dad hat, and be a responsible human being for the rest of day. You can do that ride in the sun, with your friends, adding a valuable social component to your training. Your goal race, Ironman Louisville or an August half Ironman is about eight to 10 weeks away so this investment in June makes sense to all parties involved, especially your family.
Expensive Time: 3.5-hour trainer ride in December
It's 5:30 a.m. in December, in Chicago; it's 32 degrees out, and you swing your leg over your bike on the trainer. You cast your head forward to your A-race, which is eight months away. You've already asked your family and lifestyle to accommodate your crazy triathlon habit all year. You've likely incurred some spousal approval unit (SAU) costs, and it's time to pay some back. Do the math on how much time and head space you've already committed to thinking about the race, motivating yourself, and strategizing your training. Then think about how many similar trainer rides you have on the calendar before your bike touches the pavement again.
Both training sessions involve the same time investment, but with dramatically different cost considerations.
Conclusion
We can share many stories of athletes who've come to us for advice after being sentenced to 18-hour training weeks, or 4-hour Zone 1 base building trainer rides in February for an Ironman in September. Often times, these coaches or offseason training plans blindly apply the training knowledge of the sport without considering these three deeper principles above.
Keep in mind that offseason training time is more expensive than in-season time, which means you should spend less of it on high ROI activities. As an age grouper with limited time available, low volume in the offseason is just the right thing to do: for your head, your lifestyle and your family.
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