THEIR ON WALL
“I have a number of long-course finisher’s medals to my name but am failing to improve. Please relight my Ironman fire!”
Firstly, congratulations on your finishes. And rest assured it’s quite common for athletes to hit a wall. Thankfully, there are a few things you can look into…
Have a look at your results position in each discipline. Do you consistently drop places in the swim, bike or run? Focus on that area. If it’s swimming, it could be that a few video-analysis sessions would make a difference. If it’s bike or run, then including some speed and strength work would improve your efficiency.
Reflect on your goals, making them as specific and measurable as you can. It could be increasing your FTP (functional threshold power) on the bike by 10 watts by the end of June, running a sub1:50hr half marathon by the middle of May or swimming 2km in under 36mins by the start of July. You could set a goal for each or just for the discipline that you need to improve in the most. Improving each sport by 1% adds up to a lot of time over an Ironman.
Prepare for the counterintuitive. In other words, while you need to include volume to complete a long-course event, you need to work at higher intensities, too, especially if you’ve hit a plateau. There’s plenty of evidence to show that working at a higher intensity improves endurance, plus efficiency. If you always train at the same intensity, you’re missing out on valuable benefits to your training.
Strength training’s another area to work on. But it’s something that even experienced longcourse finishers avoid, which is a shame as numerous studies show improved performance when athletes supplement their training with strength sessions. Your movement patterns improve, which leads to greater efficiency and power output.
If you’re training the same way all-year round then you’ll inevitably hit a plateau. Training should progress and you should have scheduled downtime. If you don’t have a season break, then mentally and physically it can be very draining. Just as the seasons change, your training focus should change throughout the year.
Have you become stale in the structure of your season? Could you try some different types of events to complement your goals? You could include a swim run event, time trial, run event or shorter-distance triathlons/duathlons. You might learn something from doing these events that’ll help you to progress in long course.
Nutrition is key. Is there anything you can do to improve your nutrition, both in and out of training?
What you eat supports your recovery and ability to perform. You should make sure you go into sessions properly fuelled, fuel well during longer/intense sessions, and fuel after to promote muscle protein synthesis. Practise your race-day nutrition because this can have a huge impact on your race-day performance.
Have you had a bike fit? Improving your position on the bike offers the most aero gains, so getting a professional bike fit is one of the best investments you can make to improve both comfort and speed. If you don’t use aerobars or a TT bike, then this is also worth looking into. A complete aero set-up also means a streamlined tri-suit, switching from a road helmet to an aero helmet, and bagging yourself a pair of aero wheels.