James, the founder of StrideBox, has been working hard over the last 2 years to grow this company and hasn’t made time for his own events. But, now he is taking some of that time back and decided to make the jump over to give his first Triathlon a shot.
Being the resident certified personal trainer in the office, I have been tasked with building a training plan for James that is realistic for his life and schedule. It also needs to get him to the finish line of the Deschutes Dash Sprint Triathlon. We wanted to share this journey so we will be posting twice a week. Once a week I will post about beginner questions for Triathlon. We will talk about gear, nutrition, transition, and any other topics that come up during James’ training. James will also be posting once a week to share about his training progress.
We have included the simple plan that I have put together for James to use over the next 12 weeks. You may notice it is a bit lighter than other plans. This is on purpose. I want to prevent burnout, illness, and injury. Too much, too soon will often suppress an athletes immune system, causing them to lose a week of training. We want none of that!
We are starting off a bit on the easier side and just focusing on time rather than distance to ease in to the training. The plan is never more than 4 days a week, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a 5th workout day. If time permits, the weakest area will get an extra workout. Everyone is built differently and struggles with a different section of the triathlon. I wanted to leave room to focus on the weakness. After the first couple of weeks, the goal is to have a 5th workout when possible repeating a previous workout of the week.
The training times are short because sprint triathlons aren’t long (hence the name sprint). You need consistent training and some brick workouts (workouts where you do more than one exercise in one session) in order to be successful.
James won’t be going out to buy all of the latest gear either. He will proudly mount his $200 bicycle, lace up his StrideBox branded running shoes, and squeeze into a used or rented wet suit. Save all of that money spending for after you fall in love with triathlon!
We hope you follow James on his journey.
Download a PDF version of the Triathlon Plan.
Sarah Tucker has been a certified personal trainer for more than 10 years, is an RRCA Running Coach, and is part of the StrideBox team. She has worked with athletes to prepare for both running and triathlon events and worked for companies putting the events on.
Want more? We have the whole training series linked below. You can find tips, tricks, and training updates.
James’ Week 8 and 9 Training Update
