{"id":15478,"date":"2014-01-23T20:10:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T20:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=15478"},"modified":"2014-01-24T07:10:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T07:10:05","slug":"triathlon-training-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2014\/01\/triathlon-training-experiments\/","title":{"rendered":"Triathlon Training Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Running<\/a>

Racing<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s a funny thing triathlon training – in some ways it’s a science, in others it’s an art, but whichever way you look at it, training for a triathlon is always a continually evolving experiment.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the experiment works, everything comes together just at the right time and you peak for the race of your life. You might think that after a good year – such as the one I had last year<\/a> – you could simply check back through you training diary (you are I hope keeping a training diary aren’t you?) and simply rinse and repeat. It worked last year so it should work again right?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple, things change and training plans a need to evolve accordingly. Your race plans may be different, your goals will change, the weather will affect training in different ways this year than it did last, family, work and other life commitments may transform your ability to train. These external factors may have positive effects on your training and performance, others may be negative. The constant changes mean that every training plan needs to evolve with these changes and it therefore becomes and ever evolving experiment.<\/p>\n

Besides, if it all went so well last year then hopefully you too have evolved as an athlete. Simply doing the same again will no longer apply the same training stresses as you are no longer the same athlete. You may well be fitter and stronger than you were and therefore able to absorb more training, doing the same as last year will only see you plateau.<\/p>\n

Of course, applying more training stress will in itself be an experiment. It might work and you might go on to even greater heights. You might overdo things though and end up going downhill. Not all experiments have a good outcome after all.<\/p>\n

\"On<\/a>

Triathlon Performance<\/p><\/div>\n

The best athletes are those that are completely in tune with their bodies and intuitively know when to go hard and when to take it easy, when to apply more training stress and when to back off. They know their strengths and weaknesses and know just what to do and when to do it in order to extract the most from themselves.<\/p>\n