njc65 Mentor Group CLOSED (Page 6)

My race is July 31st - Olympic Length, and out in the middle of nowhere in Culpepper, VA.  I got my best friend to agree to do it with me.  She doesn't live close enough for us to train to together (about an hour apart), but it helps to know I'll have someone I know in the race with me!

Neil,

Do you think its worthwhile to compete in a sprint this season before I compete in the Olympic event in July?  Would it be counterproductive for my training efforts?  I was considering doing a sprint even in mid-May, which is about two months after my current couch to sprint training routine will end.  I was planning on picking up one of the sprint to Olympic trainings after that.

My Olympic Triathlon is on July 30th (think I may have written 31st in an earlier post).  I want to make sure that whatever I do, it won't interrupt my ability to not look like a fool in this event.

Thanks,
Nicole

Consistency in Endurance Training

We hear it said all the time:  consistency is key in endurance training.  But what exactly does 'consistency' mean, and why is it so important?  And how can we maintain it?

What is Consistency?

First, let's be clear about what 'consistency' does not mean (at least not here).  It does not mean that we do the same workout every time we step out the door (or hop on the bike, or jump in the pool, or walk into the gym).  Nor does it mean that we do the same type of training year round.  Nor does it mean that we never take a break.  It is important to vary our workouts over the course of a week, to vary our overall training regimen of the course of the year, and to get some rest from time to time to let the inevitable little aches and pains heal up.

Consistency means getting sufficiently many well-designed training sessions in per week, reasonably spaced throughout the week, to achieve our fitness goals.  Those goals will be different at different times of the year, and different for different people and for different races.  After a long race eg Ironman, fitness will inevitably decline -- mere mortals cannot maintain peak fitness indefinitely at any level, so we train less.  Our goal is not to improve fitness, or even to maintain it.  Our goal is to recover and not lose too much fitness.  On the flip side, during the build portion of a training plan, our goal is to, well, build (fitness).  At other times, we may be interested in just maintaining, or building a very specific type of fitness (for example, 5K speed, or endurance for a century ride).

Because we have so many different goals, our definition of 'consistency' is necessarily vague.  How do we fill in the details?  There is no magic formula, but there are a few guidelines.

First, there is a minimum number of training sessions per week that we will need to do in order to maintain or improve.  And while this number will depend on a lot of individual factors, it is not equal to 1, and it is probably not equal to 2.  (For some very fit individuals, 1 or 2 might be enough to maintain for a short while, but not long-term.  For individuals who are coming off the couch, 1 or 2 will provide some gains short term, but eventually 1 or 2 will not be enough.)  There are wildly different training methodologies out there -- some advocate high volume, low intensity, while others advocate lower volume and high intensity, and there are plenty of points between those extremes, but I am not aware of any successful training plan that, as a matter of general course, would have anybody training swim bike or run just once per week.  As I mentioned above, many beginner plans will have one doing each twice per week, and for beginners this frequency will get you to the starting line (and more important, across the finish line).  However, it will not take long before twice a week is not enough to make further gains.

Second, these sessions need to be reasonably well 'designed'.  I'm not talking about fancy sets of intervals or complicated progression runs or the like.  There is a place for that stuff, but the bottom line is that we are best served by there not being too large of an imbalance from one session to the next.  Running 2 miles 2 times a week, and 15 miles once a week is a good way to get injured.  Yes, it is OK to make some sessions longer or harder -- indeed, race-specific preparation normally demands that we do so.  But do so within reason.  That 19 miles of running would be better split up as (for example) 5-7-7, or even better as 4-4-4-7.  The same goes (though to a lesser extent) with biking and swimming.  Two 30 minute rides during the week followed by a century on the weekend is a poor use of your training time.

Third and finally, we are better off spacing our workouts relatively evenly throughout the week, and keeping the harder efforts apart from each other if possible.  It is all too common for endurance athletes to miss a few workouts during the week and then load up on the weekend to 'make up for lost time'.  The result is more likely than not to be an injury.  If you're lucky, you won't get injured, just so tired and sore that you take Monday through Wednesday off, and then the vicious cycle has begun.


Why Does it Matter?

Speaking metaphorically, training for endurance sport is all about tearing the body down so that it can rebuild itself stronger.  Less metaphorically, and focusing just on the muscles for the moment, exercise causes some damage to your muscles.  This is especially true of exercise that involves eccentric contractions, meaning that the muscle is contracting at the same time that it is lengthening because of some load.  (Running involves a lot of eccentric contraction which is one reason it is so easy to hurt yourself running.)  The precise nature of this damage is not completely understood, and it varies with the intensity of the exercise, but it appears to include damage to connective tissue, the tissues that surround muscle fibres ('fascia'), and perhaps even the fibres themselves, or the parts of them that are responsible for contraction.

In any case, whatever the nature of the damage, when you have finished done exercising, your body goes to work cleaning up the mess and repairing.  It sends in support (largely in the form of white blood cells, specifically macrophages and neutrophils, which is why muscles can swell up after hard exercise) to consume the damaged proteins, and the reinforcements (largely in the form of new proteins).  For reasons that are, to my knowledge, not well understood, the rebuilt muscle tissue is, well, better, stronger, and faster.  In fact, physiologists call this process of rebuilding 'remodeling' and that's a good name inasmuch as the new muscle is improved over the old. They call the fact that remodeling produces improvements the 'repeated bout effect'.

The best theory going about why intense exercise makes us sore is that there are pain receptors in and around the muscles that are triggered by the byproducts of the process described above.  This is why (according to the theory) it takes a while for muscle soreness to set in.  (In any case, the old 'lactic acid' theory of soreness is debunked -- lactic acid clears from your muscle in less than 2 hours in the worst cases.)  However -- and this is important -- don't think that you need to be sore in order to get the benefits of the repeated bout effect.  In fact, 99.9% of the time you do not want to train to the point of being sore the next day.  (OK, those of you who are just starting out can ignore that last statement -- it is very difficult to avoid soreness when you are just starting out.  Don't worry; this will go away quickly (in weeks, not months) -- because of the repeated bout effect!)  You get remodeled muscles even when you exercise more moderately.  And you get the added benefit of being able to do it again the next day, and the next, and the next, and this consistency is much better for you than the slash and burn method of slaying yourself and then being laid up for 4 days before you can train again. You get far more remodels this way.

Exercise has other physiological benefits of course. The major one is that your body gets more efficient at getting energy to the place it is needed (your muscles). It also becomes able to deliver more energy (more precisely, it supplies more of what your muscles need to make energy, and your muscles become better equipped to use this additional supply). This increase in efficiency and volume is achieved in several ways. Your heart gets bigger and stronger. Some muscle fibers are converted from anaerobic but powerful types (Type IIb, 'fast twitch') to aerobically efficient, fatigue-resistant, types (Type IIa, and possibly Type I, 'slow twitch'). Your capillaries expand in size and number, enhancing the flow of oxygen and nutrients to your muscles, and the flow of waste out of them. Your number of mitochondria (the cells largely responsible for the production of energy) increases. And we could go on...

Every time you train, you make little improvements on all of these fronts. If you train big one day, then rest 4 days, you get one session of improvement, followed by 4 days where your body says "you know, we didn't really need to do that now did we?". In other words, your body pretty quickly reverses the small improvements you get from a single bout of exercise. It quickly adapts to what it is told that it needs. You have to continually convince your body that yes, you do need those little improvements. The only way to do that is to exercise. Consistently.


How Do I Do It?

OK, so I hope now you're convinced that consistency is key. How do we achieve it? There are really two issues here. (1) How can we be sure that our bodies can handle a consistent training regimen? (2) How can we get out the door (onto the bike, into the pool, into the gym) on a consistent basis with everything else going on in our lives?

The answer to (1) is easy: don't train too hard. In running, this means running easy (conversation is possible) most of the time. As a general guideline, keep the really intense running to around 5% of your total running per week. And don't go hard if your body is telling you not to. In biking, we can handle more intensity (because there is less impact and less eccentric contraction going on). Again as a very general guideline (these numbers are very much ballpark and will vary based on a lot of things, but they'll give you an idea), maybe 25% of your biking can be very hard, 50% moderate, and 25% relatively easy. (By 'relatively easy' I don't mean soft-pedaling. This isn't a Sunday, stop and smell the flowers, cruise pace, but it is one where holding a conversation is not a problem.) Swimming is even lower impact, and you can afford to put some very intense swimming into just about every, if not every, training session. The main thing to watch out for is shoulder injury, which can be more of a problem for with form issues. Going very hard with poor form can lead to injury. Overuse is also possible. Listen to your body.

The answer to (2) is hard. The first thing to say here is that once you get sufficiently involved in triathlon, you will want to train most days. It won't be a struggle -- you will desire to train. That still leaves us with two problems: what do you do when you don't want to train, and how do you make the time to train?

Here I think that the number of answers is just about equal to the number of people. I'll tell you what works for me, and what I've heard working for others. Maybe something here will work for you.

As for lack of desire, one thing that works for me is remembering that at the end of any training session, I am almost always glad that I did it, even if I'm not super thrilled about getting started. I try to remember that feeling of satisfaction that I get from getting it done on days when the fire isn't in the belly. Often just remembering what that feels like is enough to get me started. Another is having training partners. So you told your friend that you'd meet up for the group ride Saturday morning at 6am. It's 5:30am and your bed really is comfy and warm. But no way are you going to leave your friend sitting out there in the cold. So you go. That's what friends are for! Finally, committing to a goal, and making that goal known to others, is a great way to maintain motivation.

As for lack of time, it's a problem most of us face. Two things that help are to commit each day to a time to train, and to be prepared to take advantage of unexpected opportunities to train.

Don't just say "Sometime today I'm going to go for a run". Say "At noon today, I'm going to go for a run." Treat it as you would an appointment with a business partner, or a client, schedule it and do it; you wouldn't cancel or move that appointment without a good reason. The same goes for your training 'appointment'. Second, be ready to take advantage of unplanned training time. Was that meeting at 4:00 just cancelled? Well, what are you waiting for, get over to the pool and go for a swim! The thing is, for this to work, you have to be ready. Your swim bag (or a spare one) lives in your car. A pair of running shoes and gear lives in your office. Your bike is always ready to roll on a moment's notice. You might be surprised how much training time you can find just by being ready to strike when the opportunity presents itself.

I know its really hard but early morning training is a real plus. It gets it done, it kicks start your metabolism for the day, makes you feel great and fills you full of energy. Also if you can get a lunchtime session in that works well too. I am going to swim a couple of times a week as part of the goals I set for Feb.

Combining sessions, or combining training with other activities can sometimes be useful. Commuting to work or other places by running or biking can also be a very efficient use of time. Finally, while none of us wants to lose perspective on what's important, do be prepared to make some sacrifices. The life of an endurance athlete (at least, one who is employed and has a family) is probably not compatible with 4 hours of TV a night, for example. Something has to give. Ask yourself what you want to look back on 10 years from now -- 15,000 hours of television or a long-term commitment to a healthy lifestyle and the memory of crossing the finish line feeling strong and looking good? The answer is clear!

Summary

• Try to train at least twice a week in each discipline, 3 times if you are not a pure beginner.
• Make sure that each session leaves you ready to do the next one. Go easier the day before and the day after your really hard sessions.
• You get better physiological adaptations from several sessions of varying intensity than from just a very few mega-sessions.
• Find a way to stay motivated.
• Commit each training day to a specific session at a specific time, but also be prepared to take advantage of unexpected opportunities to train.

Needless to say, this is awesome. Thank you so much Neil, I will be reading this several more times over the next few weeks as I continue getting myself motivated everyday.