My lovely friends on the high school swim team often claimed that their sport was the toughest in existence. My cross country friends, however, would retort with something along the lines of, “Last time I checked there are no hills in swimming.” (They’re both wrong. Cycling is the hardest).
As a member of both swim and cross country teams, it appeared to me that toughness was something more reflective of your own volition. Long distance running and swimming were only as taxing as you were willing to make them. In the same vein, the differing levels of toughness within the various triathlon distance is largely up to you.
Many like to call the full iron distance triathlon the hardest competition ever created. And yes, it is exceptionally difficult. But in all honesty, I’ve experienced much higher intensity levels of pain racing Sprint and Olympic triathlons, sometimes for even longer durations of time comparatively. Of course, that’s not always the case.
Regardless of which race brings the most pain, the obvious reason for the differing degrees in suffering is because to effectively race and train at one distance over another means you should be working on different ends of the aerobic vs. anaerobic scale. And due to these differences in racing strategy, this should also affect how you train for each.
So how does triathlon training differ for sprint, Olympic, half, and full Ironman? Let’s explore.
Stamina and Power Threshold Training
As mentioned in many of my other posts, stamina is a percentage of your power threshold pace for a specific duration of time. Because duration required to complete the distance is going to dramatically change for each type of race, so will your stamina and power training.
For example, if you’re training for a sprint triathlon and many if not all of the expected disciplines are forecasted to take less than an hour each, then theoretically you should be pushing at near or even at 100 percent of your one-hour power threshold capacity for each. Due to this truth, which aspect of your training do you think will require the most attention? The stamina training or the power threshold training?
In fact, depending on your experience, training availability, and overall fitness, you may not take part in much stamina training at all in preparation for a sprint or Olympic. The longer the race distance gets, however, the more time you’ll need to spend on stamina training.
One reminder: your fitness level (or, in other words, your TriDot score) will determine how early your stamina training will need to begin before your A race regardless of the distance. For instance, if you’re 20 weeks out from a full Ironman triathlon, an elite athlete may want to continue power threshold training for 12-14 weeks and reserve the last 6-8 for some serious stamina training. A novice, however, will want to only power threshold train for perhaps 6 more weeks and then use the next 14 to build the much-needed stamina to finish.
The reason for this difference is that a super fit athlete will gain stamina considerably faster than a newbie (not to mention their overall volume is probably already higher anyway). Stronger athletes also recover faster and, thus, will need less tapering time than the less experienced triathlete.
But now that we’ve mentioned tapering…
Taper Time
The higher your training volume has been leading up to your race, the longer the taper time will be for effective recovery. Therefore, because longer races require higher volume training, more taper time will be needed. This goes for average Joes and elites.
A good rule of thumb is that sprint triathlons typically require a one-week taper. Olympic distances are one to two. Half iron is usually two weeks while full iron is two to three.
Although these are only generalizations, work with your coach to find the ideal taper time for your triathlon distance.
Nutrition Differences
The body’s need for nutrients goes up exponentially as duration increases. For this reason, you may require considerably less calories and sodium per hour for a sprint triathlon by comparison to the per-hour requirement during a full Ironman.
Because of this, you’ll want to incorporate how you’ll be nutritioning in the race during training. That means not consuming calories the way an Ironman athlete would if your sights are set on a sprint or Olympic. Remember that you’ll be performing on a different side of the aerobic vs. anaerobic scale and the body handles food differently depending on how hard you’re pushing.
I’ve been to a lot of sprint and Olympic triathlons and I never fail to see a few folks with three bottles and a circus parade of gels taped to their bike. Experts tell us that the body already has a gas tank that can work solidly for about two hours. Not to mention we’re trying to go fast right? Consequently, we should be striving to consume the least amount of food that we can get away with without hindering performance.
Of course, as with everything in triathlon there are always exceptions to the rule. “Know thyself” is as true here as it is with everything else. Once again, train before you race. Never go into competition attempting something new and novel.
TRIDOT TAKEAWAY:
Your training for sprint, Olympic, or full Ironman triathlons should look different. Depending on the distance, you should consider altering your stamina and power threshold training, your tapering time, and your nutrition training.
TALK WITH TRIDOT:
Do you train differently depending on the distance you’re focusing on? In what ways do you change it up for short triathlons vs. long course?
