Multi Year Planning For Competitive Athletes
Many of you will have come across my podcast with Rich Roll where we took a deep dive on 1,000 day pacing.
Here’s my article introducing the concept.
1,000 day pacing applies to all areas of our lives. Today, we will focus on endurance sport. Specifically, as a tactic to get ourselves close to our ultimate potential.
Getting To The Top
For the last seasons, I have been following the progression we explained in Chapter One, How To Endurance.
My timeline has been:
First Year - Focus on Basic Fitness
Six Months - Focus on Metabolics and race ÖtillÖ World Champs
2024 Season - Build Work Capacity and race Alpe d’Huez Triathlon
Next Six Months - Build Ironman-Specific Run Capacity
Bring It All Together For Challenge Roth 2025
The above is Phase One of my return to racing. Start to finish, Phase One is 1,175 days. I’m 850 days in and enjoying the process.
In my early-30s, I went through a similar progression when I worked my way from a mid-pack Amateur (August 1999) to Ultraman Hawaii Champion (November 2002).
There are important lessons I want to pass along to you.
Solve The Monkey First
Do you enjoy doing what’s required?
A deep enjoyment of the process will speed your gains and ensure you don’t spend thousands of hours “climbing the wrong mountain.”
Do I understand what’s required?
The requires for high-performance are not what we expect.
The difficulty lies in repeating The Basic Week.
Focus on repeating YOUR week.
If you use our benchmark tests then you will see progress. But progress should not be the main driver.
The difficulty comes from…
creating a lifestyle of daily actions towards our goals, then
not getting distracted.
Remember to keep the focus on:
Enjoyment.
Consistency.
You vs. You.
It Will Take As Long As It Takes
The progression outlined in Chapter One has its own timetable.
In my case,
2-3 years to prepare for a 70.3 distance race, and
a further year to prepare for an Ironman distance race.
We can shorten those timeframes but… rushing increases the risk we lose the ability to repeat our week.
…and injuries aren’t fun.
Run Progression
Even with unlimited time, and a low stress life, biomechanical adaptations cannot be hurried.
Take time with ramping your run volume. The ability to run, consistently & pain free, does wonders for our performance.
Our run chapter gives plenty of ideas for using cross training to speed our overall development.
Off-Season Timing & Structure
You can get away without an offseason in your first year of training. Simply, let load fall naturally across your first winter of structured training. Don’t fight the seasons.
After you’ve been rolling for 18 months, it’s time to insert a “proper” offseason.
A simple template:
Once a year, 28 easy days in a row.
For a mid-year break, or to clear staleness:
14 easy days in a row.
When shedding fatigue, aim for 2 sessions of each sport per week (swim, bike, run, strength). All of these sessions are low stress. Occasionally, insert a bit of quickness. This results in 45-90 minutes a day of enjoyable exercise.
I'm wrapping up my off-season this week. My focus has been returning to a healthy baseline, getting my larger life in order and helping the people who support my athletic goals.
Recovery, taken when healthy, is more powerful than waiting for illness, injury or burnout to force downtime.
Illness-Injury-Burnout are signs we were on an unsustainable path. Learn the lesson and return at a level BELOW the breakpoint.
For your return to training, see Part One and Part Two of Season Start Up.
Life Best Fitness
How deep should you take your offseason?
This is a tough aspect of high-performance sport.
The higher we take our performance, the deeper we need to take our offseason.
The most effective time to back off, occurs when we are most tempted to push onwards.
Life best performance requires life best recovery.
When you achieve a best… you will be tempted to keep it rolling.
This is where multi-year planning can be helpful.
As you “tick the box” on each goal, keep an eye on the next step in your development.
The progression I outlined above can be seen as a series of macrocycles focused on:
Swim Performance
Overall Duration
Bike Performance
Run Durability
Ironman Performance
All the while, maintaining a balanced program.
If you are already a competitive athlete then your progression might involve working your way up the competitive tiers…
Local
Regional
National
International
World
As you achieve your goals, take time to enjoy your successes.
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