subject: Training For Your First Triathlon [print this page] If you are looking for a way to work out your entire body, while pushing toward a goal that will keep you motivated and working hard, try training for a triathlon! This is a great way to reach your goals, while trying something new and exciting.
The first think you need to do is learn how to train successfully. You can either try to race with an engine the size of a lawnmower, or you can build your engine up with a good base so that you are racing with a huge-turbo charged jet engine.
There are many factors that will influence your racing. Nutrition, tapering, speed work, rest, and mindset are some of them.
But the biggest physical factor is the base you build in the beginning of the season. A good base period when you develop your body's ability to burn stored fat for fuel is what determines the size of the internal engine that the other things have to work with.
A well-designed base period enables you to take good nutrition, speed work, rest, and positive thoughts, and transform them into your best race possible. The choice is yours.
The catch is that most people do not have the patience to build a base correctly. The reason is that for the first twelve weeks or so of your season, you will have to strap on a heart rate monitor and put your ego aside.
Your heart rate monitor will tell you when you are working with a heart rate that is fat burning. These are in the lower training zones well below your maximum heart rate.
The higher heart rates are anaerobic and shouldn't come until your base has been built. The reason is that the improvement you can get in performance from developing your aerobic fat burning system is huge, compared to the improvement in performance you can get from doing the high-end anaerobic carbohydrate burning workouts.
Our bodies cannot develop both systems very well at the same time. Which means that to build a base properly, an athlete has to have the patience to work the aerobic system exclusively for a huge block of time.
Here is the formula for finding the perfect heart rate for your training. Take the number one hundred and eighty and subtract your age.
Take this number and subtract five beats if you do not regularly workout. If you do workout one to two days per week, only subtract two to three beats.
If you workout more than this, keep your number where it is. If you workout seven or more times per week, add five beats to this number.
If you are over about 55 years old or younger than about 25 years old, add another five beats to whatever number you now have. The number you now have is the upper heart rate limit that you can work out at, and still develop your aerobic system.
This will build the size of your engine. Now back to the catch.
In the beginning of the season just about everyone will have lost a lot of their aerobic base, especially if in the season before you did little aerobic and mostly anaerobic training. What this means in your workouts is that you have very little ability to burn fat as a source of fuel for exercise, and your heart rate will jump up very high at a relatively slow pace in an attempt to kick your metabolism into carbohydrate burning.
This is where most athletes do not have the patience to stick with the aerobic training. You may have to slow down several minutes per mile from your normal everyday training pace just to keep your heart rate from going above the aerobic maximum.
For the next ten to twelve weeks, do exclusively aerobic workouts. Give yourself five to fifteen minutes to warm up, slowly elevating your heart rate as you go.
Do every single workout in the eighty percent range. Endurance days, moderate length days, hilly days-keep all of them the same.
No cheating. No going over just a little in each workout.
Walk the hills. Put the chain in a smaller gear.
Do whatever it takes to keep from going over your maximum number. Once your base has been built you will have plenty of opportunity to work in the more "painful" heart rates.
If you are careful and deliberate with this, no matter if you are running, swimming, or biking, you will be ready for your triathlon in no time. Now get out there and train!
