Ed Croucher's 2019 Training Forum
@Patrick McCrann, I am a month out from my last race of the 2018 season. I have had some time to reflect on my racing and on my training. I have also had some time to reflect on my overall experience being part of Endurance Nation and how both my racing and training has developed. There have been many changes with Endurance Nation. The largest negative change is the access to you. I have totally enjoyed the phone conversations we have had in the past. For me, that made EN more like a one on one coach. I am limited to forum access now. Because of where I live, a one on one coach is really not an option. Upstate New York is not the mecca for triathlon training. There are no coaches anywhere near me that have a fraction of what you offer. Also, the cost of a one on one coach is prohibitive for me. I have looked at other training teams and sites. I had the opportunity to do a training camp with Andy Potts. The camp was a fantastic experience and he is a special person. However, he remains a pro athlete and his team is not truly run by him. After any training camp, the relationship returns to one online. Looking at AP Racing and several other triathlon teams, I really appreciate the enormous resource the EN site is. I have listened to several pod casts recently. Two of the “Big Guns”, Matt Dixon and Gerry Rodriguez talked about athletes and the relationships with coaches. The funny thing was that they never said to drop you coach and come to them. The lamented the benefits to staying with a coach long term. By the way, Andy Potts had had the same coach all the way. I will always read and listen to the “Big Guns” in triathlon. One of the things that strike me every time I listen is that you are one of the “Big Guns” in triathlon. No other team has performed like yours. Every strong coach tells their athletes that consistency is the biggest key to success. Endurance Nation proves that!
I know looking at race results only will never accurately reveal the changes or improvements. However, when I look at the table below, it is clear that improvements have been made. I have only included the full Ironman races in the table. My 70.3 races have been very steady and right around the 5 hour barrier. I know that if I focused on that race I could break it. I came to EN because I wanted to race the Full Ironman distance and do well. This year particularly has been a very good race year. I did 3 races, one 70.3 and two full Ironman races. I finished the 70.3 in 5:11:56. The full distance races were very good. I have told you many times my goal is to qualify for the World Championship. This year at Maryland, I was one place and about 8 minutes from that goal! That is close enough to keep my chasing that goal. One statistic in the table that really pops out to me is my swim times. I clearly need to improve in that area. The other area I know I can make a sizeable improvement is the bike.
Race Div. Gen. Ovr. Swim Bike Run Overall
2018
IRONMAN® Maryland 3 98 119 1:18:36 5:20:29 3:51:55 10:38:44
IRONMAN® Lake Placid 11 190 225 1:12:33 6:12:06 4:08:02 11:40:46
2017
IRONMAN® Mont-Tremblant 33 349 411 1:19:39 5:44:00 4:24:43 11:37:37
2016
IRONMAN® Wisconsin 27 305 376 1:14:13 5:53:59 4:31:05 11:50:59
2015
IRONMAN® Florida 20 216 251 1:21:35 5:27:36 4:14:48 11:14:19
IRONMAN® Lake Placid 19 192 214 1:14:22 6:04:52 4:03:04 11:33:53
2014
IRONMAN® Lake Placid 25 339 384 01:13:07 6:03:42 4:19:50 11:47:35
2013 Before Endurance Nation
IRONMAN® Lake Placid 44 582 688 1:15:55 5:59:28 4:40:33 12:09:09
Here is where I want to talk about training. My training overall is consistent, but my job and life always move obstacles into my path. Some really big bumps came this year and I was able to still make the best of my training and race well. I believe that a lot of that was by following the EN training model since 2014; my general fitness level is very high. My available training hours during the “Out Season” are between 8 and 10. As far as the swim training goes, I am going to do everything I can to make sure I get 3 swims each week. I have already begun adding some additional strength work to my week. This year, I am committed to improving my swim form and my bike power. I am fully engaged in the “Run Durability” training. During the 2018 training year, I completed 1522 miles averaging 29 miles per week. This is more than 5 miles per week more than I had ever done. I know this helped me and I will continue. Each fall since I have been with EN, I have completed an Out-Season. I have not seen the power improvements I would have liked. In 2013 before coming to EN I did a 20 minute FTP test where I hit 285 watts for those minutes. I have not been close since. I have also added much more training emphasis in both swim and run during my EN time. I need to complete a year of training where I can keep the power gains leading into my races. On the bike, I need to change something that will move my power up. In general, the “Out-Season” has two very hard hour workouts during the week and a longer workout (not an easy) on the weekend. Do I need to change the kind of workouts I do? We typically push VO2 max efforts early and then build FTP efforts later. I am looking for any suggestions you have to help me improve my bike. So far, the only Ironman race I have is IMMD where I am looking to improve everything from 2018!
Comments
@Edwin Croucher -
Thank you so much for your candid assessment of how things work. I understand that there is a difference between how I coach right now inside and there is Asian versus how I coached before. Quite frankly before there were two of us coaching and I had a significantly great greater amount of bandwidth. Currently as things are set up as I split my time between coaching and running the business, I have less personal time to talk on the phone.
Before you could just call me up and talk whenever you wanted. Now I use text messages and forum posts and scheduled calls to achieve the same thing. I appreciate you respecting the need to share me with your other teammates. I'm confident that we can be successful because your peers are doing it and you too have seen the results. The real challenge becomes in finding a place where you can identify areas where you personally can divert from what we typically do to find your goals.
As I look at your season and the table you provided, I'm very pleased with the progress. I know sometimes a year without improvement seems like you're not going anywhere, but my years of coaching tell me otherwise.
The results you earned in Maryland are definitely, as you noted, related to all the hard work you've done over the years. It was the culmination of not only fitness, but also patience with the mishaps of your year (which happens almost every year!!!!), and your refined ability to execute. By and large, that is the biggest change you have made over your time with Endurance Nation. You have become a much smarter and effective racer.
So where do we go from here?
First of all, we know that you are very successful at racing flatter courses. Even though you might enjoy racing in Lake Placid and doing the hills, it's clear that a course without the temptation of climbs suits your strength and skill set. It also allows you to have enough bandwidth to handle the run. By "handle," I mean being able to run at your true potential. At the heart of things, I believe your strongest discipline is the run, which is another reason to continue to focus on run durability.
As you identify areas for improvement moving forward it's important to note that there are often some conflicting desires. The desire to include increased run volume while simultaneously improving your bike power is somewhat contradictory. My personal lessons learned from this year are that you do not need to do all of the intensity work at the same time you are increasing your run volume in order to see results. If you followed my reports from this season, he saw how I did a significant amount of indoor volume on Swift with races, but that the higher intensity work in my race prep was actually the source of the fitness that I carried with me on race day. To that end, I recommend that we adjust your expectations in the out season based off of what you have proposed.
I recommend that we stick with the run durability program and aim for somewhere between 30 and 32 miles per week on average. That would be fantastic! You do not need to go to 35 or 38 or 40 miles per week to be successful. I also recommend that you stick with the bike workouts that are listed, as they are effective. Of course, you can swap them out for Zwift races if those are preferable.
The only addition I would make is a fourth ride so you get in some endurance time. How you manage that time is up to you, but the bike focused out season plan will give you some guidance. Essentially it's steady riding with brief periods of intensity similar to what we do on Sundays in Zwift.
If possible, I recommend that you still identify areas where you can get in some strategic bike volume early in the year (camps / weekends). I believe that your experience in Mallorca was certainly helpful. And I would plan for some shorter racing earlier in the year. I think it will be interesting for you to get into some short course races in June and July as a period of early season speed that we can then use to parlay into your Maryland build. Please let me know what you think!
@Coach Patrick , Thanks for the assessment and the plan. I am in for a new training year. One thing that has changed with getting older is how fast I recover from an Ironman effort. My post race heart rate remains higher than my normal training rate for a much longer time. I have moved from recovery, taken a nice easy break and begun actual training again. I need to re-set my heart rate for the run. That is going to take about two weeks of steady Maffetone running. I followed that after IMLP this summer at the recommendation of @Mike Roberts. I can still build my running miles back up to 30 miles per week. I will not be doing any speed work during the early weeks. I will be making some bike training plan changes to spice up the riding. Although I am very happy with my performance at Maryland, I am not satisfied. I have more speed for all three legs. I am already looking at some spring 70.3 races. As expensive as it is, IMLP was an incredible fitness boom for Maryland. I will be looking at adding a really big effort 9 - 10 weeks before the A race. Keep watching and thank you for your help.
Great! You are welcome to use the rug or ability program. I think as long as you do all the running at that TRP pace that you will achieve your heart rate goAl.
The key is to stay active without any training that feels like “work.“ I personally a lot of time on the bike but you are welcome to use the run. I look forward to seeing the data