Triathlon - Taking the plunge!!!

I'm finally taking the plunge. I'm going to participate in the Western Sydney Nepean Triathlon on the 29th of November this year. The triathlon is a 1km swim, 30km bike and a 10km run (I don't know what that is classified with you guys?).

So starting next week I have a 15 week training plan, the last week of which is a tapering week.
I have attached it here, you will notice a day marked in blue (my b'day, I get my road bike, which will have aero bars added and be tri'd up). Days marked in red are important university times and the final day marked in blue is well the race :)

What do you guys think? I'm trying to accelerate my progression slowly as to not induce injury.

I am aiming to break the under 2 hour barrier, but if not then I can save that for another tri.

Chris

Edit: I'm going to buy some tri shorts for the whole event. What does everyone suggest for the bike/run with regards to upperbody clothing? I have my cycling jersey, I am thinking of getting a drifit nike T-shirt (like a training T-shirt for running). I will not be getting a full wetsuit for this event, investment for that will come later.

I will start with a little equipment background. If you are doing the road bike, invest in a forward seatpost to truly get the aero position. as for the shirt, DO NOT TRY TO PUT ANYTHING ON IN TRANSITION. you will learn (like I did) that it just does not work. get a tri top, or another tight fitting shirt, and try training with it one day. if it drags too much, find something else. You also might want to grab speed laces (usually cost about $6 and that saves shoe tying time. And you should use clipless pedals, but if you are not, toe clips will be sufficient.

on to your training program...
I do have to ask what is your current fitness level, and what kind of pool are you are swimming in?
for instance can you swim 1000m straight right now, can you bike at least 20 mi right now, and can you run at least 3 mi right now without injury? Is the pool you are swimming in a long course or a short course pool? (what is the distance of each "lap") I will assume long course because 20 laps is 500 in a short course pool, not 1000.

How old are you? What is your height and weight? these determine how fast you can get into this. if you are less than 30 (or recovering from injury) it is much too slow, if you are older than depending on your age (and weight too actually) it might be fine.

i also don't know what uni means but i will assume that it is work, school, or some other form of break.

it seems that you have a few too many rest days usually you would just have one per week.

your swimming (unless you cannot swim very well or fast at all) seems terribly short, i do at least 2500 yards per practice. (one hundred laps short, 50-long) possibly replace one of your rest days with a swim day.

consider practicing transitions some days, (replace one of your taper week rest days with a transition day. this always helped me during the race)

also there is nothing in the plan about how the workouts go but add some interval training if it is not there, do sprints, etc.

the last thing is i would avoid the wednesday-thursday runs when they get long. maybe plateu one out and use that as a hard interval or track day. usually you only want to do one long run (close to race distance) per week.

I think you should do fine with the program. it will definitely prepare you to complete, and probably to break the two hour mark as well.

Thanks Sirious

Well with my background. I am 20 (21 at the end of this month). I am 184cm and I weigh 56kg (I am an extreme lightweight).

I can bike for 20 miles already (I regularly do 30Km rides on Sundays). I was running earlier in the year and I can easily do 5 mi. No injury with either.

With swimming, well, I did swim school at well school, I haven't done much swimming since. The main problem here would be technique.

The pool is 50m long, the swim leg is 1000m, so 20 laps. Should I be doing more?
With regards to swimming now, I could do maybe 5 laps in row, I really don't know :( Swimming will be the problem.

I have those rest days as Tuesdays are way too busy for me (wake up 6AM, get home 8PM). Fridays (well I thought I don't want to increase the chance of injury so i'll take the day off before I crank it up over the weekend.

Uni is just short for University :)

What do you mean do not try to put anything on in transition?? I'll have my tri shorts on in the swim, I come out into transition, give my feet and body a quite rub with a towel, then put tight-fitting shirt on and socks/shoes, the helmet and off I go. What don't I understand??

Yes interval training, I'm thinking of trying that out, I will have to re-plan the plan and see where I can put it in. Any interval training tips?

I will re-examine the wed-thursday scenario. I put big training events on those days are I have most of my free time during the working week in those two days.

Thanks again Sirious.

Cheers,
Chris

then i have to say... you are taking it way too easy. first of all you are 20 and light so you do not have weight issues for your knees and you have a huge amount of recovery power. you will be fine taking a much more aggressive training routine. You have the training routine of a 40 year old who weighs 100-110kg. You would be considered VERY low risk for any kind of injury. (swim you should not be able to injure yourself, biking you should not be able too, running, you should not unless you are running very fast, very long)

assuming you were a decent swimmer, it should only take a few practices to get you back up to speed, if you were in the "capable but not competitive" category, then it might take a bit longer, but you will be needing for laps of warm up minimum. you do not have to complete all your laps in a row, start off with four laps warm up then 10x two laps pace then 4 laps warm down for a purely minimal first practice. then increase that until you are up to speed.

Here is a note on general training convention:
For swimming you train longer distances than you race
For cycling you train longer distances than you race
For running you train shorter distances than you race (running's weird... it's not really my strong point)

Trainsitions:
Stuff you do not yet understand but will very, very, soon (I sure did):
1. putting a tight-fitting shirt over a wet body is not as easy as it sounds
2. putting a tight-fitting shirt over a wet body will not work as well as you planned
3. putting a tight-fitting shirt over a wet body could turn your quick transtion into a five minute long nightmare
forget rubbing anything with a towel except the bottom of your feet while you stand on it.
have tri shorts and a tight fitting shirt on during the swim, pad down feet while putting on helmet, roll on pre-rolled socks and put on shoes, then off you go.
watch these videos they pretty much sum it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKWHELY0qxw (if you want to do the shoes already clipped in thing, test it out first)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya6HxuE_x58&feature=related

Interval training makes you faster, distance training increases your ability to go longer.
do different days(in all three sports) where you do different lengths of sprints. Some will be 15 seconds as fast as you can go (feel the burn) some will be 5 minutes as fast in that interval, and some will be 20 minutes at a faster pace than normal

Oh and one last thing:
Please remember this one thing, because so many do it wrong.
DON'T DO ANYTHING NEW ON RACE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much Sirious, all of your tips are helping me out.

A 40 year old 100kg guy eh, I'll restructure it and try to put in some intervals (for speed).

Thanks for the transition tips, those videos were great aswell. I have seen others and am now starting to get an idea how to do it quickly.

I'll get back to you soon.

Chris

So I have updated the training plan. I have fully updated the swim section for the whole 15 weeks. How does it look now?

I have updated the second week with a few intervals, have not updated the rest of the weeks.
I changed the Thursday run into a Thursday bike (will help with injury prevention).
How does it look?

Thanks.

Chris

good very good. ummm. Sorry i should have mentioned this: in general swimming more than about 5 laps consecutively is excessive except for one or two days you do a 2000 for time (as we call it 40 laps for you). Try splitting them up, look at drills, maybe try to talk to some of the guys on the swim team. they will tell you crazy sets then you have to use your judgement to make the intervals easier and take the yardage down. (assuming your university has a swim team, otherwise ask the swim team at the pool you work out at, otherwise look on the internet for swim drills.

parts of your workout will be drills, parts will be sprints, parts will be paced intervals.

also is this an open water swim?
you might want to swim/bike/run the course on seperate days to get an idea of what it is going to be like.

I'll look into drills and drop the consecutive laps, like instead of 1 * 50 laps i'll do 10 * 5 laps.

The swim is at a regatta centre, the one they built for the 2000 olympics I think. So you suggest me going there and practicing it at location?

Chris