A common question people ask when looking to complete a triathlon is how much training do I need to do. Sadly, there is no single correct answer as the amount of training required will vary from person to person and of course more challenging goals will require more training. In this post I will try and provide a guide that will help you work out how much training will be necessary to achieve your goal.
Don’t do too much
It is common for someone, especially someone who is just starting triathlon, to think that more training means better performance. This is not true. Too much training will lead to overtraining and will actually have a negative impact on your fitness and therefore your ability to achieve your goal. Symptoms of overtraining may include:
- Reduced performance
- Bad moods
- Fatigue (Of course you will experience some fatigue after all your hard sessions but when overtraining you will experience more fatigue after putting the same amount of effort into a session and will experience fatigue after completing sessions that wouldn’t usually cause fatigue. This will have a negative impact on your fitness as it could prevent you from training for a few days after hard sessions.)
- Low motivation
- Weakened immune system
To avoid overtraining it is important to gradually increase your training load. This means don’t go straight from doing no training to doing 15 hours a week as this will result in overtraining, instead you should start by doing a couple hours a week and then gradually increase the amount of training you are doing.
So how much do I actually need to do?
The amount of training you need to do will vary based on the distance you are aiming to do and what your goals are. In this section I will provide a rough guide on how much training is necessary for each triathlon distance.
Super-sprint distance
A super-sprint distance triathlon is the shortest triathlon distance there is. It consists of a 400 metre swim, a 10 kilometre bike ride and finishes with a 2.5 kilometre run. If you already have a good level of fitness you won’t need to do much training to complete this distance. If you are looking to put in a fast time, finish on the podium or don’t already have that level of fitness you will need to do some training. If you are just looking to finish the event and aren’t confident that you could do so without some training a few hours a week for about 4 weeks should be enough to see you to the finish line. If there is one particular discipline you feel less confident in I recommend spending more time on this discipline to give you that little bit more confidence on race day. If the race has an open water swim you should definitely practice swimming in open water a few times before race day as it is very different to swimming in a pool.
Sprint distance
Sprint distance triathlons are the second shortest triathlon distance and are around twice as long as a super-sprint distance triathlon. They consist of a 750 metre swim, followed by a 20 kilometre bike ride and then a 5 kilometre run. I would definitely recommend doing at least a little bit of training for this distance. If you already have a good level of fitness a couple of hours a week on the areas you feel least confident in should be sufficient. If your fitness level is not as good 3-4 hours a week would be a good place to start but remember to build up to it to avoid overtraining. A lot of sprint distance triathlons have an open water swim so you should make sure you practice swimming in open water before your race. If you are new to open water swimming I highly recommend that you read open water swimming for beginners here.
Standard distance
The Olympic triathlons and a lot of the world championship series races are held over a standard distance course. A standard distance triathlon is twice as long as a sprint distance triathlon. The distances are a 1500 metre swim, a 40 kilometre bike ride and a 10 kilometre run. 2 hours for a standard distance triathlon would be a very good time so it is clearly an event that requires endurance. For this reason it does require quite a bit of training. I would recommend 4-5 hours of training per week for this distance although 2-3 hours per week would be the very minimum that I would recommend. I would say that doing this for 4-8 weeks would be sufficient. If you want to be doing well in these races and winning age group medals you probably need to be doing at least 10 hours of training per week.
Middle distance
Middle distance triathlons are also known as half distance triathlons and 70.3 triathlons (as the total distance of the swim bike and run is 70.3 miles). A middle distance triathlon consists of a 1.8 kilometre swim, a 90 kilometre bike ride and a half marathon 21.1 kilometre run. I would recommend at least 5-6 hours a week of training for this event with 4 hours being the minimum. You will need to do this for 8-10 weeks unless you are already an incredibly fit athlete. The athletes who are winning these events will often be pros who are doing 20+ hours of training per week (some pro athletes do more than twice this amount) but even finishing this distance is an achievement.
Full distance
A full distance triathlon is the longest typical triathlon distance. It was also the distance of the first modern triathlon. It consists of a 3.8 kilometre swim, a 180 kilometre bike ride and a marathon 42.2 kilometre run. The minimum amount of training I would recommend for this distance is 6 hours per week although 8-10 hours would be ideal. I recommend doing this for 8-12 weeks before your event. As with the middle distance triathlon finishing this race is an achievement and the people winning it will be professional athletes.
How much of each discipline?
About 50% of a triathlon is spent on the bike. This should be reflected in your training but is not a strict rule. You should spend most of your training time working on the discipline that you feel is your weakest. Of course there are other things that will impact how long you spend training for each discipline. For example you might not have much access to a pool or might struggle to find time to go out on the bike in the winter with less daylight hours and poor weather. I also recommend throwing in some triathlon focused gym sessions. My favourite exercise is squats to improve my performance on the bike.
Thanks for reading this post, remember to follow me on Twitter @firstplacetri to make sure you hear when a new content is released. I would love to hear what you thought of this post so please leave a comment if you found it useful. I hope that this post helps you smash your goals in your next race.
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