2019 has been a much better year than 2018. I had the best performances I’ve ever had. I broke my 5km PB to a 18:12mins, Standard Duathlon under 2:04h and Olympic Triathlon under 2:20h and got my highest FTP of 234W, (247W 20mins).
In 2018 I had no structured training, my rest days were a bit too hard, I wasnt rested enough and I tried to do all I could in a week. I was burnt out and over trained. I had to take longer rest days so training volume and intensity wasnt as high as it could be with structured training.
So here are a few things I’ve changed in 2019 and with a structured plan, I was training more, resting better and actually performing better than 2018.
WEEKLY STRUCTURE
In 2018, I was deciding what I wanted to do every single day. The trouble with this is that I was likely to avoid the things I disliked doing. So I rarely did long rides or long runs since I was racing sprint distances.
In 2019, a weekly structure gave me something to do everyday. Not the exact workout, but the type of workout I needed to do. Mondays and Fridays were rest days, Tues to Thurs were hard interval days and the weekends were long rides and runs.
And because I was regularly rested, my body could adapt better and I reached a new peak performance this year. I never understood why a structured training was so important but after trying it out this year, I could say it was the best change I have ever made.
Consistency
Consistency in terms of regular training but also consistent workouts. Meaning every week I would increase the intensity by a small increment. Early in the year I decided to do 10k tempo runs in the gym and slowly upped the speed every week. I started out at 14kmh and now I can do 15.1kmh. Also I started my long runs at 16km and slowly increased to 21, 24km long runs. But that does not mean the distance will grow indefinitely: the distance will drop during the rest week, and build it up in the next 3 weeks to a longer distance than the previous build.
For the bike, I’ve been doing 2x20mins every week. Doing the same workout every week tells me exactly how I’m progressing (if my heart rate is lower with the same power numbers). But the drawback is that I avoided the rest of the cycling zones, I hardly ever trained in Zone 5 and above. But my target race was a 40km ride, so I needed a solid threshold rather than a powerful sprint. Perhaps now in the off season, I can start doing VO2 & sprint sets on the bike.
Loosing Weight
If you have read my loosing weight blog, I have lost 4-5kg since last year. I have been tracking the mass of my lunch and dinner and found a sweet spot (400g -450g) of food to loose weight slowly and consistently. At race weight, I was 56 -57kg.
But loosing weight is gonna be a problem during the off season as I’m eating more rubbish food now heheh. Since I know how to loose weight, I will change my eating routine as race season comes again.
Long Runs and Rides
In 2018, I hardly did any long rides or runs because I didnt enjoy them. Especially doing long runs was so boring doing it myself. So this year I would do a long ride on Sat and a run on Sun. I began doing my long runs on the track because I could track my heart rate and pace better over many long runs. And over time, my average heart rate dropped while my average pace got faster. That’s a great sign of improved aerobic capacity and running economy.
In 2019, I learnt about how doing your long runs can benefit you in a way that short intervals cannot. In summary, long rides/ runs improve your mitochondria density, improves your zone 2 efficiency and strengthens your aerobic system. How important are long runs? They say that if you have time for only one run in the week, it’s gotta be a long run.
Now here are some things I could still work on:
Strength and conditioning
They say to get the most performance in your season, it’s recommended to do strength sessions 3x a week in the off season and 1x a week in the season. But I was too lazy to do strength in the season and focused on the actual workouts. If I was at home, I wouldn’t travel all the way to school just for a half an hour gym session.
So this year I bought a barbell, bench and a few weights so I could do my strength at home. And I hope in the off season I can make these strength sessions a routine and not skip strength sessions. I will link my gym routine here. Studies have shown that performance can improve up to 17% by doing strength training, more so in older people.
Mesocycle
Another thing I could work on in 2020 is my mesocycle, which is the monthly train-rest cycle. This year I tried to do a 3 week hard, 1 week rest cycle. It didnt really go so well because my 3rd hard week would often have failed workouts. (Due to the fatigued built up from the last 2 weeks) So perhaps I can try doing 2 weeks hard, 1 week easy next year. Or doing the first 2 of 3 hard weeks easier, so I could have good workouts on the 3rd hard week.
Brick
I never really believed brick would be that helpful in a triathlon. I thought I would focus on the specific sport during training and that’ll be good enough. But after Singapore Triathlon, I knew that bricks was something I had to do now. I felt good in the first 5k off the bike. 10km was no problem during training, but off the bike, I was suffering the last 5k on the run. I needed to bricks of at least 6km and if I’m doing a half Ironman, perhaps a 10 to 14km brick run at race pace. So that’s something I gotta plan going into race season next year.
Rest week training
I used to think rest week was 60% volume and intensity of the hard week. But I quickly found out that a rest week should not have any intervals at all, after still being fatigued during my “rest” week. So instead, I learnt that ALL workouts have to be at super easy pace.
So a typical rest week would be easy from monday to friday and carry on with a long ride and run on the weekend at usual zone 2 pace.
Base
My season started early this year in January where the first SEA Games qualifiers were held. So my base building was non existent this year. Even after the qualifying race in Jan, I carried on training for Metasprint and the next SEA Games qualifying race in April.
That means I had lacked the aerobic gains that a good 3 month ish base period would have given me. So next year I would take Nov 2019 to Feb 2020 as the Base period and March and April will be specific half Ironman training.
The base period is where we can strengthen our weakness too. More swimming running drills, high end speed workout (sprints & VO2 Max), gym work and lots of easy zone 2 work for them aerobic gains.
Build
The build phase is when the workouts look more and more like the race. Every week you supposed to increase your intensity or duration a little bit more than the previous week. But I never knew exactly how much to increase by. It was a lot of trial and error for me this year and I sort of found out what my body can and cannot do.
For example, I tried doing a 30km long run. It felt okay during the run but the next 4 days I couldn’t hit any hard workouts. After a few trial and errors, my long runs range from 18 to 24km, and 16km on a rest week.
As for running, the key workout was 1.2k or 1.6k repeats at 3:35pace. When I try to do 3:30pace, I couldn’t complete the workout. So even a 5s per k difference is too significant of an increase. So next year I can try doing 3:30pace for 1k reps and slowly build the distance to 1.2k reps.
For the bike threshold workout, I should increase the duration to 45mins/ 1hr or even 90mins at LT1 because right now I’m only doing 40mins of threshold work on the bike. So if I can increase the duration spent at threshold intensity, my cycling would definitely improve by a whole lot.
Going into 2020, I’m much more experienced to plan a better season and weekly structure. And I should be able to reach new peaks with a better base, training build, strength training, a better rest cycle and more brick runs. Thanks for reading up till here! I know its a long one so thanks for sticking around!
Aaroiseverything 