As I pull myself out of what felt like a long offseason and slowly get the wheels turning again, I am looking to do a bit more planning than I usually do heading into the season. Generally, I don’t have a real plan heading into a season. While I am a firm believer in “going by feel”, I’ve decided to put a couple of early-season hours in to better define what I want out of my year and hopefully give myself a broad timeline for the goals that I am looking to achieve.
While tapering for Ironman Lake Tahoe, I read Joe Friel’s Triathlete’s Training Bible in its entirety. Coaches have their own training philosophy and, although I’m not well versed on too many different approaches, I have found Friel’s to be relatively middle of the road with no real surprises or variations from what I am used to seeing in a training plan.
Part of Friel’s plan includes goal setting before you even begin to think about serious training. Part of this is mapping out your “A-priority” races, or those in which you really want to perform at your peak. For me, there are two such events: the Door County Triathlon (sprint and half-iron) and then Ironman Wisconsin as redemption for the misfortune in Tahoe. I imagine I am similar to most triathletes in that every time I get on the start line, I am going for the win. So this is not to say that any other races that I do throughout the year will be half-assed. But rather, my training plan will be constructed around those two events with other races playing an equally important part in experience and benchmarking my fitness.
After deciding what will be my primary focus events, it turned to what is going to make me most successful in those events. I base these goals off of both concrete results from last year (Door County Triathlon) as well as abstract expectations based on previous levels of fitness (Ironman Wisconsin).
The goals are split into three parts. First, the overarching goal that will most likely manifest in a race. The most important thing for these goals is that they focus on what athletes can control themselves. To make a goal of “winning __________ race” is not ideal because you never know if some world champion will show up to your small-town event for a tune-up and blow away all competition. The way to get around this is to set yourself a (realistic) time goal that will most likely set up you near the top of the podium. In my case, seven seconds faster on my 5k run at the Door County Sprint Triathlon last year would have given me the overall win. So if I set a goal to cut one minute off my run time at the same event, I’m setting myself up pretty well in competing for the top spot (provided the swim and bike don’t suffer too much)
Second are your limiters. Otherwise stated as, “what is making this difficult for you?” Without getting too far into Friel’s different aspects of fitness, there are only a few general types of fitness to improve upon. If you are struggling to run 5 minute miles for a 5k, then you probably shouldn’t be running 100-mile weeks at an 8 minute pace. You need speedwork. Discover what is preventing you from achieving your goals (speed, strength, endurance are the key players) and address those in training.
The final part of Friel’s goal-setting is setting objectives to achieve your goal. These should be smaller achievements that will funnel you into accomplishing your goal. While most of your objectives will be things to do in training, I always like to include a fun milestone that will still benefit your broader goal. In my case, I have a goal of breaking a 17:00 5k in the Door County Triathlon. But I have also always wanted to run a sub-5 minute mile (current PR=5:02). So one of my objectives is to run a sub-5 minute mile in training. My limiter for the goal is speed and achieving a sub-5 minute mile requires lots of speed, so the two align smoothly.
Goals, like everything in training, should be malleable and allow for adjustments throughout the season. Perhaps in two months I find that all my strength training has made a 6-hour bike in Ironman Wisconsin too realistic to be honestly challenging. I can change my goal in order to keep things tough but reachable.
Below, you will find my layout of the goals, limiters and objectives that I have set for 2015. Now it’s time for execution.
1) Goal: Run a 17:00 minute 5k at the Door County Triathlon
Limiter: Speed skills, anaerobic endurance
Training Objectives:
- Run a sub 5-minute mile by April
- Practice run technique at least once a week
- Complete 5×1 mile repeats at 5:15 pace by March
2) Goal: Break 6-hour bike in Ironman Wisconsin
Limiter: Endurance, Muscular Endurance
Training Objectives:
- Bike two centuries per week starting in June (pending DoCo sprint-distance readiness)
- Go to one group ride per week when they start in the summer
- Increase muscular strength in the weight room with lunges, single leg squats, etc. (current base numbers are TBD)
3) Goal: Break 29:00 minutes in the Door County Half-Iron Swim
Limiter: Speed Skills, Muscular Endurance
Training Objectives:
- Break 1:00 minute in a 100y time trial by June
- Devote one entire swim set to technique and drills
- Complete 10×100 on the 1:20 by the end of March
- Complete a 1000y time trial in 13:00
4) Goal: Don’t miss more than two planned workouts in a week
Limiter: Unexpected writing articles, avoiding burnout
Training Objectives:
- Be realistic in the amount of workouts you can do before each week
- Build a schedule with designated workout times that you know will not be interfered with
- Foam roll/stretch 5x a week
