Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The IM Training Plan:

What's the plan?  20 weeks of madness, resulting in life changing improvements, the best physical health I have ever been in my whole life, and the ability to complete an IronMan.  So far we have overcome much, we are on week 11!  Check out this weeks schedule:

Week 11 Schedule

This week is focused on running.  It's a good idea to have theme weeks built into your training.  This let's you really push your effectiveness at a specific event while maintaining the level's you have achieved in the others.  Of course, the most important part is recovery time, don't over-do it or you'll end up injured or too drained to continue.  Check out the intensity chart per week (it's minutes working out per week) I unceremoniously stole from the website I am using for training below!

The entire training program I am following can be found online at http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=441

The fourth week in each month is designed to be a recovery week, where you're still working out, just less intensely.  The program is built quite intelligently, with workouts called breakthrough workouts, which break your body and tissues down and push you past where you have performed before.  These are followed by recovery or low intensity workouts, which allow your system time to recover, and when it does recover, it over-shoots the rebound, which results in you having an overall far increased level of performance due to the recovery!  No recovery, no performance increase!


Here is a flash into a week of training!  Check out this week:
Monday - 90 minute bike, shoot for a target average speed of 17mph.  This is your race pace.

Tuesday - 90 minute tempo run.  Tempo run basically means your going to increase and decrease your speed based on minutes running, this helps push your cardio health without damaging your fast twitch muscle fibers, which come in handy when your running and are easy to recruit as your muscles get tired.  Similar to the way strides work for your muscles, but for cardio.

Wednesday - 3000 yard swim (1.7 miles), and 30 minute run.  Try to keep the pace of the swim consistent, this is a distance day, there are also speed days designed to increase your speed while keeping your exertion down (by boosting performance).  Keep the run easy, RPE 3.  RPE = rate of perceived exertion.  Basically how hard are you working on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being pushing as hard as you can.

Thursday - 75 min endurance run.  Steady pace, RPE 3-4.  then a 1900 yard ladder swim.  this means you swim 300 yards, 2 minute break, then 275 yards, 2 minute break, then 250, 2 min, all the way down to 25 yards, then your done.  it's freeking hard to do!

Friday - 60 min easy run, 2 hour bike.

Saturday - Speed swim day!  8 x 100 yard.  so you swim 100 yards 8 times.  Each 100 yard spurt takes the first 25 yards easy, next 25 increasing speed, next 25 yards easy, last 25 yards hard effort.  EBEH

Sunday - 2.5 hour endurance run.  Try to use nutrition that you will have access to on race day.  these long workouts are the only chance you'll get to test out your race day nutrition!  I usually run about a 10-11 minute mile, so this sunday will be my first half marathon distance workout!  WOOT!!

If this sounds like a lot, then congratulations, your normal.  But when you break it down, it's really not that much.  Most of us make time for the gym anyway, and once you master your calendar, you'll be shocked how many hours you have in a week to get stuff done!  It's all about what's important!  God first, family second, everything else comes third.  Think about it for a second.  How long is 20 weeks?  yup, it's 5 months.  Even if you do half of these workouts, or do half of all of them, you're still going to easily move into a level of fitness that if maintained will add years to your life and even more important, QUALITY years to your life!  How's that for a gift to your family!  Live an extra 10 years!  Your spouse will LOVE your new looks too, trust me.  The benefits are endless, lower stress, new found health, spouse who ... yup, winning example to the kids, live longer, live happier, become awesome!  What's your good reason not to get in shape again?

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