Building the Car

Down to the track tonight for a wee bit of coaching for the guys and girls from Stadium Triathlon Club. An interesting session planned, well at least I think it is, should hopefully be challenging with a dash of fun for everyone.

As opposed to last Thursday (when rain was forecast), the sky out my window is looking blue and rather lovely, there is a chill in the air, but all around the conditions seem pretty perfect for running . Hopefully that means we have a few athletes coming out of the woodwork.

For these sessions the focus is really on getting the squad to work in the upper realms of their intensity range. Tonight we are actually going to be doing a bit of work above threshold to really get the lungs burning and the heart pumping. These higher intensity sessions are important to make sure we are working all the energy pathways of the athletes, which is key for driving improvement.

Triathletes often do one of two things with their training. Often triathletes will go out and make every session a smashfest, crushing themselves every time and not spending enough (or any) time in the lower intensity ranges, working aerobically.

The other habit you see is athletes never working at higher intensity, but only working long and steady, never working anaerobically. You particularly see this with Ironman athletes who are concerned about volume but not so bothered about speed.

The reality is though that for triathletes, no matter what distance they race in, they need to work both aerobically and anaerobically in their training. True if you are training for an Ironman most of your week might be spent working at a steady intensity, with comparatively shorter periods at the higher zones. Conversely if you train only for sprints you might spend more time working in the anaerobic intensities (and even VO2 Max) and less time training aerobically. The mix may change, but the key is that it is important to spend time doing both.

When we spend time working in those lower aerobic zones, steady and tempo intensities, it helps us build our capacity, build our resilience and build our fitness. All this is necessary work for building our base fitness. Without the base fitness there is no foundation on which to construct the pointy end performance.

The higher end intensities, the anaerobic threshold work, is key for taking that base and pushing it. Increasing our capacity for speed and, therefore, improving our performance.

Without the base you might go fast, but not far. Without the threshold you might go far, but not fast. To be successful you need both.

My favourite analogy for all this is the one of a high performance vehicle. In very simplistic terms you need two things to make a fast car, a good engine and a strong chassis. If you have a strong chassis but a weak engine then there is nothing to make the car go. If you have a strong engine, but a noodly chassis then you have no way of getting all that power to the ground. To make the car fast you need both.

Carrying this analogy across to the body, the aerobic work strengthens the chassis and the anaerobic threshold work tweaks the engine. Neither is more important than the other, to go quickly both need to be considered in your training week. Combining the two together is how you get an athlete with sustainable speed.

That will be what the group will be working on tonight.