It was back in 2011 that I got the crazy idea to run a marathon. I blame Frank Smith, the owner of Island Triathlon and Bike. I had been riding for years. Never raced. Just commuted to work every day and did the two Century Rides every year. People still remember me for that. "Still riding you bike to work?" I'm never sure how to answer.
I blame Frank because he organized the army of cyclists needed to start the marathon timing clocks. OK, more like a squad. About a dozen couples. Every year there was a briefing the week before the race. Must have been at the December 2010 meeting when Frank asked how many people there had done it, and half of the people in the room raised their hands. I was stunned. Somewhere in the middle of the following year - 2022 - I decided to do it. I thought I was too late to race that year, and set myself the goal of running in 2012.
I never trained on the bike. I just rode. Taking on the marathon felt different. I knew I had a lot to learn, and one of the first things I learned was there is a thing called a training plan. I must have found Hal Higdon on the then still primitive World Wide Web. There were free training plans and a forum where he answered questions. Advanced runners could get more but that cost money.
I dutifully followed Higdon's beginner plan, starting with short walk/runs three times a week and gradually increasing my distance. By November of 2012 the Sunday long run was well into the teens, toping out at 18 miles. I recall thinking I had to do each one as an out-and-back, so I would run from Kahala to Hawaii Kai, as far as Mariner's Cove, then go back along the same route. Never occurred to me I could do repeats of shorter segments. Doh!
Not long after that first marathon my wife Pattie said these prescient words, "Now that you bike and run, you might as well take up triathlon." She had been doing triathlon for several years, so why not? Well, the extent of my swimming ability was the side stroke. But I was game. My good friend, masseuse, and mentor Sonya Weiser Souza got me started, and pointed me to the YouTube videos by Terry Laughlin. That led me to an on-line course taught by Suzanne Atkinson.
Sidebar, my favorite Terry Laughlin video: Terry at Kona Swim Camp
Swimming introduced me to a new level of structured workouts. A typical run workout would be "Run for five miles." Compare that to this little gem:
I tried my best to do workouts like this one at the Oahu Club's 25 yard pool. My poor eyesight meant I had to print these out in a ginormous font, then put the paper in a zip lock bag and stick it to the pool deck with my water bottle. I wasn't familiar with the jargon and had a heck of a time trying to remember what I was supposed to do, lap by lap. But I thought this was how to practice swimming.
Eventually it occurred to me that swimmers, cyclists, and runners each have their own, unique style of specifying workouts. Swim workouts are deigned for pools, with the possibility of more than one swimmer per lane. Everyone does the same thing. They are measured by laps, and in that way, distance. (Being a slow swimmer I was never able to complete one of these in the hour I had in the morning.) Structured run workouts are designed for a track, 400 yards per lap. With cycling I found it either way, distance or time, but inevitably when I said to someone I did a long ride on Sunday, the question they would ask was "How far?" and never "How long?"
Whenever I hear sports physiologists talk about training, they describe it in terms of time and intensity. You may enjoy bragging about how far you went, but your body doesn't care. What matters to your muscles is how long and how hard they worked.
When I decided to take up coaching I knew I would need a cohesive way to prescribe workouts. Joe Friel has a certain style. So does David Warden, the guy behind 80/20 Endurance. These are the goals I set:
- A naming convention that conveys useful information.
- Time based rather than distance based.
- Simple, easy to follow instructions.
- Just enough variety to cover what is necessary.
To those goals I added a few assumptions:
- All swimming would be in open water.
- All bike high intensity interval sessions would be on the turbo trainer, for safety and control.
- All running would be on the road or grass, no track.
Above all else was the concept that triathletes should not train the same way athletes in the individual component sports train.
The thing that causes the most concern for triathletes is the swim. Why? Because they train in the pool. Open water feels foreign to them, and typically triggers intense, negative emotions. The best way to get comfortable in open water is to practice in it. As for running on the track, there are some technical differences between running on a track and on the road, but the real reason for this choice was the difficulty I experienced in getting access to a track. It used to be, any runner could get in a hour before school on the local high school track. These days, they are all locked up.
As my thoughts about how to design workouts came into focus, I found the biggest departure from tradition was with swim workouts. I divide my swim workouts into three types, drill, intensity, and endurance. Very much a parallel to how I approach bike and run training, except that for swimming I set aside more time for skill practice. Ideally there is enough time each week to do one of each. There may be three drill sessions in the early base, two drill and one endurance in the late base, one of each in the early build, and finally two intensity and one endurance in the late build. It all depends on what the athlete will benefit the most from.
For drill workouts I have three durations, 30 min., 45 min., and 60 min. These times work well for morning swims before work. They can also be combined with a bike or run workout. Below is the 45 min. workout. The other two are exactly the same except for the durations.
WU 15 min easy.
DRILLS 10 min pick a focal point.
MAIN 20 min continuous, let go and watch yourself swim.
Whenever we start to exercise, much of the movement patterns come from the prefrontal cortex - our working memory. Our movements are stiff and slow. Gradually our thinking brain steps aside and movement the patterns come from our procedural memory, which is much faster and better suited to complex tasks such as playing the piano, swinging a golf club, and, you guessed it, swimming.
Now that we have the procedural memory booted up and on-line, it is time to fix, or improve, one of these well practiced movement patterns. That is what drills do. Pick one and only one focal point for that session and review it. If we have been swimming regularly we should already know what it is. It may take weeks to make a measurable improvement, but each session contributes something.
Movement patterns are best done with procedural memory, so after pulling them apart it is time to put them back. This is what the last portion of the workout is for. Swim without thinking about it. Pretend you are a drone, flying over your body, or a fish swimming beside you, watching yourself swim. No thinking. No analyzing. Just observing. Not trying to change anything. Let your swim come to you.
Intensity workouts follow a similar pattern except the drill section is replaced by high intensity efforts. Those take more time, so the free swim part is shorter. The endurance swims are all about holding good form without pausing, all the while observing yourself without trying to fix mistakes. Mindful swimming.
Using this simple format removes a lot of the stress I felt learning to swim. Age group athletes without a strong swimming background should benefit from this simple approach. The most important thing an age groupers can do to improve their swim is spend more time swimming, preferably in open water.