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The Eight-Week Winter Marathon, or Early Season Triathlon Training
By Kevin Moats
Kevin Moats, one of the best age group athletes in the world, recently joined the Master Amino Acid Pattern (MAP) team. Kevin has completed over 35 Ironman races and competed in Kona nearly every year from 1987 to 2004. See his full racing resume for details. In this article, Kevin shares his strategy for winter training.
There are two schools of thought regarding Ironman training in the off season -- either focus on your weakest sport(s), or get back to your roots and rebuild your strongest sport.
My preference is for the latter since, after a regime of training for all three sports, our strongest sport has a tendency to get a little ragged by the end of season. There will still be plenty of time in March to work on the other two sports before a late summer Ironman.
Running is perhaps the most honest of the three sports. There is nowhere to hide. You cannot mask your true condition due to improved technique or new equipment.
An all out 10K or marathon, especially if completed each year, will tell you what shape you are in and what you need to work on. Running is the hardest sport on your body, and as you get older (over 40) it is harder to do the necessary intensity and volume during the regular season to establish the necessary base and improve leg speed and strength.
Running also has another advantage: you can rarely use weather as an excuse for not training. You can always get through a two-hour run -- in cold, darkness, rain, sleet, or snow. One can’t say the same about the bike.
Finally, if you have a strong running base by early March, it is much easier to add back the bike because of the underlying running base.
Every winter I embark on an eight-week winter marathon training program: six weeks of training, two weeks of taper, capped off by a winter marathon.
In mid-December, I start to rebuild my run in anticipation of a late winter marathon and an early spring of 10K road races and duathlons.
The running phase is basically from mid-December through mid-February. The main goal of the winter running program is to develop running efficiency and the ability to run a faster pace with the same efficiency. Put simply, if you can run 30 seconds per mile quicker with the same heart rate or effort, you will run your Ironman marathon 13 minutes faster.
This is accomplished by three types of workouts: what I call the Long Run, the Interval Track Workout (interval/heart rate specific), and the Pace Track Workout (pace specific).
The Long Run
During triathlon season, you are usually too fatigued from the long ride the day before to run at a quality and pace that would dramatically affect your efficiency.
The ideal pace of this Long Run workout is about one minute per mile faster than your Ironman marathon. So if your Ironman marathon pace is eight minutes per mile (a 3:30 marathon), your long runs should be a seven-minute-per-mile pace.
Starting out with an hour and half run, the goal is to build up to a three hour run at a steady pace over a six week period and ideally two weeks before your winter/spring marathon. You want to finish as strong as you start and feel in control, unlike an Ironman marathon -- which has you hanging on for dear life the last ten miles.
Interval Track Workout
The main mistake with track workouts for most people is going too hard or fast. The goal with these workouts is to run as fast as comfortable, not as fast as possible. The pace of these workouts should be at your present 10K pace.
For example, if you run your 10K in 37 minutes -- a six minute per mile pace -- the intervals would be around 90 seconds per 400m. This pace should initially feel easy, but cumulatively, after 12-16 intervals, will feel difficult.
Unlike the pace intervals, in which you will have a longer rest period, you never quite recover. Your heart rate should drop to about 70 percent of your max heart rate before you start the next hard effort. The key to this workout is in the rest period. The rest period/interval between the hard "efforts" should be the length necessary for your heart rate to recover to about 70 percent.
A sample effort will be as follows:
12 X 400m with a 100-200m jog between efforts. At the end of each effort, your heart rate should be about 85-90 percent of your max heart rate. Then jog 100m or 200m -- until your heart rate drops to 70 percent of max (120-130 PR if max heart rate is 185).
You should build up to sixteen or twenty 400m's. The beauty of this workout is that the total workout, including the recovery interval, equals a 10K, so it really prepares you for both an open 10K and an international distance triathlon.
Over a six week period, you should find that your pace will naturally increase and your recovery time decrease (all indicating that you are becoming more efficient).
Pace Track Workout
This is the workout that builds your underlying speed. Unlike the previous workouts, this workout is done at your max one-mile pace and faster. Risk of injury goes up dramatically as you begin to push the envelope with regard to your speed capability. Full jogging/walking recovery is necessary between each effort.
A sample workout is as follows:
- After a one mile warm-up and another mile of striders, jog the curve and sprint the straights.
- 4 X 800m with 400m walk/jog pace will be close to your all-out one mile pace, not 10K pace.
- 4 X 400m with 200m jog/walk.
- 4 X 200m with 200 jog walk.
These 200m's will be run as fast as you can possibly go. Focus on good knee lift, stepping lightly but quickly. This is as close as you will ever get to going all out. Only try this after you have thoroughly warmed up and done the previous paced runs.
For example, if your all-out mile time is five minutes (75 seconds per 400m), this workout should be at 2 min 30 seconds or faster. Obviously you will never be running either an international distance 10K or Ironman marathon at this pace, but you will be developing running muscle efficiencies that will dramatically improve your sub-maximal running pace.
Conclusion
This eight-week winter marathon training will hold you in good stead later in the season, especially after you get off the bike after a long hot, humid, windy day in Kona. You'll know you can at least shuffle through a marathon no matter what. And who knows, you may actually be able to run it.
Articles from Kevin:
The Eight-Week Winter Marathon, or Early Season Triathlon Training - Age Group Excellence: Part 1: Running Off the Bike - Part 2: The Challenges of Kona - How to train to run 26.2 Miles after swimming 2.4 miles and bicycling 112 - The Mid-Season Break - 30 Days to Kona: Peaking/Tapering for the Big One - Kona Spring Training Camp -10 Things about Training - Winter Break and Off Season Training - Turnaround Buoy in Kona! - Lavaman Race Report
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