volume vs. intensity

Depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but the basic tenet is that first you go far, then you go fast, or, alternatively, if you're going to build a house, first you build a solid foundation.

A good place for anyone to start is the Triathlete's Training Bible by Joe Friel which will enlighten you on such concepts as base building and periodization. Others on here will chime in with helpful advice, Joel for instance has written a couple of mini-articles disguised as threads, like this one Still need a long run?

Edited by the bear 2006-07-21 3:13 PM

I think you're talking about Heartrate Training Zones. If you don't use a HR monitor, it doesn't much matter. Although, people will tell you could use RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) as well.

I'm like you, I've never used either for any sort of training. I have always gone by distance and / or time. It's just another tool that works for people, but I don't see it as being the end-all be-all of training methods.

Bear is right, and Friels book does a great job of explaining why.

Basically, you are training for an endurance sport, and thus need a source of fuel for hours of activity at a time. The most efficient fuel source for your body is fat, which everyone, even the thinnest of us, have a nearly unlimited supply of. In order to teach your body how to burn fat for fuel, you need to exercise at lower intensitities than you are used to. This keeps your fuel use as mostly fats, and helps up-regulate the enzymes that help convert fat to fuel.

When the time comes to add on some intensity prior to a race, you are adding those workouts on top of a solid fat-burning (ie aerobic) foundation. If you spend time building up the aerobic engine, you have a much higher platform for the anaerobic work, which is basically speed work, using diffferent fuel sources.

So you could just keep doing high intensity stuff, and you will get faster but you will hit a cieling of improvment much lower than doing low intensity stuff first.

Hope I made that clear as mud.

It was clear to me! Seriously, AdventureBear, that is the SINGLE most concise and clear explanation of the "why" I've ever read. I get it now!

I have read this information 100 times... but sometimes I just need to be told the same thing in a different way. Thanks! (Hope it helps the original poster too.)

I guess being one of those fancy college educated doctors pays off sometimes! If you find my advice useful, just send a check for $10,000 to my loan company.


I'm not one of those fancy college educated doctors

Okay, at least now I understand the principles involved. That makes it a lot clearer, thanks. The problem I have is that I've been running and doing callisthenics and whatnot for years pretty seriously, so I don't really know how much of that base I already have built. I've never really trained "for endurance" in the triathlon sense, but I've done medium distance runs and such for years. And if I do my first triathlon, it's not going to be an Iron Man or anything. I just don't want to cut back on speed/intensity in my workouts and then realize all I've done is made myself slower, e.i., tearing down the house to put a good foundation under it, and realize it was there all along (to ruin a perfectly good metaphor). The way I see it, if I'm training for a sprint triathlon then running 5 miles at 7 min/mile seems pretty reasonable, I'm running 166% of the race distance after all. It isn't like I can't run more than 100 yards so I'm trying to sprint it as fast as possible. I'm obviously unexperienced with the triathlon specific stuff, so please correct me if I'm wrong (as I probably am).

THen what you need to do next is a field test. You probably DO have some endurance base built, but you need to find out how much. The way to do that is with either a laboratory controlled test looking at either lactate threshold, VO2 max, or both.

OR, you can do a field test, which is much more accessible and repeatable.

The end result is that you will come up witha range of heart rate zones that are appropriate for your CURRENT level of fitness, and thus will not lose your edge, but continue building yoru foundation where appropriate.

When is your first race again? If it's within 2 weeks, just do what you're doing. If it's four - six weeks or more away, you have time to do the a field test, come up with some zones and at least get in a few low -intensity runs to see what it feels like.
In the long run (a few months to years), you will see a big benefit from modifying your training to your current level of fitness by followign some of these training principals.

PM your email address, and I can send you detailed directions, but they are in teh Friel book, which I think you would get a lot out of reading as well.

Thanks for the advice, I will do the field test as soon as I can get a heart monitor. My first race won't be until next season, so I have plenty (PLENTY) of time. I picked just about the worst time of year to get interested in this. I have actually ordered The Triathlete's Training Bible on Amazon and it's probably at my house right now, but I'm away from home and won't be back until mid August. I guess between now and then I'll just focus on longer workouts without entirely abandoning intensity, and do the field test in about a month and go from there. Thanks guys.

GET THE BOOK SENT TO YOU! You will devour the information in it, I promise!!!