What type of athlete are you?

If you are to construct a meaningful training programme for yourself, you will need to decide what type of an athlete you are. There is no point in setting training goals that your body is simply unable to achieve at present, but if you set yourself a training programme that is too easy, you will not progress. So, into which of the following categories do you fit?

You’re making your first attempt at sport, so you should hold back because your mind will want to go faster than your body will allow. Initially, you should concentrate on developing your technique, an area where you can probably make large advances. Attention to fitness should come second, and when that happens, your fitness will increase rapidly. However, you will also experience sore muscles and lots of fatigue from a lack of endurance, and as a result, you will take longer to recover from exercise.

If accumulation fatigue occurs during a workout, you should finish the session immediately, recover, and then make changes to your diet so that your energy levels increase. Your training should begin with simple power walking or gentle running, but you should learn to enjoy it. You should also train alone so that you are not tempted to push yourself too soon, and you should take2-3 complete rest days a week. Your effort level should be no more than seven at any time during training (see page 51 for rating of perceived exertion [RPE] table).

You have a good understanding of sport and are 100 % committed, but you have never really had an interest in exercise until now. As with the first-timer, your mind will want to go faster than your body will allow, so you should first concentrate on developing your technique and be wary of injury.

As you have probably only trained sporadically before, you should constantly vary your training between easy, medium and hard. The hard training will make the easy training feel very comfortable, while the easy workouts will allow the body to recover before you up the pace again. If you start to feel the first signs of fatigue, stop the training session.

You have been exercising all your life, but with no real purpose. You now need to follow a progressive routine, watch for the signs of fatigue and monitor your fitness.

You will have at least some of the necessary skills, such as a good swimming technique, good coordination and/or good general endurance, and you will have an established training routine, but with only a general sporting history, you will probably need to hold back a little as you might not be as fit as you think you are.

You were fit once but have not participated in an exercise regimen for a long time. Skills can soon be re-learned, but it will take time to regain fitness. You might still have the enthusiasm of your youth, but your body is not the same, so don’t force it.

After having had such a long break from exercise, you will need to take at least one or two days a week to rest. Our minds don’t forget what training is like but our muscles do, so build up your fitness and endurance steadily, and don’t forget that a session that was once easy might now be difficult.

You have a work-hard, play-hard ethic, and your performances in training are usually good, but you are often injured as you do not know how to go easy or take a day off. You are also unable to hold a reasonable pace for long periods of time, as your tendency is to go too hard initially and then be forced to slow down.

You need to learn to build up fitness gradually, otherwise you will peak too soon and then, by race day, you will have tailed off. Avoid going hard in every workout because this will lead to a plateau in performance midway through your training programme, which could be difficult to break out of.

You do short bursts of daily training, usually because of a New Year’s resolution, in preparation for a holiday or for a certain sporting event, but then you do nothing for ages. You never really give fitness a chance because you give up before it becomes enjoyable.

You should train slightly less than you feel you ought to because by holding back you will avoid the mental problems you experience with burnout. However, 15min before the end of a workout, you should pick up the pace or do short bursts of increased intensity so that you feel you have achieved something from the session. You should refrain from going hard in every session, otherwise you will get tired and become dispirited.

You have a strong build, you look fit, and you like the thrill of going hard and pushing against resistance. However, while you can swim a few lengths, are good in short, fast bursts, are comfortable with indoor bike spinning and can run fast over 5 km, you lack endurance and are poor at runs of 10 km or more. You will need to work on your swim-bike-run pace judgement and improve flexibility, as fitness, not strength, is the key to triathlon. When cycling, you will need to learn to use the handlebars as levers. It is always easy to spot people who train mostly on a gym spin bike because they ride with stiff, straight arms.

While you will have good strength, a good understanding of how your body reacts to resistance training, and a good knowledge of sport, you will need to completely break your training habits. It is a common mistake to simply tag on three other sports to your usual gym training and expect to improve in all three by race day.

Initially you should work on your weakness, which is probably endurance. Once you have reached a certain fitness level you will easily be able to maintain it while focusing your energy on the new sports. Don’t forget that you will improve rapidly, as your body will already be accustomed to repairing itself after muscle breakdown. If you already have a swimming or running background, all you need to do is fine tune this with relatively few workouts per week.

You have either concentrated on a single sport or done a number of sports for many years, and have a good understanding of how your body responds to hard training. You might already have experience in swimming and cycling, say, but be unable to swim long distances.

Your training programme needs to be adjusted so that you simply maintain your ability in the sports in which you are already experienced, while concentrating on technique in the new disciplines.

If you are a specialist runner with a history of injury, you will benefit from cross-training because you will have to decrease your running time in training but hopefully will not pick up too many injuries in cycling and swimming. For you, triathlon training will help you gain strength and improve your cardiovascular fitness. Most runners like to run every day and hate having a day off, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing. During triathlon training, it is inevitable that you will not be able to run every day because you will also be swimming or cycling.

However, while the specialist swimmer will have very good cardiovascular fitness and be used to long and hard training, he might experience initial injuries when running and cycling because he will have high fitness levels but will not have built up the relevant muscles sufficiently to be able to cope with his attempted speed.

Fitting a training schedule into a busy week

Anyone with a family and a full-time job will inevitably have difficulty fitting a training routine into their busy lives, especially if you bear in mind that all training will have to be followed by rest and recovery time.

There are 168 hours in a week. If about 40 hours are spent working (more if you commute) and 56 hours sleeping (eight hours per night), then that leaves 72 hours at most for training and all other personal commitments, including family. Because of the nature of training, at least some of it will need to be undertaken during the week, but for the busy triathlete, it is obvious that weekends are very important, both for performing significant training and for making sure that the family does not feel ignored.

It is also important to calculate your recovery time accurately in order to get the full benefit from the training. Steady endurance work will require an equal amount of rest and recovery time, but demanding training will require three times the amount of rest and recovery. Therefore, in order to use your time efficiently, the schedule needs to be arranged so that this rest and recovery time is spent on other commitments, such as family or, if you’re single, completing all the necessary chores that keep your life functioning.

The most important thing to remember is that training is not linear; it should run in cycles, rather like the seasons. In addition, training should not be over-ambitious. You simply cannot increase from 10 to 11 to 12 to 13 to 14 miles each week without considering the rest of your life plus the accumulated training fatigue. Therefore, you should progress gradually and not underestimate the small improvements you make.

The most difficult part of regular, daily training sessions is your commitment to them. If you are hurting then you are training too hard. Triathlon is an endurance event, and your workouts need to be progressive.

What is fitness?

It goes without saying that, in order to compete successfully in the triathlon, you have to be as fit as possible. But what is fitness and how can it be measured?

An athlete might have great speed but if he lacks race-pace training and endurance then his competitiveness in a triathlon will be limited. Athletes who have developed a high level of fitness in other sports might not be as fast in a triathlon as athletes with higher endurance, because the latter will have a greater ability to convert oxygen into energy. However, once an athlete has become adept at triathlon, he will automatically become a specialist in each of the three sports. A fit athlete will also have a high ability to recover from exercise.

A successful training programme will work the sport-specific muscles, but you will also need to train at race-pace intensity often enough to improve without overtraining. In order to achieve optimum fitness, it is also necessary to train at different intensity levels. If you never run slowly, apart from when warming up, then the very nature of going slowly and using muscles you do not normally use immediately before a competition is likely to reduce your chances of success.

However, if you are to get the most out of your training, it is necessary to understand exactly what happens to the body when you exercise.

When you do any form of exercise, whether it be cardiovascular work or the lifting of weights, your muscles improve and you become stronger, faster, etc. You will then able to lift heavier weights, or you will be able to run faster, or a certain distance run will become easier. This increase in fitness is called “progression.”

However, if you continue to run the same distance at the same regular interval, you might find that your performance slowly begins to deteriorate, and however hard you try, you cannot achieve the performance of a few weeks earlier. You might then start training even harder, but your performances only get worse. At this point you begin to become despondent and might even consider giving up.

The truth is that your fitness levels have not been decreasing and you have probably even been progressing, but what you have not understood is the effect of “accumulative fatigue.”

Fatigue usually occurs during a long-distance event when the body simply runs out of glycogen, which it then converts to glucose, which is then burnt at the muscles to form energy. The problem can be resolved quickly by taking a high-energy drink.

However, during a training programme, the body’s glycogen stores can become depleted very gradually, so that the athlete might not be aware of it. For instance, a man has a car with a 48-litre fuel tank and puts ten litres of petrol into the tank every week, but what he does not know is that he consumes 12 litres of petrol every week. The performance of his car is fine for 24 weeks until he suddenly starts running out of petrol, and this is effectively what has happened to the above runner. Accumulative fatigue can strike at any time, but it often happens to triathletes about 20-28 weeks into a training programme.

If this happens to you, the problem is solved by having more recovery and changing your dietary requirements so that your energy intake is greater than your energy expenditure – that is, until your glycogen levels have been built up again. Naturally, this process is assisted by rest.

Also, when you exercise, the muscles that have been used are actually broken down by the body and then rebuilt stronger, which is why we become stronger and faster. However, if we continue to exercise during this time, we can damage our body and even become more susceptible to illness due to a reduction in the effectiveness of the immune system. Consequently, a period of rest needs to be built into any training regimen, and this period is called “recovery.”

Many athletes encounter problems because they simply make too much effort for too long. For instance, if you cycled uphill a number of times at maximum effort, your fitness level would increase rapidly but you would also become more susceptible to illness and injury. Therefore, it might be more productive to cycle up the same hill at a steadier, more controlled pace. The reason for this is because the physiological effects on the body are different for the two types of exercise. In order to excel at triathlon, you need to do both types of exercise, but in a controlled way. Sometimes in this sport, slower is better.

So, fitness for triathlon is achieved by finding the correct balance of exercise, nutrition, rest and recovery, and this balance is different for everyone. This is what this book is all about.

Maintaining a healthy body

Correct body functioning is achieved through homeostasis, which is the body’s ability to maintain the correct balance of carbon dioxide, ions, oxygen, sugar, temperature, urea, water, etc. The organs and glands responsible for this process include the hypothalamus, kidneys, liver, lungs, muscles, pancreas, pituitary gland and skin.

Hypothalamus – An area of the brain responsible for many functions, such as the monitoring of carbon dioxide in the blood, body temperature and water content.

Kidneys – Perform many important functions, such as removing urine from the blood and controlling the amount of water in the body.

Liver – Also performs many important functions, such as storing glycogen and regulating body temperature.

Lungs – Used to remove carbon dioxide and receive oxygen.

Muscles – Used to maintain body posture and body temperature through muscular activity and shivering.

Pancreas – The gland organ in the digestive and endocrine system. It maintains the correct glucose levels in blood by producing insulin.

Pituitary gland – A small gland at the base of the brain that secretes various hormones, including anti-diuretic hormone (ADH), to regulate the body’s water content.

Skin – This is sometimes overlooked when athletes are trying to establish good health, but it is the largest organ in the body and it performs a very important function: that of maintaining a constant body temperature. Healthy skin is therefore important for athletes competing in endurance sports such as triathlon.

While your sweat rate will increase in hot conditions, the evaporation of sweat from the skin will be slowed in high humidity, possibly leading to overheating and hyperthermia. If left untreated, this can lead to brain and organ damage and even death. Factors that increase the chances of hyperthermia include age, dehydration, fever, heart disease, obesity and poor circulation. Other heat-related problems include heat exhaustion, heat stroke, heat cramps, heat rash and sunburn.

Hydration

Hydration is important for good health, but the amount of water required by humans varies depending upon a person’s size, sweat rate and diet. A small person with a sedentary job in an air conditioned office who eats lots of fruit and vegetables will not need to drink as much water as a large man who does physical work in the heat. Children have a larger surface-area-to-volume ratio than adults and therefore can become dehydrated more easily.

If you fail to drink enough water, your risk of infection increases; your urine becomes more concentrated and its smell intensifies; and your chances of becoming constipated increase, thus increasing your likelihood of bowel cancer.

However, over-hydration can also be dangerous, as it causes the body to excrete sodium via the urine (hyponatraemia) and is the cause of more deaths than dehydration. If you develop hyponatraemia you feel bloated; you develop headaches or pressure around the brain; you have puffiness or pressure around the shorts and sock line; and your skin feels tight and becomes shiny. If you develop hyponatraemia, do not imbibe any electrolyte drink, as this will only exacerbate the problem.

The best way to remain hydrated is to drink regularly during the day; it sounds obvious but not everyone does this. The average person’s daily consumption of water should be around two litres (excluding that required when training), so if you get up at 7am and go to bed at 11pm you need to drink 125 ml of fluid per hour, although you might want to increase this somewhat in order to take into account the fact that you probably won’t want to drink as much in the final few hours before bedtime in order to avoid having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Also, you might want to drink more as soon as you wake in the morning, such as 330-500 ml of water or 50/50 water and juice drink.

If you have any concerns in this area then consider keeping a record in your training diary of how often you go to the toilet. The average is 4-8 times a day unless you have a medical condition, and the average volume of urine passed is 1.5 litres per day. In order to train your bladder (very important during a long race), try not to visit the bathroom as soon as you get the urge. If you are correctly hydrated, your urine should be straw coloured. If it is clear, you might be drinking too much.

It’s always a good idea to have drinks available wherever you go: in the car, at the office, by the bed at night, etc. Varying the type and flavour of drink will avoid monotony, although in hotter climates, little to no flavours work best. If you develop regular cramps, you could have an electrolyte imbalance.

General points