How I got faster in Triathlon
After about 5 years in Triathlon as an amateur age grouper I reflect on what works for me in training and racing and what doesn’t
If you’ve just started or have been going for a while in triathlon you start wondering.. how do I get better? Looking at training advice from way too many websites, online training plans, podcasts, YouTube, friends and coaches the question is: What works and what doesn’t? The information that can be found is often conflicting and a lot of different training philosophies stand in sharp contrast to each other.
In these years in the sport I tried a few different types of training and mostly failed. But by failing I discovered what works for me in the end. To throw in some buzz words of things I tried: Online training plans from different coaches, also TrainerRoad plans, (mostly online) coaching and simply going by feel ending up being my own coach for the time being.
This focuses solely on training. Equipment and gadgets are not discussed here and would be a topic on their own. In my experience training is the big thing anyway even more important than compression socks on the run. Seriously though, please stop.
I’m NOT a coach, I DIDN’T study sport or exercise physiology, this is solely based on my n=1 experience of observing what works for me and what doesn’t.
Context
Age: 35
Triathlons: 9 (4 Sprint, 4 Olympic, 1 Middle Distance)
Classification: Local age group podiums
Sprint time: 1:03h
Olympic time: 2:10h
Middle distance: 5:28h (5 years ago just after starting triathlon; 2nd race and quite a few things went wrong)
As you can see I’m no way near of winning race times but since starting triathlon I managed to get from mid pack to podium or winning age group podiums in local races. Nothing to brag about but just gives some context.
What is important though: this is about performance improvement. Not relentless performance improvement by going crazy, divorcing your wife, leaving the family and moving to a different country but using the time available efficiently for training and improve performance as best as you can.
A brief overview of training methodologies I used so far in training before I ended up being my own coach:
Training by feel
- Good for starting out: but as soon as you get going and have a feel for the sport progress to getting in some structure by either getting a coach or a training plan.
- Never disregard how your body and mind feels: This is one of the hardest parts in training for any sport I’d assume. Listening to how your body honestly feels followed up by appropriate reactions even if that means making a step back or two.
Training with TrainerRoad
This was back in 2018 when I last tried it and underlying training plans were probably different than they are now. There also is an AI now for planning and adapting training plans, which I haven’t tried.
- Structure with a cycling focus: Cycling in triathlon is key as it has a huge potential for a good finish time and also sets up for a good run.
- Way too hard: First time I came into contact with “overtraining”. I was trying to stick to the plan no matter what and failed. I wasn’t honest to myself about fatigue and not actually improving in training but kept following the plan blindly. Not sure about today’s training plans but at this time the training was way too hard and the ramp test overestimated my FTP by quite a margin probably. There were nearly no easy workouts on the bike. There is also a quite popular YouTube video from Dylan Johnson talking about TrainerRoad plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0n-nnRbFBs
Having a coach
- Get a coach! After TrainerRoad and recovering from overtraining I was working with a coach for a few years and I learnt how to hold back when necessary and we worked together riding the edge of too much and improvement. And improve we did..
I learned how to balance volume and intensity, we tried different approaches, identified weaknesses and it was the absolute base for becoming faster. If you never had a coach (and not have an exercise physiology background) you very likely won’t improve. Get a coach! - Time and worry saver: You get your plan laid out for you with some required communication, you make the plan green and give feedback in order for the coach to decide if the plan needs to be adjusted.
- Be your own assistant coach: Having a coach is like you’re a coach in-training. Ask yourself or the coach why these sessions now make sense in the current phase of training. Try to get a look behind the curtain in order to understand as much as possible regarding the whole planning process.
- Shoutout to my former coach: I learnt so much from my coach and it was the perfect match for this time. Go visit and contact them (German) here at https://sweetspot-training.at/ or listen to their podcast.
How to train?
But even when having figured out it’s best to work with a coach.. which sessions really work for me?! There are multiple training philosophies around (coaches training that way wouldn’t call it a philosophy but whatever).
- Polarized training: Made popular by Dr. Stephen Seiler (https://twitter.com/StephenSeiler). Also known as 80/20 training. Training mostly easy where easy is really easy but hard sessions are also really hard. Initially when polarized training came up I think the hard part was really mostly about VO2Max training but it seems like there’s also room now for race specific training in the “hard” portion but anyway.
- Threshold training: This can pretty much be linked with the Norwegian triathlon team spearheaded by Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden. Even though polarized training was coined as a Norwegian model for training the Norwegian triathlon team doesn’t seem to do any polarized training at all. They do a lot of work around or under the anaerobic threshold (LT2 = Lactate Threshold 2 / Lactate turning point). According to their coach Olav Aleksander Bu they also found that this training is not only works on the economy of the athletes but also has the potential to increase VO2Max as well (which raises the question if VO2Max training is actually the best way to raise VO2Max because a significant longer time can be spent in the threshold zone).
Sidenote: That being said the Norwegian training methodology seems to be quite pragmatic and race specific. They seem to train, at least in my understanding, less based on physiological zones but very targeted towards goal performance (swim, bike and run with a certain intensity in mind that wins races). But anyways, pros are a different breed than an average age grouper like myself
- Pyramidal training: Pyramidal training involves gradually increasing volume and intensity of training over time. The method is called “pyramidal” because it resembles building a pyramid, where each layer represents a different phase of training with increasing intensity. In triathlon, it could involve starting with shorter swims, bikes, and runs and gradually increasing their duration and intensity as well as mixing up different intensities.
What to train?
Regarding specific sessions this boils down to:
- Swimming: Swimming is special in triathlon and has a broad range of athletes’ technical ability in the sport. Think it’s pretty safe to say that with swimming technical skills have to be honed until there’s a stable base because as triathletes endurance should not be a limiter. What might be a limiter is specific swimming muscles though especially for amateur triathletes spending the least amount of time swimming compared to cycling and running. Still it’s possible to do any kind of workout in the swim, namely short and hard, longer intervals or long easy aerobic swims.
- Cycling: The bike with it’s accurate power measurements allows for the most accurate training out of the 3 disciplines. This also means that there’s a huge variety in possible workouts for cycling. 40/20s Rønnestad intervals or 30/15s? Or rather Stephen Seiler’s famous 4x8min intervals (which were superior in a study to 4x4 and 4x16min intervals). Or maybe even SweetSpot or threshold training? Sweetspot especially has been used by TrainerRoad plans extensively as, at that time when I tried it at least, their reason was that it improves performance but also doesn’t take long to recover from it. I disagree.
- Running: Uphill VO2Max sessions and 100/200/400m intervals? Or rather focus on longer threshold workouts like 1k, 2k etc.? Are long runs a must?
Learnings
Now this is pretty specific for me but you might find yourself in this part as well. Important for the following parts: my physiology. In school I was the fastest sprinter and couldn’t even finish endurance runs. There’s probably a genetic predisposition for faster type of sport (type 2 muscle fibers). I was never the endurance type and always knew that. I also did two performance diagnostics on the bike which confirmed this as well with a relatively high VO2Max compared to also a relatively high VLamax (relatively high power that can’t be sustained for a long time). So my goal is clear: Increasing the sustainable percentage of my VO2Max.
Performance diagnostics (or even lab tests) are overrated
There is a certain amount of matches to burn per season or year. Performance diagnostics are usually based on all-out efforts which burnt *at least* one of those matches. For my physiology with being able to produce relatively (Lionel Sanders obviously laughing of course) high power this was a suffer fest that left me recovering from this test for days. I did two set of INSCYD tests for this which consist of (everything all-out):
- 20 sec sprint
- 3 min
- 6 min
- 10 min
This protocol left me fatigued for days and mentally drained. The outcome though was a lot more realistic than any FTP test ever gave me (next point). In my case it showed that my LT2 is at 286W where as a FTP test at that time would probably have given me a FTP around 320W.
Also I don’t want to accept that having a good day or an off-day determines my training zones for the following weeks or months.
FTP tests don’t work (for me)
FTP tests got quite silly in my opinion. Ramp tests and the classic 20-min test (or maybe even shorter) are playing exactly into my strengths of producing high power for a short time but not for a long duration. A 60-min test would see radical different numbers than a 20-min or ramp test in my case. This leads to an inflated FTP which is then the base for all following workouts and I’d cook myself massively. In my opinion a FTP test can be done but just when being aware what you test here. You don’t test your FTP that can be held for 60 minutes but you test your output for a ramp test or a 20-min test and that’s it. If you find this number valuable then it makes sense in doing the test regularly.
Power meter is a must
That’s pretty much it basically. If you train on the bike without a reliable power meter you better have a shit ton of feel for your body and performance. I personally use the Assioma Favero Duo on all my bikes (switch the pedals when I switch the bike). I also use a Stryd running power meter on the run but this is definitely a lot more optional than a power meter on the bike. Stryd can be very useful though in my opinion.
Easy is easy is easy
Going harder on your easy days makes no sense. The goal of your easy training days is to get volume in and work on your aerobic efficiency. It doesn’t help you at all to go any faster than what feels easy on that day. Also what feels easy can vary dramatically from day to day (bad sleep, life stress, didn’t eat enough, lost 5 times in a row on Call of Duty Warzone to a 8-year old, …)
Balance between Hard vs. Easy
Be very careful with high training intensity. It creates a lot of stress on the body and the body has to be ready to absorb it otherwise your recovery and performance will decline. More is not always more. You always have to listen to your body and be honest if you are currently able to absorb the training stimulus you throw at it. For me it seems that I need to be especially careful with high intensity training. So going forward there are just a few hard sessions but I rather want to increase overall volume. Some session I plan for myself have optional intensities when I feel good but will totally skip them if I don’t feel fresh enough.
Sidenote on training absorption: I have read a lot of definitions of talent in endurance training. The definition that appealed most to me personally so far is that being able to absorb a lot of training (intensity and volume) is the biggest talent in endurance sports. Pros can deteriorate in their performance as well but they bounce back quickly, soaking up the applied stress.
No shortcuts, consistency is key
No matter what you do and how you train but keeping the consistency high is what makes you better long term. Believe me I’ve looked and tried to find the things that speed up the process with nutrition, supplements etc. and there is no silver bullet apart from putting in the work, being consistent and being patient.
Swimming resistance bands (dry-land exercises)
This was made apparent to me during COVID lockdowns where I, especially in the first lockdown, trained a few months using resistance bands for swimming. Doesn’t really matter which one you use, those would certainly do: https://amzn.to/3Is6B2V
When I went back to the pool after lockdown it only took a few sessions to get the feel back for the water but all in all it was like I didn’t lose anything. Soon I was back doing 3k, 4k swim sessions again without any issues. Recently I had a few months of swimming completely and didn’t strength train with resistance bands, the result was the opposite and had to build up from ~1k swims where my arms and shoulders would get tired very quickly. This made me think: Pros might swim 6 times per week and there’s probably no way of doing that for amateurs but maybe there is a lot to be gained from 2 swim workouts + 2 sessions of swimming specific resistance band exercises. At least for me that works incredibly well as those swimming specific muscles are only trained 1 or 2 times per week and that simply is not enough to improve somewhat quickly.
What I usually do here are sets of 30sec on, 30sec off intervals like for example 3x(8x30/30) with a 3 min rest in between sets which makes it around 30 minutes total.
Strength training doesn’t seem to work for me
That’s probably highly individual as this is supported by quite a few studies and also Dylan Johnson on his awesome YouTube channel. Before starting triathlon I was doing strength training for quite a few years being in the gym about ~4 days per week so I had a quite good base and maybe this is just not a low hanging fruit for me. What I observed for me:
- Heavy resistance training in the gym did nothing for me: I tried it two times already for a few weeks, up to two months and haven’t gained anything from it. I quickly increased the weight I could manage on a deadlift or squat but that was about it. I didn’t feel any measurable or perceivable increase in performance on the bike or run (swimming see point above). So for me this is a waste of time and energy that I’d rather put into swim, bike and run.
- Targeted exercises to eliminate weaknesses work: As probably every triathlete I had my fair share of injuries and niggles. I can only recommend looking for a good physiotherapist who ideally is experienced with the requirements of swim/bike/run. When dealing with IT band issues or adductor issues, the right glute exercises made them disappear in a few weeks every time.
- Not sure about core workout but I don’t do it. At the moment at least because to be honest I hate doing those exercises. I could imagine though that core exercises have benefits for the run at least and I should get into it again.
- The Norwegians don’t do any strength training🤷♂️ The killer argument for and against anything and everything is whether the Norwegians do it or not. Seriously though, they don’t see any benefits in non-targeted strength training, meaning classic deadlift, squat, leg press etc. routine. On the other hand though Jan Frodeno seems to do quite a lot of strength training and he still is the GOAT so there’s that.. Still the question for amateur triathletes with time constraints is if strength training gives more benefit than investing this time in swim/bike/run and I personally don’t think it’s worth the time when being time restricted.
Having a coach is great but can also be (perceived) pressure
It’s not really pressure at all to be honest. It’s just what you make of it. But I had times where I felt burnt out a little but didn’t want to admit it to the coach (huge no go when working with a coach; always give feedback or it doesn’t work). Whenever I gave feedback that it’s just too much at the moment it was hard for me to admit to someone else. Just admitting it to myself feels a lot easier. Also changing plans on my own without having to contact anyone is easier to do for me and I do it all the more often and gain a lot from it, especially less stress. For a lot of people though handing off this burden of having to change a plan is an even bigger benefit of having a coach so this is an entirely personal decision what appeals to you more. Again: For most athletes I can only recommend getting a coach.
Become your own coach
This is very individual again but works for me *at the moment*. After a few years as a coached athlete we discovered a lot of things that work and don’t work. What I was missing though is (perceived) freedom in general. Let me be clear, I had all the freedom in the world, it’s just about personal perception. Freedom to adjust last minute, freedom to suck it up or just freedom of getting sick without having to worry about training plans having to be thrown overboard. But again, this is only perceived freedom in the training process for me because other athletes couldn’t care less about this and just write their coach if they are sick thinking ‘I’m paying this guy/woman so that’s just his job’. For me there was always a feeling of having failed, of disappointment even though that’s not real of course. Most important reason for doing this is also: no one knows it better how I feel than myself.
Now I can’t stress this enough but this can and will only work if:
- You have the experience of coaching and training in general. You don’t have to be an exercise physiologist but you should be interested in sport science and what creates human performance in endurance sports. If you’re not interested in following up on sport science and coaching this will not work for you, period.
- Be as objective as necessary but not more than that. Meaning that just because you know what workouts might be good for the upcoming week don’t make them hard goals just because of that. Check in how you feel, that’s your feedback to the coach. Base your decision on how you feel and if you feel like you can’t absorb the current training load, be honest and change the plan.
HRV measurement for progress and recovery
My n=1 jury is still out for me on that one as I started tracking just recently but I have the feeling that it gives me additional value in tracking it. At the moment I’m using a Garmin Forerunner 255 for tracking HRV. For getting into HRV I recommend following Marco Altini. How I’m tracking:
- Nightly HRV average as collected by Garmin (rmssd): Automatically collected nightly by the watch.
- Morning measurement using Health Snapshot on the Garmin watch and entering the result in HRV4Training app (https://www.hrv4t.com)
Repeatable weekly structure
What’s surprising to me is that a lot of training plans seem to be quite chaotic regarding their weekly structure but when listening to pros in podcasts or YouTube it seems that they mostly have a quite static framework for a weekly structure. I find this for amateur athletes even way more important and found it very exhausting and stressy when every week looked different. What my current weekly structure looks like:
- Monday: Day off┏(・o･)┛♪┗ ( ･o･) ┓(yes, it’s ok to be happy about rest days, you can still love the sport)
- Tuesday: Hard Run, Easy Bike
- Wednesday: Easy Run (might include Strides), Swim
- Thursday: Hard Bike
- Friday: Short Easy Run (might include Strides), Bike (around 2h but can be longer or more intense depending on how I feel)
- Saturday: Long Run (maybe with some efforts like picking up the pace to 70.3 race pace for the last 15 min or, depending on how I feel)
- Sunday: Long Bike, Swim
Tracking progress
No performance diagnostics for me anymore. Every workout is a test and the best test is a race. That doesn’t mean every workout should be evaluated in detail because there are still good days where you feel like flying and off days where you are fatigued and fight against yourself (reality of training).
Ways to analyze your workouts for progress:
- Compare your workouts: This one is pretty simple but probably most effective. When you’re doing a set of 5x5min on the bike for example one week and again 2, 4 and 6 weeks later it’s quite easy to follow perceived exertion, watts or pace and heart rate.
- Efficiency factor (EF as seen in TrainingPeaks): Follow the trend of this number comparing similar workouts. Be aware that the EF is vastly different in easier workouts than harder workouts of course so make sure you compare apples with apples.
- Power/Pace vs Heart rate: Also called Pw:Hr in TrainingPeaks. This gives an indication of your aerobic fitness, I’d say especially in easy workouts with a constant effort. It shows how much your heart rate increased for the same power or pace during the workout and also gives an indication wether your easy runs are maybe too hard if heart rate can’t be held steadily.
- Compare to past data: For the bike you can use the great online tool intervals.icu. It has a huge variety of possibilities of analyzing your training. One example in my current case: After catching COVID my training showed a higher heart rate than before. (Important: Perceived exertion didn’t increase in the same order of magnitude, so heart rate probably doesn’t tell the full story here). Looking at the example below it seems that on the bike my aerobic fitness is not up to where it was before whereas higher power intervals indicate that HR at least is comparable for those efforts.
Hard on the Bike, Threshold on the Run, Race Specific in the Swim
Highly individual as well most likely but at the moment that’s what works best for me. Only talking about the non-easy workouts here (about 80% is easy) but I’m starting out with a block of short and high intensity intervals on the run and the bike, keep that intensity up on the bike until maybe 8 weeks out of a race and for the run I’d switch to longer threshold intervals way before races.
Hard on the bike: I always felt best on the bike when doing a lot of high intensity workouts on the bike. Few weeks out from the race I’d plan to get specific with some race pace intervals but mostly low cadence uphill threshold or sweetspot range workouts. Examples for some sessions:
- High intensity: 30/30 and 40/20sec Rønnestad intervals like 3x(10x40/20sec). 5x5min, 4x8min but definitely never longer than 8 minutes.
- Race specific phase: 3x10min 50–60rpm intervals with sweetspot power building up to 3x20min or 2x30min intervals. Race specific workouts would be tailored to the race I’m targeting. For Olympic distance races the race specific intervals would definitely be shorter than for a half distance race.
- Long term SweetSpot/Threshold focus doesn’t work for me: I tried training with a big focus on increasing the fractional utilization of VO2Max (becoming more efficient; decreasing Vlamax) by doing a lot of sweetspot and threshold range/zone intervals. This didn’t work for me on the bike (it does on the run though, next point). It only resulted in a plateau where the targeted power never really got any easier but continued to feel hard. This is quite interesting as I’m pretty sure it would work for other athletes. What I noticed additionally on the bike was that heart rate decreased in the targeted sweetspot/threshold range but perceived exertion didn’t get better and it felt like a muscular limitation for long intervals more than a cardiovascular limitation.
Short VO2Max run block followed by Threshold focus: With the run I have a love/hate kind of relationship. It’s often my most loved discipline but not my best (cycling is). What I found works best for me is getting in some leg speed with a short VO2Max block of workouts but soon switching to threshold workouts.
- High intensity: Uphill VO2Max type of efforts like 3x(5*1min) uphill with 1:30min rest. As well as 100/200/400m efforts.
- Threshold running: As this is where I see most improvements (meaning I get faster) as well as I know that I can run fast for a short amount of time and this is not a limiter for me, I lean a lot on threshold running. Also it just seems logical to me that collecting time at intensity on the run is not easy for triathletes (stress from 3 disciplines and injury prevention) it only makes sense that doing that as threshold runs makes a lot of sense. You can accumulate a lot more time at threshold pace than you can at VO2Max intervals. Also the physiological stress from running very hard is a lot tougher on the body than it is on the bike or swim, it certainly is for me. Examples here are every form of threshold run that increases time spent at threshold: 12*800m, 10*1k, 6*1.5k, 2*3k,..
Swimming with technique focus or race specific intervals: As amateurs we don’t spend a lot of time in the pool. In swimming there’s probably the biggest disconnect between athletes doing the sport individually compared to cycling and running. That’s why in my opinion this needs a very specific approach as we don’t have a lot of time here:
- I rarely train long and easy. Once again, time is limited in the swim and what we do here has to be productive. Also for me personally I can recover from a higher intensity in the swim better than in the other 2 sports.
- You can’t win the race in the swim but you can lose it. That is true for the pros as it is for amateurs but for different reasons. For pros it’s mostly because of group dynamics on the bike but for amateurs it’s about energy preservation. It’s certainly important for a good age group result to have a decent swim because otherwise you are probably way off and have to plow through a field of people which certainly doesn’t help your bike time.
- Either focus on technique or be race specific. What I mean with focus on technique is when swimming 100s for example always focus on technique. You can also do some 50s or 25s very fast to get used to swimming fast. Personally I never really gained anything from VO2Max intervals on the swim, for example 10x100m with 15sec rest swimming on best average pace. I never found this to increase my swim speed for the target distance of 1.5 or 1.9km. I’d rather do that kind of workout on the bike and focus on technique in the swim. The other side of the coin for me is 200m+ of swimming increasing the interval duration keeping a somewhat active pace (near race pace maybe even a little bit above as I tend to swim rather conservatively in the race).
- Open water swimming: Still surprising to me that I haven’t considered for a long time but maybe I didn’t want to admit it myself as it can be a hassle sometimes: When getting close to your races start swimming in the open water. It’s quite fascinating how many triathletes miss this and are suddenly quite surprised on race day how different it is: sighting, constant swimming for a long time without any turns and micro-breaks and worst of all.. being in the washing machine that is other athletes.
One complete rest day per week
Monday is my day off. I recently only introduced this concept of a strict one day off per week. I don’t do anything sport related on that day. I don’t stretch, I don’t strength train, I don’t go for an easy walk. Certainly during training camp for example I’d follow a different structure but apart from that this day is incredibly important and I can only recommend it even though increasingly more training plans out there don’t have regular rest days.
Where I go from here
For most of 2022 I thought there’s nothing for me to get out of this sport anymore and reached a point where I thought quitting is my best option. With some time off I recognized that I still like to bike and run.. maybe even swim sometimes️🤷♂️. Not 100% sure yet I want to continue doing races and train specifically for them or rather do whatever I want just to get better for myself. But I’m pretty sure that once I improve beyond a certain point I’m gonna be on a start line once again. Also a soft goal for me would be still to qualify for Ironman 70.3 Worlds (even though that whole event is a little bit of a marketing joke but anyways..). That’s quite a steep goal for me as I think I figured out mainly the Olympic distance (within my possibilities of the given time frame) but 70.3 is a different game even though I think I can perform there (again, within my possibilities). I’m not interested in a full distance triathlon though and probably never will be as ultra distance sport is just not appealing to me, especially as an amateur.
Recap
Even though this has been highly individual to me and my physiology probably but maybe a few amateur triathletes out there find this useful and can take some things into consideration for their daily training routine.
In conclusion, I hope that this blog post has provided valuable insights and information on the topic at hand. I believe that it is important to constantly educate ourselves and stay informed on current trends and developments in practical application of exercise physiology and human performance.
If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or reach out to me (Twitter: @christoph_m_ or follow me on Strava). Thank you for reading!
