Training Plan for DURING Race Season?

The training plans aren't designed to lead you up to season of racing. They're designed to lead you up to a specific A priority race. B priority races can be inserted into that training period, with a mini-taper of 3 or 4 days, followed by a resumption of the training volume called for in the plan.

So for instance, if you were using the Olympic - 2x Balanced - 20 Week plan, it's assumed that you're training for an Olympic distance race on the 4th weekend of month 5. If you wanted to do a Sprint in week 4 of month 3 you could do the following substitutions to do a short taper:

Note: Most of our training plans are volume based, so the numeric values are the length of the workout in minutes.

That could work very well. I'd pick another A race and work backward from that date. I just took a look at your training log and the volume you'll be building up towards would be manageable even with the 10% increase.

There are some that might recommend increasing the intensity of your workouts after your first race, but that's something to be decided then. You're going at slower paces (like I was when I started) and you'll get the most benefit from just putting in the time and keeping up the awesome consistency that you've maintained this month. Well done.

Hi Mike,

Me again!  (I didn't realize you're in Rochester til just now when I checked your blog; my sister is there too, she's a staff photographer for the local paper there.)

So I have 2 more weeks left in my 20 week balanced sprint training plan and my first race is May 4, and I've been thinking about what I should do in terms of training plan for the rest of the summer. 

I took a look at duplicating the incremental increases in volume on the 20 week plan, and adding that volume to each month going forward.  BUT that creates huge rides/runs/swims that I don't think I need for little sprint races.  (Like in the first month after this last month, I'll have 80+ min rides, just too much I think.)

I'm thinking maybe I'll just add a minute every week to each discipline, and back off every third week, and taper for race weeks.

I figure that's better than sitting on the couch; and I'm hoping that I'll still yield improvements.  Since it's my first year, I'm just trying to spend the time doing what I need to do; I'm not focussing on getting fast for the time being, just surviving comfortably!

Think that'll work?

Really appreciate your support!