Your Ironman Year

The Basics

In 2003, Joe Friel and I wrote the book on training for long-distance triathlon. The book (updated in 2009) remains available and I recommend it to you, particularly the key workouts and case studies.

Over the next year, as I prepare for Challenge Roth, I’m going to update my writing. For a rough idea of the road ahead, refer to this post I previously shared.

The table of contents from the Second Edition of Going Long. For a road map of the journey to come please see this post on X.

Before we look forward, let’s look back at what you should have accomplished over the last few years:

• You’re able to swim relaxed freestyle and you’ve completed workouts up to 4,000 meters duration.

• You’ve completed running races at 5 km, 10 km and Half Marathon distances. You do not need to have completed a marathon, but you do need to have been injury free for the last 12 months and have been running 3-4x weekly.

• You’ve completed triathlon events ranging from sprint distance to 70.3 distance.

• You’ve ridden a number of century rides (100 miles, or more).

If you have completed a ironman-distance race in the last season then all the better. Gather your average pace, power and heart rate data from that race, it’s going to come in handy.

To set your year up, we’re going to focus on a series of topics. These apply to everyone from novices through to elites.

• Planning Your Season

• Choosing Your Event

• Supporting Races & Events

• Training Camps

• LT1, For Real

• Training Targets

• Heat & Altitude

The spark to write this chapter came from a speedy buddy of mine. He’s been racing since the dawn of triathlon and qualifies (whenever he wants) for World Champs.