OLYMPIC-DISTANCE TRAINING PLAN

Racing Olympic distance in 2021 but short on training hours? Then follow our six-week plan for the time-crunched triathlete

Short on training time but got an Olympicdistance event coming up? You need our six-week plan

Many of us would love to live the life of a pro athlete. You can picture it now – train, eat, sleep, repeat. It’s actually a lot harder than that, of course, but it still sounds appealing. For everybody else, we need to fit our training around busy modern lives, which usually includes a home life, work life and a social life, and so often something has to give.

When you realise that you’re not paid to train and your family come first, often you need to sacrifice the amount of training you do. This shouldn’t mean giving up challenging yourself – there’s always a way to achieve your goals – but you need to be well-structured and strict with your training time.

This six-week plan to get timecrunched athletes to the finish of an Olympic triathlon is suitable for those who only have 1hr to train each weekday and a little more time on the weekend. In order to be successful on limited time you must be good at time management, be able to divide up your day and treat training sessions like appointments that can’t be missed.

Due to the fact that training can’t last too long during the week, it’s crucial to focus more on the intensity of the sessions, making them more vigorous and challenging. Racing Olympic triathlon requires you to absorb fairly high levels of effort, so the inclusion of interval and tempo sessions during the week will help get you used to that feeling of discomfort. Keeping the weekend for that one longer endurance session helps to keep the balance between covering the distance and doing it to the best of your ability.

This plan is varied but well balanced between the amount of swim, bike and run necessary. If there’s a key session not to miss it’s the multi-brick, which gets you race ready, simulates that feeling of being at your upper limit and running off the bike in order to gauge your best pace.

Always include a warm-up and cool-down. Warm-up for 5-8mins, gradually building intensity from easy to vigorous. Cool-down with 3-5mins of easy cardio followed by stretches.