Wednesday, April 7, 2010

New Ironman Training Plans - Only 5 days/wk of Training

There are a growing number of people wanting to be an "Ironman", and yet we all have busy lives, and many demands. It's difficult to find a balance between our commitments in life, work and family, with the training demands of an Ironman.

So one of the things I've been working diligently on has been a "bare-bones" training plan for Ironman. After all, I know probably better than most what it takes to be an Ironman. I've trained myself as an elite to be ready, trained Kona qualifiers, beginners, and even trained a celebrity battling weight issues to missing the cut-off in Kona by less than 4 minutes, and that's one of the toughest Ironman races in the world.

I am pretty excited to announce these new training plans, which require ONLY 5 days of training per week! In the plans, I give every Monday and Friday off for the athlete. (My next set of Ironman plans to be released will have one week day and Sunday's off!)

The plans are:
Ironman Finisher in 16 wks - ONLY 5 days/wk Training - Saturday Race
Ironman Finisher in 16 wks - ONLY 5 days/wk Training - Sunday Race
Ironman Finisher in 20 wks - ONLY 5 days/wk Training - Saturday Race
Ironman Finisher in 20 wks - ONLY 5 days/wk Training - Sunday Race

An obvious question is, "What is the real difference between 16 and 20 weeks?" The answer is the risk which must be taken in training. An extra month of preparation requires less risk in terms of ramping up the volume, in order to adequately prepare the athlete. The reason for offering two different plans is we all have different time frames we work with. The other item to determine is whether the race falls on a Saturday or Sunday, as the race week preparation will be different.

You can view these plans and more descriptions, including a graphical preview of the weekly volume, here at my featured coach page on TrainingPeaks.com. You can look for more of the same at Active.com and Active Trainer in the coming days, if that is your online training log.

Enjoy and best of luck!

Coach Vance

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