Why You're not Getting Faster

On the surface training for triathlons and endurance sports seems simple. Periods of stress followed by periods of rest over and over will eventually yield results, but maybe not the results you want. Here are a few reasons you may not be getting faster even though it seems like you’re training a lot.

You’re not stressing your body enough.

This is first for a reason, because I think it’s the most important factor for most people. Your body is a brilliantly designed machine and it adapts to stress extremely quickly, therefore you need to keep adding or changing the stress. The popular opinion in training at this point is geared towards rest/recovery and that is absolutely true but what most people fail to see is how difficult the hard work has to be in order to earn that rest. The times I ride the bike at 175 watts isn’t giving me the adaptation but that easy effort makes the 5 minute intervals at 420 watts possible and that stress will promote adaptation. If you run 3 times a week for a few years and never change the distance or intensity your body will adapt to that pace and it will no longer be enough of a stress to promote adaptation. If you take that baseline (3 runs per week) and are training for an Ironman I’d suggest adding a 4th and eventually 5th run of varying distances in order to safely increase volume. If you’re training for a 5k you could keep it at 3 runs but increase the intensity with intervals, hill repeats and fartleks in order to add the speed necessary for that race.

You’re sabotaging your own training.

If you’re like most triathletes you have a job, responsibilities, a family and countless other stressors in your life. After a long day of working and having unexpected challenges thrown your way it’s all too easy to bail on your evening run. Don’t. Use the workouts as a way to unwind and destress rather than thinking about it as an added stress in your life. Something I also see too frequently is athletes who scrap the prescribed workout and do their own thing. This is most common in brick workouts. Athletes will be tired after riding and convince themselves that they are too tired to run and skip it. Besides the fact that you are always going to be tired coming off the bike in a race, you’re missing the opportunity to build mental toughness and running on tired legs is key to getting ready for triathlons. Your coach is also building your plan with the assumption that you are going to execute it. Moving workouts randomly, stacking workouts, changing the workout or skipping them all together is a good way to have your plan fall apart.

Your mistakes are in the kitchen.

Hate to say it but a huge factor in cycling and running is your power to weight ratio. If you really enjoy your “off season” and pack on an extra 15 pounds you’re going to be struggling come race day. You do also have to be careful about going too far on the side of weight loss. I’ve pushed myself to the point of being way too skinny and my performances suffered greatly. I had no energy, I wasn’t recovering properly, I could barely hold any power on the bike and I was in an unsustainable place in my training. You need to find the right balance that works best for you, and maybe only use pizza and ice cream as rewards for a hard training day!

You haven’t given your plan enough time.

You have a coach and you’ve been consistently training for a few months now but you just aren’t getting any faster! Something has to be wrong as you should have achieved all of your long term goals at this point. False...give it more time..like a lot more time. Endurance sports are all about consistent work, day after day, month after month and yes, year after year. If you have a goal such as; a world championship race, winning a race or going pro, be prepared to spend the next 4-6 years of your life doing a ton of the same work!

You try to buy your speed.

I totally understand trying to do your best and achieving your best time and honestly the right gear is part of it. However I see a lot of athletes putting more emphasis than necessary on expensive bikes, wheels, shoes, helmets, etc. No amount of aerodynamics or gear will make up for the training that you’re likely skipping...get in the pool! When you start losing races by a matter of seconds then we can talk about upgrading your Zipp 808 to a Zipp disc wheel, I guess. To this day the two fastest guys I race are riding time trial bikes almost a decade old with 10 speed mechanical shifting...GASP!

You need to rest.

This is last for a reason, because I think it’s the least important for the majority of people. It’s trendy right now to focus on HRV and throw out words like “overtrained” but trust me, you’re not overtrained, you’re just not fit. Now if you’ve been training 20+ hours a week for an extended period of time, under fueling and under resting, you can’t sleep, and your hormones are tanked then yes, let’s talk about over training. What’s more important for the average athlete when it comes to rest is resting at the correct times and for the correct amount of time. This is where working with a coach can be hugely beneficial as your coach will design your plan based around periods of stress and rest.