Friday, March 30, 2007

Different Training Philosophies

When I first started working with Peter Reid, we talked about the training plan for Ironman Florida, and what I needed to know. The one thing he stressed time and again, "Most people overtrain for Ironman." When he sent me the final training phase after LA Triathlon, to prepare for IMFL, I replied to his email with, "Is this all???" Sure enough, as small as it seemed compared to what I expected, Pete knew what he was doing.

I'm not going to share my full volumes and things, and say that Peter's way is the only way, but I came across a blog of a pro who finished top 20 in Kona last year, and will be doing Arizona in two weeks, and I had to wonder if maybe he really is an Ironman genius. Here is an excerpt from his blog:

Back to the training block...since Christmas, the volume of training has been consistently over 32-33hr per week. If I look over my training diary and just look at the training volume for this year's weeks, this is what I've done:

32:45
33:35
33:28
32.53
33:03
30:10
34:20
40:10
39:00
37:40
37:45(last week)

and the updated totals are (through today)

Swim: 347.1km
Bike: 6909km
Run: 1449km

It has been a consistently tough year so far for me, as the numbers confirm :P Through the last couple weeks, I definitely feel a loss of fitness or in another words, I'm getting really tired and some workouts are very tough. But I'm sure all the hard work will be worth it when I cross the finish line at Ironman Arizona for the third time. I'm really looking forward to racing, seeing some old friends, and punching my ticket to Kona.


When I read this, my jaw about hit the floor! My highest week in preparation for Florida was maybe 30 hours, MAYBE!

We shall see how this individual does, and I truly do wish him the best, but I honestly can't believe someone can do this much training, and still keep quality, as well as stay injury-free. If he doesn't do well, it shows again that Pete is probably very right.

Tomorrow is the California 70.3 race. My pick to win is Kate Major for the women, and Luke Bell if he's racing for the men. I'm looking forward to watching it, and seeing how it goes.

If you're out at the race and see me, say hello!

Vance - 2007 NFA

4 comments:

barndog said...

I like your(pete's) philosophy. top 20 is good, but it's not top 10.

Anonymous said...

testing

Anonymous said...

40h/week??? Ridiculous! Keep up the good work, Jim! You're a very classy guy that deserves to be one of the top triathletes in the World.

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of elite athletes who do 40 hour weeks. Some are short course and long course. 30-32 Hours is really not that much for an ironman build. Terrenzo Bozzone supposedly did 2 weeks at 50 hours is his build to Wildflower last year. Though I doubt is totals really reached that high, I know he routinely puts in 40 hours weeks in the base phase. Good Luck in AZ Jim