The premier magazine devoted to the increasingly popular triple-event sport presents the proven, definitive guide to boosting your fitness and getting that extra edge to do your best. Triathlete Magazine's Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide offers 42 complete training plans for every variety of triathlete, from absolute beginner to elite veteran, for every distance from sprints to Ironman.

Get set to discover:

• How to balance and vary your workouts for peak performance
• The six intensity levels, from recovery (the slowest pace) to speed (the fastest
• Why tune-up races make the best workouts
• Why rest is more important for the veteran than the beginner
• What makes swim workouts different from bike and run workouts
• How to maximize your strength in minimum time.

Chapter 1

This book is not like a novel, which you need to read from start to finish, without skipping anything. It's more like a big recipe book that you can and should use one recipe at a time. There are 40 complete training plans (plus a pair of off-season training plans) in these pages, at least one of which is a good fit for you today, given your current fitness level, schedule, and event goals. But of course you can't follow multiple training plans simultaneously. So the way to use this book is to choose the best plan for you, complete it, and then pick another, and so on.

This chapter, however, is required reading. Its purpose is to give you the information you'll need to choose the right training plans to follow and to get the most out of them. First I'd like to explain the key features shared by all of the plans in this book. Understanding the rationale behind each of these key features will help you assume greater control over your training. In my experience, triathletes train with more motivation and discipline, and therefore get better results, when they truly understand and believe in their system of training.

Key Training Plan Features

There are six key features of the training plans presented in this book that you should understand before you begin using them.

Balance

Each plan has a more or less even balance in the number of swim, bike, and run workouts scheduled every week. (Note that bike and run workouts are sometimes combined into "brick" workouts.) Most agegroup triathletes tend to do more workouts in their favorite discipline, which is almost always their strongest discipline. This is not the best way to improve as a triathlete, because you have the greatest potential for improvement in your weakest discipline, so it makes no sense to marginalize it.

On the other hand, some coaches advise triathletes to do the greatest number of workouts in their weakest discipline, precisely because it offers the greatest opportunity for improvement. I see nothing wrong with maintaining this sort of strategic imbalance for short periods of time, but in the long term triathletes who take this approach tend to lose fitness in their strongest discipline, which is also undesirable. By doing a roughly equal number of workouts in all three disciplines you get something close to the best of both worlds: You get stronger in each discipline and weaker in none.

There's an exception in some of my middle-level half-Ironman and Ironman training plans, which include three swim workouts versus four bike and four run workouts in a typical week. At these longer race distances the swim leg is proportionally shorter than the bike and the run legs as compared to shorter race distances. Triathletes who are trying to keep their total training volume relatively moderate in preparing for longer races can't do four workouts per week in each discipline. One of them has to give, and it makes the most sense that it's swimming.

Variation

One of the most common problems in the training of self-coached triathletes is a lack of variation in their workouts. They fall into a rut of doing basically the same few workouts over and over. But you'll get fitter faster if you challenge your body in a variety of different ways in your swimming, cycling, and running workouts. Each of the training plans in this program incorporates a diversity of workout types, which you'll learn about in the next chapter.

Three Phases

Each training plan is divided into three phases. First is the base phase. It features a gradually increasing volume of primarily moderateintensity training to build aerobic fitness and endurance, limit the likelihood of injuries, and prepare your body for the tougher training to follow in the second phase of training-the build phase. It also includes judicious doses of high-intensity training to develop sportspecific strength and power and prepare your body for the highintensity workouts of the build phase.

The challenging, high-intensity workouts added in the build phase increase your aerobic fitness and enhance your ability to resist fatigue at higher speeds of swimming, cycling, and running.

The final phase is the peak phase. In this phase the top training priority is workouts that are highly race-specific in their demands. The two main types of race-specific workouts are long swims, rides, runs, and brick workouts that prepare you to go the full distance on race day and somewhat shorter workouts performed at or near race intensity. The final week to two weeks of the peak phase is a "taper" period, in which your training load is steadily reduced to leave you rested and ready for maximum performance on race day.

Step Cycles

Step cycles are four-week blocks of training in which the second week is more challenging than the first, the third week is more challenging than the second, and the fourth week is a recovery week, in which training volume is reduced 10 to 20 percent. Training in step cycles is much better than training with less week-to-week variation in training volume. The incremental training increases in the first three weeks ensure that your fitness moves in a positive direction with minimal risk of injury or exhaustion. The recovery weeks taken every fourth week allow your body to fully absorb recent training and prepare for still more challenging training in the weeks to come.

One Rest Day per Week

Every single training plan in this book has one scheduled day of complete rest per week, from the Level 1 sprint plan all the way up to the Level 10 Ironman plan. Why? Because even if you're a noncompetitive beginner who plans to do only one short triathlon, you should exercise six days a week, for the sake of your health if not your performance. And even if you're a world-class veteran triathlete capable of handling the most punishing workout schedule, you'll still benefit from regularly scheduled rest as much as anyone else-maybe more than anyone else.

Copyright © 2006 by Triathlete Magazine

Tags: Exercise and Fitness, Running

About the Author

Matt Fitzgerald, runner, triathlete, and coach, is a former editor and current contributor for Triathlete magazine. He writes articles for such national publications as Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Outside, Fitness Runner, and the Runner's World Web site, and serves as managing editor of the sports nutrition Web site, Pioneering Muscles.