The first session for today was a morning ride for the Front Runner Triathlon Squad. Today's ride was officially the first road riding session of the 2017/2018 triathlon season. A special occasion in anyone's book.
Such an auspicious training occasion called for a special session, which is just what this morning's ride was. The special session for today was a 20km flat out effort. The idea of the effort was to help determine the cycling threshold power for the members of the triathlon squad. The reason the ride was done during the first session is to give the athletes a benchmark to start the season from. With this benchmark set the squad can now retest as the season progresses tracking their progress and improvement. This quantification gives a tangible way for coaches and athletes to measure improvement as the season progresses.
As well as setting a benchmark, the other reason for the effort this morning was to give the squad an idea of their current threshold power. Determining this threshold means that as the athletes continue their training in the coming weeks they can be sure they are training at appropriate intensities. By allowing the athletes to correctly target their intensities we can ensure that the sessions are achieving the training goals that they are supposed to. A good example of training smarter not harder.
The other coaching session for today was a run down at Langley Park in the City. This session was providing coaching for a corporate group that is preparing for the Perth City to Surf in a few weeks time.
The session for these guys was the classic Mona Fartlek, named for the famous Steve Moneghetti who used to regularly do this session. The Mona Fartlek is a series of efforts all done at above threshold pace, broken up with steady recovery. The efforts look like this:
2 x 90 seconds on, 90 seconds off
4 x 1 minute on, 1 minute off
4 x 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off
4 x 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off.
All up it makes for a 20 minute session.
The session is a demanding one, but it is also a great threshold session that targets pace variation.
Coaching the corporate group through the session was an interesting experience and one that is rather different to that of coaching the rest of the Front Runner athletes. Most of the corporate groups are very new to running, many of them having only started running 7 weeks ago. As an indication of their newness, almost none of them knew who Steve Moneghetti is.
Coaching a novice group of runners through a session like the Mona Fartlek required taking things back to first principals in terms of describing the session, how the session is executed and what the targeted intensities were.
Still, I think I managed to convey the intent of the session appropriately. Certainly if the looks of exertion at the end of the session are anything to go by I think the session hit its mark.
No coaching tomorrow. A bit of time to spend doing my own exercise instead, plus the small matter of a follow up cardiac MRI.
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