26-week training plan advice

guest — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:04:20 GMT

Q. I want to follow your 26-week training plan for my Ironman event from your book “T[raining Plans for Multisport Athletes|http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931382921?ie=UTF8&tag=galebernhardt-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1931382921].” I do have a few questions, if you have a few moments to answer. I understand if you’re buried and can’t answer all individual training questions for people that read your books and columns.

Basically, I am trying to set up a nice schedule for a day to day routine, like you have outlined in your book. I like to be able to associate dates to particular workouts so that I can mindlessly go about other things. I have this set up in Excel (because I don’t see an online version of the 26-week plan) and was just curious about how I can adjust a few things. The largest issue currently is due to some family circumstances (a death), and some personal issues. I should be in my second week of training; but I am not. Is there any way to reconcile that?

Also, how can I snowboard and ski all winter and still train for an Ironman!? (I’m LOL, but serious too…)

Signed,

Want my cake and eat it too

A. Hey dessert person, the short answer about questions is I will answer e-mail questions if I have time and most of the time they become blog or newsletter columns (like this one). Once I have to start looking at the details of anyone’s training plan, then I charge a consulting fee or I will look at them as I have time – which can be one to six weeks out depending on what I have going on at the moment the question comes to me. The lucky ones hit me at a low workload time and can get more detailed questions answered quickly.

#1 - For you, the easy answer is to take a look at either the 13-weeks to a 13-hour Ironman or the 13-weeks to a sub-13-hour Ironman training plan (both available in the easy-to-use electronic format as well as the book). You need to already be doing the volumes shown in the first week of the training plan and have had a rest week prior to beginning week 1 of either plan. That’s where you want to be going the few weeks before your big race.

#2 - The second step is evaluating honestly where are you “now” (now can be literally now, or in a few weeks when you work your way through the family and personal issues). Begin the 26-week plan at the point where you are “now”. (I don't have the 26-week plan loaded onto Active Trainer yet, so you'll have to use your own Excel spreadsheet for now.) This likely means starting at Week #1.

#3 - You can use the 13-weeks to a sub-13 plan for the last 13 weeks before the race or use the last 13 weeks of the 26-week plan. Either way, you’ll need to chop out a portion of the 26-week plan – probably taken out of the middle.

Yes, you can still do some boarding this winter – just be sure you can do #1.

Hope that helps.

Gale

Blog Posts From Active Expert: Gale Bernhardt Tagged With triathlon_coaching

26-week training plan advice