Episode 5: Lessons From 2023

2023 was a big year for us! In this episode, we cover many of the lessons we learned from training and coaching. Topics include: strength training, mental health, how to get the most from the trainer, supplementation, fueling, Norwegian training, diverting injuries before they happen, and more! We also introduce a new segment—gear pick of the week—and reveal Katie’s 2024 A race and Jim’s vision for her training plan.

Extended show notes:

We just celebrated Christmas. Katie, what did Santa bring you?

  • Katie: Race registration! Signed up for 2024 “A” Race — Sea to Summit.

  • Sea to Summit Triathlon is a 1.2 mile swim near Atlantic in Maine; 95 mile bike with 6K elevation; 5 mile run/hike up Mt. Washington with almost 4,500 feet of vertical

Question for Katie: Why this race? Three reasons:

  • Life schedule: I have a busy year with 5 weddings and 3 graduations; don’t want the pressure of an IRONMAN (IM). Also don’t recommend doing IRONMAN every single year. I want to train a lot, but not at the same level as IM, and I know there will be many weekends in the spring where I can’t follow a perfect training schedule.

  • Terrain: this race replicates my favorite terrain, making it easy to train and prepare.

  • Preferences and goals: I’m not a huge swimming fan; really like biking; and love trail running / want to get better at it.

Question for Jim: What is your vision for the Sea to Summit training plan?

  • With any athlete and event, we start by discussing your race goals, what time you want to commit to training, where you will be located during various training blocks, work travel, any particular strengths or weaknesses you want to target. This is a partnership and negotiation between coach and athlete.

The following is a high level overview of Katie’s Sea to Summit training plan that can also be adapted for Ironman and even Half Ironman training:

  • January: Easy and tempo Zwift trainer rides. Base runs with 20” - 30” pickups. Winter hiking. Maybe 1-2X per week, easy swimming.

  • February: Z2/tempo/short threshold Zwift trainer rides, increase run intervals to 1’ - 2’ at threshold / 10K and 5K pace. 2X per week swim, some technical 50’s, speed and strength with paddles & buoy. (Our favorite is 4 x 200 Paddles & Buoy at the end of many swim workouts.)

  • March: Z2/tempo/neuromuscular (10” - 20” at 150% FTP) and Anaerobic Capacity (20” - 40” at 120-125% FTP). FTP = Functional Threshold Power i.e., what watts or effort you can maintain for an hour. Your hour power. Long rides outside if the weather starts to warm, run hill intervals, more short threshold running. 2X -3X per week swims.

  • April: Z2/tempo/Sweet Spot (~90% FTP) during week, long ride on weekends, more hill run intervals for strength, speed and work upper aerobic range. Sea to Summit is an aerobic threshold test for the entire hike. 3X per week swims - 1 mixed, 1 speed, 1 strength.

  • May: 3 - 4 hour weekend rides, run is similar to April, 3X per week swims - 1 mixed, 1 speed, 1 strength.

  • June: 4 - 5 hour weekend rides, focus on hiking, getting vertical gain on hikes, weighted carries with 10% body weight up steep hills or hiking, some road running. 3X per week swims (mixed, speed and distance in open water). We will do a Race Simulation 8 weeks out from race day on similar terrain as the course. This can be Open Water Swim, long hilly ride and end up hiking a smaller mountain with some weight.

  • July: Initially 1-2 4 - 5 hour weekend rides - goal is to race 100 miles at ~80% of FTP. 10’, 20’ & 30’ bike intervals at 80 - 85% FTP, hiking with vertical focus and weighted carries, some road running, 3X per week swims (mixed, speed and distance in open water). For the Race Simulation 4 weeks out, we will aim to hike up Washington and after a long bike ride on part of the course. Taper in the final 2 weeks before race day.

Thinking ahead to 2024, we also want to think back to some lessons in 2023 that we learned from both coaching and training.

Jim’s training lessons:

  • Strength training: I looked in the gym mirror and saw a skinny, weak endurance athlete who couldn’t lift half of what was recommended by strength experts for my age. Time to finally lift! I started very conservatively, learning how to move with weight, technique is very important. From there, I progressed to heavier weights and now I’m lifting 4X per week with fairly heavy weight. My goal is to really challenge my motor units - that’s necessary to really build strength.

    • As mentioned in the last podcast, I’m focusing on compound movements - bench press, squat, pullups, shoulder press. Throw in a lot of back extension, calf raises, lat pulls.

    • Question for Katie - you got serious about strength last winter, too?

      • YES! Worked with a strength trainer for a couple of months to establish a routine. Now lifting 2-3x per week; still not completely comfortable with really heavy weights but have developed a strength routine that works really well for me and prevents injuries. A lot of single leg work, band work, plyometrics, etc. Hoping to do more heavy weights in the next 1-2 months.

  • Mental health: Like many anxious, type A, high achieving, tightly wound triathletes, I’ve primarily always managed my mental health via exercise. I view this as a scale with physical on one side and mental on the other. Throughout the day, weight i.e., anxiety tends to pile up on the mental side, pushing the scale out of balance. By doing workouts, I add to the physical side of the scale and shave off some grams on the mental side to keep the scale balanced. But while that works for me most of the time, sometimes it does not work! I realized I may need to have other methods to deal with anxiety than just working out. For me the solution was being aware and conscious to carve out more time and awareness to balance out my scale.

    • Katie: I agree that exercise as a coping mechanism doesn’t always work. Getting injured is one area here that can really throw people, so it helps to have other mechanisms of mental health support before exercise is forcibly taken away. On my part, I’ve identified that a lot of it is about being outside with people I love rather than actually needing to exercise. I’d pick a day on a porch in VT over a treadmill run in the city for mental health a million times over.

    • As coaches we spend most of our time thinking about and programming physical health activities. But mental health is super important and equal partners with physical health. I’m encouraged we are talking about it more in our culture with many sports figures leading the way.

  • All roads lead to Rome on a trainer: All trainer work, structured and even unstructured, is all productive work. We have an extensive custom Zwift workout folder with 350 workouts. These are very specific to zones, periodization, key workouts and designed for specific stimulus for a physical training attribute.

    • However, I bet you could probably simplify your trainer work to easy/medium/hard throughout the winter and probably get a similar training effect. If you spend 5 - 10 hours on a trainer throughout the winter just unstructured you would probably be a beast in spring. It doesn’t have to be that complicated and specific. With that said, you should still have a coach!

    • Zwift sprints are a fun way to approximate the 125-160% FTP bursts we program

  • The last two are nutrition/supplement based. After years of avoiding any kind of supplementation instead focusing on a healthy diet, I changed my tune a little:

    • I jumped on the creatine bandwagon. I found it really helped for higher end, anaerobic capacity bike intervals. It’s very well studied and documented.

    • And then I completely sold out to Big Supplements and jumped on the Athletic Greens train. How cliche, having a podcast and drinking AG1! But seriously I was feeling a bit down last winter and it really helped. I suspect the big shot of B vitamins is magic. There are probably other ways to skin that cat but for now it’s very convenient.

    • Question for Katie: What supplements, if any, are you taking?

Katie’s lessons from training:

  • Fueling: If you nail fueling, you will be faster. Full stop. 70-80 g carbs per hour and the addition of Skratch Superfuel to my race and race sim fueling was huge.

  • Pre-race stress: Pre-race nerves and anxiety are not directly proportional to performance outcomes! I previously thought I could only perform well if I was a puddle of stress going into the race. As it turns out, you can perform well at varying levels of stress.

    • Note that this is predicated on feeling good about the controllables going in. You have a choice re: whether to stress about the controllables or not.

  • Racing Placid and Kona in the same year: Fitness carryover from IMLP into Kona -- how my approach this year was different and really successful relative to 2019. Release pressure of trying to optimize for two goal races at once; successfully avoided getting injured in the Kona prep and the Placid fitness carried over nicely.

  • Life stress and mental health: Learned a lot about mental health and training in the Placid build. REALLY hard to perform at max levels when LSS is high. Learned a lot about potential swaps and modifications that don’t preclude a really strong race.

Jim’s lessons from coaching:

  • You don’t always have to hit all the workouts to have a great race especially if you are an experienced athlete.

    • Lesson: There is a lot of play in the training plan especially with experienced athletes.

    • Remember: the training plan is an illusion of control. There are many roads to Rome. With that said, you need to have a plan in order to change a plan.

  • The second lesson was a case of the too’s: too much, too fast, too soon.

    • Case study: I had a very motivated, new athlete who was discovering their athletic self. Their schedule ended up with a workout seven days a week, no Day Off which should have been a warning flag especially for a new athlete. After a period of Base building, we started with 2X per week of 5K and 10K run intervals. But after a few months, this athlete developed an Achilles injury that ended up plaguing them for another couple of months. In retrospect, given this was a new athlete, new to running, I should have limited speed work to Half Marathon and 10K paces and 1X per week. The 2X per week with 5K efforts I’m sure contributed to his injury.

    • Usually injuries start occurring weeks and maybe months before they actually manifest. Be aware of the too’s.

    • And in preparing for this podcast, I became extra aware of the work my new athletes are doing and I went back and made some intensity adjustments in their TrainingPeaks this week.

  • Taking a page from the Norwegians: I included a lot more tempo, sub threshold running for 10 - 14 weeks leading into athlete “A” races especially for my more experienced long course triathletes. Focus on marathon / half marathon run pace block. This worked out beautifully. Who says we don’t know how to Zone 3! Katie, what did you experience from this new approach?

    • Loved it. Z3 as part of a structured workout with a great warmup is SO different from Wednesday Night Worlds tempo.

Katie’s lessons from coaching:

  • New data uploading automatically to TP that helps me keep an eye on athletes—sleep, HRV, ‘body battery,’ etc. Holistic approach to overall health and wellness.

  • Beta testing weekly check-in survey for U25 athletes: physical health and mental health.

  • Something I’m super proud of—diverting athlete injuries before they happen .

Gear pick of the week: