Last year at an inaugural edition of
a local off road tri I placed first in my division and eighth overall. While
recuperating from my final sprint, one of the other younger competitors who
finished a bit after me asked how I did. When I told him he seemed a little
stunned and inquired just how did an old guy like me go that fast! I then gave
him a thumbnail sketch of and told him I wasn’t genetically gifted, just a hard
worker who didn’t mind the pain.
There are 2 routes to the top of
your age group and neither is particularly hard to decipher, no GPS needed here.
Route 1 is a highway, one paved with your genes. It’s simple really; you were
just born with a better set of athletic tools than the rest of us. Everything athletic
comes easy to you. Most likely you were a three star athlete in high school
(and wore one of those sweater tied around your neck). Training for you is
consistent but you don’t need to go overboard, i.e. you have a life.
But for the rest of us we must take
the “other” Route, my roadway, is a meandering country road. It’s full of pot
holes and little detours but paved with hard work. Maybe a decent high school
athlete, we have to work hard for everything we get. Nothing is handed to us. We
must practice and train and practice some more just to keep up with the Route
Oner’s. We bust our butts for our victories (while hopefully passing one of those
pretty boys with all the talent). Now since those AG hotshots are already are
winning everything, they have long ago moved onto another blog. Probably one
describing the best way to display your medals, but those of you still
reading.. you must be one of us! The
hard working, and good looking, trainaholics!
Now I am no perennial favorite nor
am I an overall winner. But I consistently finish at the top of my age group
and somewhere near the top of the overall standings. So what do I do to get
where I am? I will give you a little run down on my training concepts but first
let me go over something I said in the beginning. Going fast is more painful
than going slow. If you intend on pushing your limits you must come to grips
with this early on. It’s gonna hurt but let me tell you its sooooo worth!
Without any further literary torture let me pass on some of my ideas:
- I try to do something every day. Some of those days are recovery runs or swims but I shoot for zero days of zero training.
- 2 hours a day is my minimum time spent training. You must push yourself to go longer and faster, this can’t be done on an hour or two several times a week.
- 3 swims, 4 rides, 4 runs is my base level in each discipline. I try to do two workouts a day except for my long run and recovery days. Long rides are always followed immediately with a run. Inertia is hard to stop.
- To go faster you must go faster. I seek out younger and/or faster people to train with. I look for every opportunity to go fast (except for recovery days). You just can’t expect to race at a speed your body has never seen before.
- I am almost totally vegan. It has morphed into ‘it’s the right thing to do” but it started out as a way to keep weight off and recover faster. I recover from hard workouts quicker than anyone I know and I firmly believe it is because of my diet.
The specifics of run length and time
in the saddle will differ depending on the distance you plan on racing. But
developing a training plan with a foundation similar to the one I have laid out
here will make you fast and someone to be reckoned with every time you toe it
up at the starting line.
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