Here's the plan

Was sick all day Friday through today with some crappy cold.  Feeling better..just in time to get my summary of the master plan from my coach today.  In  nutshell here it is:
Scott, 

I've created an annual overview for your training with 2 target races

HIM Racine on 7/17/11 and IM MOOOoooo on 9/11/11  

With that in mind, there are four general macrocycles to the year.  Working backwards from your A race, they are:

Specific IM prep, 12 weeks from June 28th - Sept 11th (race day)

General Aerobic Power Development, 12 weeks from March 29th - June 27th

General Base/Skills/Technique & Weight Loss, 12 weeks from Jan 4th - March 28th

Strength, Flexibility &Nutrition, Now until - Jan 3rd (about 10 weeks)

This is a wonderful length of time to prep you for the ironman next September, and I am happy to discuss each of the phases in more detail. 

From now until the new year, we will try to restore a tri focused training routine, with generous rest and "off" weeks scheduled, work in some functional strength and core exercises, and have you focus on nutrition...not necessarily weight loss at first, but working on food & nutrition as fuel for your body and improving overall management of stress (maintain healthful diet & good sleep habits).   

The 3 month period from Jan - March will be prime time (after the holidays) to set specific weight loss targets and get closer to goal weight.  We will try to have a 6 month period of weight loss ending 3 months prior to your IM, so that the last development phase you are working on race & workout nutrition and not worried about weight loss.   

The 3 month period form March until the end of June I refer to as general power development. This will be the time period with the most intense workouts, using a variety of sweet spot, threshold & vo2 max training intervals in a progressive fashion to build overall aerobic power (essentially, raising your functional threshold in all sports).  For an IM event, the higher your threshold/weight ratio, the faster your performance will be. 

The final 3 months is a focus on fatigue resistance while maintaining the gains we've made during the general power phase.  Rides & runs will gradually get longer and closer to race pace intensity.  

My approach ti IM and HIM training is a focus on the whole athlete, and quality training sessions, not just logging miles. Recent exercise physiology studies have demonstrated that aerobic power (FTP) is improved with higher intensity and lower volume training methods.  the experience of coaches like Matt Dixon, Phil Skiba & the Endurance Nation guys supports that higher intensity, lower volume training, even for IM distance athletes works well, with less time invested.

 

Well it looks like my coach has it all mapped out for me and is fairly optimistic. I just need to ask her about a few of the concepts that she mentioned that I am not really familiar with..like.."nutrition" and "healthful diet" and "training."