Time to Rebuild

Quite often during the winter months it's tough to do the right thing that will make us faster in our summer goal races. The temptations to start hitting hard too early, or racing lots and digging too deep too often (because that what we enjoy doing) in all sorts of fun invents. Instead we should be be heading in to a rebuild, to make the chassis strong so that it will take the training loads we need to do to become fast. Once thats done, building the engine can commence.

A gradual increase in easy miles will strengthen the muscle, tendons and ligaments. A couple of strength and condition sessions a week, with an all round body focus, paying particulat attention to core strength, will produce a solid platform from which to apply power.

Focus heavily on improving skills rather than getting fast. Be that your swim technique, always a winter favourite. You could work on your bike handling ability, which is generally poor at all levels of triathlon. Perfecting how to run eficiently is going make running of the bike faster. It always amazes me how much athletes will spend for a piece of equipment(s) that is marketed to make you faster when bigger returns can be gained by investing time in practicing how to corner quickly or improve swimming related flexabity (a limiting factor for many male triathletes), which are free and guarentes an increase in speed.

The hardest part of any of the above is making it a habit. When it becomes what you always do you are almost there. The next step is to make what you always do, perfect, then you have it cracked.

Keep it simple, keep fun.