I'm a newbie who's getting started.

Thanks. I'm thinking I'll do the 16 Week Sprint - 3X Balanced Program.

Great to have you here at the T-Spot!  Good luck with your training.

Thanks for the kind words, Michael. Your website is great, too!

Hey TW -

Yeah. I think completing the swimming portion of the training is going to be the most difficult. The "open swim" hours are not friendly to my class schedule. (They're like 11:30 to 1:30pm and 4pm to 6pm). I didn't even consider my attention span after working out. Thanks for the heads up. I'm also a little paranoid about finding the time to eat! Did you do the training program that had two workouts in one day? Did you split them up or do them at the same time? It think it is going to be a little more convenient for me to do them at the same time (one after the other instead of one in the morning and one in the evening.) Any drawbacks?

-Bronson

welcome bronson.  good luck with grad school and tri training...u can do it...u have a good running background and should do well.

If you are planning on doing a sprint, and with your running background, you wouldn't need to do double training sessions. Just remember to use your weekends for the long stuff, and maybe even some bricks (bike, right after swim; or run, right after bike) You will do great.

Word of caution the 16 week program should lead right up to a race, if you try and keep the last 4 weeks of the program going you might get burnt out, so make sure that you do the exercises, but also make sure you are enjoying it.

I have gotten burn out too many times and it sucks.

Thanks, Ron and J. I understand burn out big time! That is sort of why I'm doing a triathalon instead of a marathon. Sort of getting sick of running ALL THE TIME, needed some variety.

Hey Bronson. I used to live in Lakewood. Moved to ATL for grad school. I miss it a little, except for the weather. ;-)

I just started training, too. I'm not lucky enough to have the marathon experience, but I've had a lot of luck and hard workouts with the 20-week schedule. I've done many bricks now, and they're not that bad. I'm actually starting to like them.

I use the training blog on this website a little, but also put the 1st month's schedule into Excel as the "scheduled" workout and then added a column for the "ACTUAL" workout. I'm finding I'm actually exceeding the workout schedule and times (I started off with a pretty simple one). Anyways, I think it will help because I can base the schedule for the coming months by increasing the times/distances from what I'm currently doing now. Plus, it was easy to do some calculations to determine how many minutes I've exceeded my schedule. That is a great feeling!

Go bike in the Metroparks! I'm jealous. I've only found one trail so far in ATL that is even close to Metropark-style.
Good luck.
Michelle

Okay, now that's just too weird. Interesting parallels! Thanks for the post and the training advice, Michelle. We'll have to chat more. I want to hear more about Lakewood since I've only been here less than a month.