Countdown???

Thanks Jack, I'll check it out.

You can do a lot in 40 days if you work hard, recover properly and have a solid base. How much hard training depends on how well you can recover. 60-80% of your training should stay at a lower intensity, unless you are doing a very time limited schedule. Two long hard days seems to be good for people with fulltime jobs and a third medium day if you can handle it. Even the long hard days shouldn't be all hard training. The long days and the hard days need to be the same days. Do speed in your long runs, bikes and swims. The short days are easier and are for recovery.
There is also a lot of talk about tapering for races. I don't do a big taper. The last month of training for your big race should be consistent and then take it easy the week before the race. You only need to taper more if you overtrain.
I think it is important to be consistent with frequency. If you train each discipline 3 times a week you should stick to that. Volume should stay relitively consistent. Every third or fourth week doing about two thirds or half your usual training volume is good, even if only for the mental break. Intensity should vary greatly. Check your pulse every morning if it is 5 beats above normal train very easy or not at all. If it is normal train hard. If your legs hurt for more than two days after a workout you are training too hard. For June 26th April and May are your months to work on getting a faster. I think your biggest miss conception is the "true training." The base training is the true training and the most important. You first build your hours of training and to the distance then you add the speedwork. You can't take something off the internet or from a book and blindly follow it because you need to include your whole lifestyle and you or the person who made that program don't know 100% how you will respond to it because everyone is different. The first priciple of training is overload and recovery and the first true cliche is to listen to your body.
I've read some articles that say some Ironman professionals train for speed and then distance, I think this is just confused journalists who see them training for olympic distance races early in the season and the longer races later in the season. They still start out training more miles easier.

Edited by owie 2004-02-08 11:23 PM