Reply To: How to bake in shorter triathlons

[CoachAJ]

Great feedback Jason!  Some good ideas in here and your thought process is exactly what matters.

As Jason shared, it really depends on where it fall in your build cycle.  If it on a recovery week, then just taper down, race, and then ease back into your training program.  However if the race is in the middle of a build cycles, it really comes down to how you plan for the race, execute it and recover from it.

For those of you who are new to the distance, you can race too much. I usually recommend my individual coached athletes to pick a race or two to gain the experience that Hope it looking for, as well as the half Ironman tune up race.  That said, I am creating an individual schedule for them that is incorporating these races appropriately.

And I do set boundaries for triathletes preparing for their first IM since we must achieve the periodization requirements.  If you have IM distance experience, you already have this endurance base and it is safer to add in more races.

That said, if anyone is adding them into the middle of a build cycle, it’s not my recommendation to ‘race’ it.  There is nothing wrong with doing a race as training workout if you treat the HR execution in the same manner.

Great question!