Week of February 8-14

Here is the design for the week of February 8-14.

	M	Tu	W	Th	F	Sa	Su
Swim	3000m	Off	2000m	Off	2000m	Off	Off
Bike	Off	40	Off	15	Off	30	15
Run	5	6	5	15	6	Off	8

Total distances planned for the week are swim:7000m; bike:100 miles; run: 45 miles.

The boxes shaded in red are the key workouts of the week. Since I focus slightly more on the bike this week, there are two key workouts for the bike compared to one for the swim and one for the run.The days shaded in green are where I build in my rest and recovery to get the energy to blast those key workout in red.

Monday's swim is focused on distance, with 2x1000 meter reps separated by 1 minute rest. This will be a good test of my stamina in the swim. I've come very far with the swim in January, and it's time to test it further with the 1000m reps.

Tuesday's bike is the first 40 miler on the Computrainer this year and also tests my stamina. The 30 mile ride last week gives me a lot of confidence to do this one real well.

Thursday's run will be on a hilly course and will be done in ultra style (8 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking).

Saturday returns back to the bike with 30 miles. I will be trying to push out over 210 watts over the entire distance. If I see that I cannot do that, I'll back off to about 200 watts. It's a good test to see whether I can go to the next level on the bike or not.
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Note on the design of workouts:

One of the main reasons for blogging here is to give an insight on how I design my own plans for endurance races such as triathlon and ultramarathon. This also means looking at how to make weekly designs (microcycle), monthly (mesocycle) designs, and even seasonal designs (macrocycle) to keep me focused on the overall plan.

A warning: these workouts are customed only to my races, my lifestyle, and my strengths and are intended only as a guide. If you need detailed help in tailoring your workouts, a personal coach with extensive experience will help you greatly.

The first thing to do is always, always, ALWAYS, develop your macrocycle. This makes sense, because you need to know which races you want to do well in; you need to develop your big picture first before you plan your weekly and daily activities. I will be writing an article on that on my other blog, coachjoegold.blogspot.com and should be finished by the end of the week (February 14).

The next thing to do is develop your first mesocycle. What do you aim to do in the next 4 weeks? Do you want to lose a little weight? Get some distance and volume in? Work on speed as the season approaches? Which weeks are you going to rest; which weeks will be your hardest? I will write a blog on this also, with the tentative publish date on February 21.

Once you have your mesocycle down, finally it's time to develop your day to day activites. Again, it makes sense to develop your easy and hard days (like the easy and hard weeks in your mesocycle). IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT TO BUILD IN YOUR REST EACH DAY AND EACH WEEK SO THAT YOU DO NOT OVERTRAIN. I cannot emphasize this enough. You don't want to burn out so early in the season.