Mark Allen's take on training

The reality is that many athletes don’t have coaches. Fortunately, there are a lot of books, websites and other resources to tap for advice. In his latest monthly newsletter, Mark Allen looks at how you should plan your training season.

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Divide your training into three basic parts: base, speed and taper.

BASE

Base training is neither high intensity nor is it low intensity. It’s working out at speeds and weekly training volumes that challenge you but that you know you can sustain, continue with for at least six weeks, and continue to build on after that. This phase can last 6-12 weeks or more. It’s a time when you gradually increase your training volume and/or training speeds as your body adapts to the training stress with improvements in fitness. The main goal here is patience. Don’t burn out. Avoid injury. Feel good, not exhausted. Look forward to your workouts. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done after each and every training session. Stay healthy. Train, recover, and train some more. It’s money in the bank for later. No big withdrawals yet. Save that for racing. These are all the mantras for your base phase.

SPEED

Speed is your testing for racing. It is higher intensity, even higher intensity than any speed you will go in a race, just for a much shorter period of time. A little goes a long way. Daily high intensity training will burn you out in about three weeks or less. Even weekly speedwork can take a toll if sustained for months on end. Four to eight weeks total in one stretch is usually the limit before fitness starts to go in the opposite direction and breakdown exceeds rebuilding.

TAPER

Tapering is the last phase leading up to big races. Here training is dropped down about 25% per week for 3-4 weeks leading up to your “A” races. It puts you in super-recovery mode and is required to bring out the true fitness that you have built. Most triathletes never see their real fitness because it is masked by residual fatigue left over from lots of great training but not fully utilized because their taper was too short. At MarkAllenOnline you start to decrease your training volume four weeks out from the biggest race on your schedule. And it works!