- You're a couple of weeks
into training for your first triathlon.
You're over the toughest hurdle, the starting.
Now it's time to start progressing your training slightly.
Here is part two
of our How to Train for Your First Triathlon series.
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- Now that you've been in the pool a few times
over the last couple of weeks,
hopefully you've started to find your feel for the water
and you've started to get the hang of your technique.
- But, don't worry.
Swimming is a very technical sport,
as we've mentioned before, so don't panic
if you're not progressing as fast
as you are in some of the other disciplines.
Swimming can take some time,
so be patient and remember,
you can get feedback and advice
from other swimmers and club coaches.
- Providing you're ready to,
we can start bumping the distances of our swimming up
just ever so slightly.
This doesn't have to be the overall distance,
but more the length of the reps within the session.
The idea being, that we get you to a point
of comfortably covering the triathlon swim distance
all in one go.
- You should still aim to complete two swims per week,
but now up the duration to 40 to 45 minutes
if you're ready.
An example progression would be something like this:
warmup with 100 front crawl, 100 metres of kick,
and then 100 metres pull,
and for the main set, it's four lots of 200 metres
and then a cool down with 100 pull
and 100 choice swim of any stroke.
That then gives you a total of 1300 metres,
and take a comfortable 20 to 40 seconds rest
between all of the reps.
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- Similarly to the swims,
you have a couple of weeks cycling under your belt now,
so you should be ready to progress the duration slightly.
Try to maintain your two rides per week,
but don't increase the durations too much at once.
Try to progress it to around 75 minutes in your third week,
and then up to 80 minutes in your fourth week.
Admittedly, not all of us have 75 to 80 minutes of time
to devote to cycling during the week
when we're trying to balance our busy family and work lives,
but you can make a more manageable,
shorter duration during the week,
and then when you've got more time
on the weekend, or on a day off,
you can fit your longer ride in then.
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- Equally, an indoor trainer
can be really useful in this instance.
If you're lucky enough to have an indoor trainer at home,
you can fit bike sessions in before and after work,
typically when there's less light on the roads.
But of course, you can go to your local gym
and use a static bike,
or you could join a spin class for that added motivation.
- And it may not work for everyone,
but another good option is to cycle in to work
so you can use your commute
as a training ride once or twice per week.
But obviously,
if you're just doing a sprint distance triathlon,
then you don't need to increase your duration
that much more.
- Now that you've improved your confidence on the bike
and you're increasing the durations of your rides,
it's time to start thinking about fueling
whilst training.
I'm not just talking about before and after training,
that's important,
but fueling whilst you're training is just as important.
But, for many people, the idea of removing your hands
to take fluid on, food on, or a gel on
whilst you're cycling is quite a scary idea.
- A good place to start is indoors
on the turbo trainer or a static bike,
but when you do head outside, start it off bit by bit.
To start with, take your hand off a little bit,
then reach down towards your bottle cage,
towards your back pocket, and so on.
- This is really important prep for your triathlon.
Being able to fuel during the event
will allow you to maintain your energy levels,
which in turn will improve your performance
and make the whole event far more pleasurable.
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- Then, we want to start progressing the running
in a similar way.
If you've started out with short runs within a walk,
then just start increasing the length of those runs
ever so slightly.
But if you're already doing sustained runs,
then you want to push them up
to around something like 38 to 40 minutes
in the third week,
and up to something like 40 to 45 minutes
in the fourth week.
- Remember, just keep it all easy and aerobic for now,
and continue aiming to run twice per week.
And if you're not ready
for this distance or duration just yet,
that's fine, just stick with where you're at
and then aim to increase that by 10%.
- Yes, we've mentioned it time and time again,
don't over-stretch yourself.
Increasing your training in small increments
will allow you to remain consistent with your training,
which without a doubt has the best end result.
- With all of this,
you're likely to be feeling quite tired
and that's perfectly normal.
Make sure you don't underestimate the training effect
and how tired it can actually make you.
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Recovery is important too.
Recovery allows your body time
to adapt to the training that you've actually done.
This means fueling well, getting plenty of sleep,
doing some stretches, and factoring in recovery days.
- And don't forget enjoying yourself.
To see more videos from GTN, you can click on the globe
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To see what this series is all about,
just click down here to see our intro video,
and to see weeks one and two of this series in part one,
just click down here.