Volume Elephant Redux - I call BS on the 20 hour folks
Been thinking about this a bit recently. Seems that there is always a debate about whether it is better to train the "usual" 12-16-20 hours a week and do lots of "base" training or go really hard for 8-10 hours a week which has become synonymous with EN style. I think with all the new folks in the haus this week it is a good topic.
Seems like I am always talking to people who are telling me about 16-20 hour weeks training for IM. Doing "lots" of slow easy running over the winter etc. First off, I call bull sh*t on the 20 hour a week people. That is 5 hours each weekend day and 2 hours a day every single week day. No days off, ever. My friend Dev Paul who is almost always at the top of ST training log does not do that week in and week out and he is a freakin nut. I do not think anyone with a job is consistently putting in 15 hour weeks, week in and week out. Maybe if you are bike commuting but that would eat into your quality time anyhow. Lets face it a big weekend day, 5-6 hour ride or whatever, is usually preceded by a light day the day before and a light day if not a day off the following day. Real life dictates that if you spend all day Saturday riding with gang you have something else you have to do on Sunday.
It is universally agreed that consistency in training is key. Day in, day out, week in, week out, year in....you get the point...training is the key to getting faster. Huge weeks followed by getting sick and doing nothing will not help much. I am willing to bet there are not that many people who actually consistently train more than 10 hours a week. I do not want to hear about that one week in July, I mean every week. Average it out for the year, what are the actual numbers? You can even count all that time you spend in the pool holding on to the wall BSing or getting coffee in the middle of the ride. Not that it is real "nose to the grind stone" training time but it does not matter.
I think the actual debate should be is "what is the best thing to do with the very limited training time you have, go hard or go easy" rather than "is it better to train more hours easier or less hours harder" Even that is a little misleading as [for me at least] no one is really going "hard" all the time. Maybe the real question is, should you sometimes go really really hard during the limited training time that you actually have? The answer to that question is YES. Tons of hours at a low intensity may actually be a good way to build fitness. Few hours at low intensity is not. Is few hours, some of which are at a high intensity, a better plan? I think the results here in EN land speak for themselves.
FWIW my 2009 training was a total of 357 hours, 22 minutes and 56 seconds. I ran a touch over 1600 miles which averages out to a little more than 4 miles a day. Not many people I know run more than I do. Regardless, that is less than a hour a day, an average of less than 7 hours a week. I have generally mediocre to poor eating habits and body comp, no background in any of the 3 sports and certainly am not genetically gifted, yet fairly consistently place in the top percentage of my AG. I find it hard to believe that there are a lot of folks out there training twice as much as I do. The people I know, even the really fast people, certainly do not. If so they must be going about it horribly wrong.
Thoughts?
Comments
Chris,
You're probably better connected to the high volume types than I am. I left that world, and those athletes, years ago, other than to waste time on ST and shake my head at training methods...but that's another discussion.
I was going to use these thoughts in Scott's post in the Trial Forum, but here are my notes:
Frequency
.
Largely fixed by your life, ie, life, your job, kids, hours of the day/daylight, commute says you can only swim 3x, run 4x, bike 3x per week. Just not possible to increase your cycling stress by adding a ride cuz life just won't let you. Most people understand this or, if they don't, they find it out pretty quickly
Volume
More flexible in the short term, less in the long term. IOW, I can increase the volume of my Wed run from 30' to 40' to 50' to 60'...but once I start trying to go longer than 60' I need to wake up stoopid early, I'm late for work, etc. Similarly, on the weekend, most people's lives can accomodate a regular 2-3.5 hr ride. By this, I mean you're out the door, and back, before the rest of your life and family get started. Training is largely invisible, and therefore sustainable, for longer. But once we start going over 4-5hrs, especially on a regular basis, it becomes unsustainable, at least if we expect to maintain that volume for a long time.
Intensity
Infinitely more flexible, as I have complete control over how hard/easy I go within my fixed frequency and inflexible volume contrainsts above.
Now, all this is to set up this statement:
If your primarily tool for introducing a training over load and forcing a fitness adaptation is by managing volume (ie going longer and longer), what happens when you run out of time? If you train this way for 16hrs a week this year, what happens next year? 18hrs? 20hrs the next? 25hrs in year 3? Unemployed and divorced shortly thereafter?
My point is that the model of "I get fitter by going longer" is unrealistic and unsustainable in the long term. Sooner or later, for 95% of the AG'ers out there, your life will put the brakes on that training method. Kids, work, marriage, friggin' boredom, whatever. It won't work.
Now, there are people who out, and I could probably put myself in this camp, for whom the "stuff" involved with going long is an integral part of their lifestyle. They have managed all the boxes of their life to fit within their bigger box of "I am a high volume triathlete, it's who I am, and I've configured my life to fit within that box."
That's great...but it's a lifestyle choice, not a training method. My lifestyle can accomodate a 4hr epic climbing ride every Saturday and Sunday, year round, and I can usually find 3-5 guys to do it with me. But that's a lifestyle, similar to me choosing to ride a dirtbike on Sunday instead.
More importantly, it's an unrealistic lifestyle for 95% of the folks out there. The problem is that these 5% are the ones I've seen posting on tri forums for friggin' 10yrs during their work hours, they are the ones wearing all the MDot kit to lunch on Saturday before a race, they are the ones writting books, and blogs, etc.
Chis, I agree. I think there are very few AG athletes (unless they are single, childless and/or freaks of nature) that can sustain 15-20 hrs/week year-round. I had a hard enough time with the EN hours because my family's lifestyle makes it very hard to find the time to train. I'd be dead, divorced or both if I had to train that much.
I DID do many 14-17 hour weeks for my first IM back in 2004, but my schedule "permitted" it, and I was a completely selfish ass who would disappear on weekends for 6+ hrs to ride/run after being gone traveling all week ion business. I think I came closer to divorce that year than I'd like to admit.
2 IMs later using EN-style training, my wife still doesn't like it, but it's much more manageable, even with the addition of 4 year old twins.
I hesitate to present a summary of my training logs from 2007-2010 (previous years are on an older computer which is inaccesible), cause I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion of the "right" way to train.I also don't want to engage in any "mine is bigger" debates. This is just what I've evolved to over 10+ years of triathlon training which has taken on an almost exclusive IM focus after atarting out with Xterra, Olys, HIM, etc. I agree in spending as few hours training as possible, with the most effective mix across intensity, skill building and endurance development. And, obviously I hope, I am a believer in and practitioner of the EN model, having followed the EN plans for over a year now. But my numbers FWIW are as follows:
I work 40 hours a week, about 40 weeks a year. But 24 of those hours are all in one lump, a 24 hour shift at the hospital. No kids at home, but that doesn't mean I have no family obligations!
My yearly averages in five categories, from my log book:
Sport # of workouts/year Hours/year Distance Avg Pace
Cycling 175 350 5438 mi 15.6 mph (Wheels rolling time)
Swimming 130 108 291 km 2.7 km/hr (Total time in pool/lake)
Weights 65 53
Run 178 156 1065 mi 8:47 min/mi (Legs moving time)
Skiing 16 34 (Arbitrary time of 2 hours/day actual ski time)
You do the math for the total/year
I'll note that since I've gone to EN training, my speeds have gone up significantly, but my total time has not dropped. Also, I do have a LONG season, with first IM in June, and last end of November. So I admit to being an anomaly, but just present myself as an example of what is possible on a *consistent* basis. Except for 3-4 weeks of 20-22 hours per year, most weeks are either about 7-10 (OS) or 15-18 (IM prep). I don't take any time off, except for travel days, my days completely off per year are in the single digits. This has worked for me. I try to do as little swimming as I think I can get away with, and I do bike commute about 2 days a week, maybe 30 weeks a year. I hate to run, and have to talk myself into doing each and every one of those 180 runs a year! I do maybe 6 runs over 125 minutes per year (not counting IM marathons).
Al,
Doing the math on that you are at 12 hours a week s-b-r. That includes the bike commuting. How many people do you know that spend more time training than you do? I bet there are not many, in any AG. That is kind of my point, even a big volume multiple IM's a year, swimming year round and bike commuter is only putting in 12 hours a week.
Guesstimates that a 12 hour training week really takes______________?
I bet there at least a couple of hours a week of admin stuff, driving to the pool, tinkering with bikes...then there is always the million hours I have spent on online tri forums but its best not to think about that too much
Taking that to triathlon, it makes sense to ask "how long do my rides/runs/swims have to be so that i can finish (event X)?". Couple that with the volume-based lore of the TTB and all of it's offspring, and it just "makes sense" that we should be talking about volume.
It wasn't until i read the long course training manual 2 years ago that I realized I was asking the wrong question.
To answer your question, Chris, in my experience, there are a few people at the pointy end of the field who are doing that (notably some of the athletes coached by a different coach out of the Boston area), but the vast majority of people I know, even very dedicated to the sport, are not putting in 20 hour weeks around the calendar. One of them just put up a 9:40 at LP, so it can't be that much of a limiter.
Mike
When I hear people jawboning about the amazing number of hours they ride and train in a week--like the guy at Walden Pond who said he rode 500 miles in EACH of the past two weeks getting ready for FL--the line from House always rings in my head..."everybody lies." You know what I mean. Lots and lots of BS being thrown about by people who have very shaky identities and hide behind a lot of superficial crap.
My bottom line in all this is that the EN plans work, as written, Anything we do beyond that, either intensity, frequency, or volume, we do at our own peril, as Paul suggests, and, as Rich suggests, should be considered a lifestyle choice, not an "improvement" on the training program.
Don't clean bike; helps if it's unpainted titanium. Live here in Pac NW, where it's actually possible to swim-commute to work 9 months out of the year. Set up a treadmill at work connecrted to the computer power source; can't work if you don't run. Consider showers as part of the weekly laundry routine; or, as I do, just bike in the rain several times a week.
My biggest time waster - downloading workout data into the various programs and training logs I simply HAVE to have: Garmin, WKO, my pre-power/pace training diary which I want to keep consistent since 2000, and 3 different power meter apps.
Along these same lines, did anyone else read Barefoot Ted's RR for Leadville 100. He claims to be working on trying to run as little as possible but still be able to successfully run serious ultras. Somewhere I read that he was running only a handful of hours per week, but building up via a progressive set of races (marathon, 50K, 50 mile, 100K, Leadville). Interesting to say the least.