In my previous post I wrote in general about my goal of raising my FTP. Here I will lay out in more detail what my plan to do this looks like, and why.
First I must apologize for the length of this post. As it is, I tried to simplify what is not a simple process. I will further justify my verbosity by pointing out that this is the same level of planning that I, as a coach, will put into any of my athletes’ training plans. It starts with a framework. Then the fun begins as we tailor it to fit real life.
As a senior athlete I base my training plan on Joe Friel’s Fast After 50. His book is a wealth of information, although the real juicy stuff is tucked away in a set of tables that puts creating a training plan on par with assembling an Ikea bookshelf. Fortunately I have gone through the process multiple times, to the point where I almost have those tables memorized. Friel is a genius!
A typical schedule Friel suggests consists of four specific workouts per week, plus a handful of unspecified slots. The four workouts consist of two high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions, one long, slow, duration (LSD) session, and one strength session. The two HIIT sessions consist of one very high intensity workout, what Friel calls Aerobic Capacity and others call VO2MAX, and one lactate threshold session. Duration and intensity vary based on time until the next “A” race. There can be two strength sessions per week early in the season, when durations are relatively short. Everything else - those unspecified slots - are either full stop rest or thirty minutes to an hour of very easy work. The two HIIT sessions and the LSD session need to be spaced as far apart as possible, as these are hard workouts and require a lot of recovery.
Friel is a cyclist. The tables and workout schedules in Fast After 50 make sense for a single activity, such as cycling, but a fair amount of bending and twisting is required to apply his framework to triathlon. To put it simply, the aerobic capacity work targets energy systems used in all three sports, and since such high intensity work is safest when done on the bike, on the turbo trainer, that one workout covers it for all three sports. As the intensity drops, the targets become more sport specific. I like to schedule the LT session on the bike and the LSD session for running one week, and in the following week I reverse these. There is no way to fit in quality sessions in all three activities every week.
Friel makes a good case for why older athletes should follow this framework. I often see advice aimed at younger long course athletes to avoid HIIT work, especially the VO2MAX stuff, because a long course triathlon does not place any demands on high power in the way road racing does. Tom Cusak, the coach behind WKO5, argues that FTP can only be raised so much until the system runs out of room, and the way to make room – to raise the roof – is to raise VO2MAX.
Having followed Friel’s framework for most of a year I can say with confidence that it works great for me for overall endurance training. Now my goal is to raise my FTP. The way to do that is well understood. Spend more time at or just below FTP. It’s just a matter of time in zone. But, there is a catch. There are limits to how much work an athlete can put in, and workouts that target FTP are hard. Let’s use a week as our period. What determines how much work per week I can do?
There is one limiter that is easy to understand. Time. I work a full time job, and I have other commitments, including family time. On weekdays I can usually get in an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. Saturday mornings and all day Sunday are available. I no longer need to take the boys to soccer or baseball, although I do miss those days.
Even if I had more time to train I could not increase my training load much. There is only so much activity a body can absorb without breaking down. The older you are, the more time you must devote to recovery. Hard workouts need to be spread apart by a day or two to allow time to recover or the impact will fall below what is needed. And to be clear, the long run or ride on the weekend is hard, because long duration takes the place of high intensity.
My solution to this burning the candle at both ends dilemma is to reduce the amount of LSD work per week, and to trade off some aerobic threshold work for FTP work. I will still do a long ride on Sunday, but it will not be really long and will include some FTP work as well.
For Honu I planned to walk the run. The thing is, running is a good way to improve aerobic performance, and the body does better when there is variety in training load. So, I will be blending in some runs. At least one per week will be LT intervals. Since I have not run in awhile I will need to ease into this. I still hold onto dreams of becoming a successful runner, but, seriously, that is not in the cards for me.
Let’s not forget the swim. Until now I have followed Terry Laughlin’s Total Immersion doctrine of focusing on form and technique to minimize the energy cost of swimming. I feel as though the time has come to follow the recommendation of a swim coach I hired back when I was training for my first Honu. He said I had good form, I just needed more “oomph.” So, while I am riding hard and running hard, I will be swimming hard, too.
I have been logging the distance between the white buoys at Ala Moana and plan to use them to monitor pace. So far I have 166 yards for the first two, started at the east end, and 150 yards between the next pair. Naturally the winds, currents, and tides will cause these distances to change, but I predict not by much given this distance. Like one or two percent. Currents during the swim will have more impact. Loops will help cancel current effects.
In a program like this, I cannot stress enough the importance of diet and sleep. I will not go into that here, except to say I am good at sleeping.
I am a big fan of Dr. Stephan Seiler’s 80/20 concept. I have followed it for several years and it has served me well. However, this training block will not adhere to that balance. To raise FTP requires increasing the time spent at high intensity – the 20% – which means less time at aerobic threshold. I expect to see my weekly training hours go down, and it will be that metric that I will adjust in response to fatigue.
Any improvement in FTP will take time. I may see a jump near the beginning as I ramp up more work at this intensity, but after the first few weeks I expect progress to be slow. That’s fine. I have lots of time. I am going to devote nine weeks to this effort, three of my usual three week cycles. There is no way to know what’s next until I get to the end.