And So It Begins

Today is the first day of “official” Ironman training. It’s exciting, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating it since the beginning of the year. That’s when I started working on the plan, which I’ve been cobbling together from various sources. It’s mostly based on Gale Bernhardt’s Training Plans for Multisport Athletes with lots of inspiration from Matt Dixon’s The Well-Built Triathlete. It’s still a work-in-progress, but it’s reasonable and doable.

Here’s the plan for the first week:

• Monday: AM swim (1:00)
• Tuesday: AM strength/conditioning (1:15), PM run (0:30)
• Wednesday: AM swim (1:00)
• Thursday: AM strength/conditioning (1:15), PM run (0:30)
• Friday: AM swim (1:00), PM bike (1:00)
• Saturday: Run (1:00)
• Sunday: Run (1:00)

Most weeks for a while will follow this same pattern, just with different durations for the workouts, which also serve different purposes depending on where in the training cycle I am. The hardest part for me is going to be not adding too much volume. At only 9:30 this first week, it doesn’t feel like a lot. Later, when I’m doing between fifteen and eighteen hours per week, I hope not to have overdone it in the earlier weeks.

Wish me luck!