In this post I talked about switching from a 7-day training cycle to a 10-day one. Then in this follow-up post I talked about how that worked out for me. I'm now on my next training plan and I've decided to stick with the 10-day cycle length.
Objectives
My current training objective is my first ever triathlon (Newbury Triathlon) on 7th September. This is a nice introductory sprint event with a 400m pool swim, 22k bike and 5k run. The pool based swim is good for me as this is by far my weakest discipline and the most difficult one to train.
Following that I have Basingstoke Half Marathon at the beginning of October. This is an undulating course, so I'm trying to keep a running heavy plan with enough hill work.
Situation
Since the last plan I built I've had a change of jobs and I'm now working at a company just 2.2 miles from home. This means I have plenty of scope for run-commuting, bike-commuting or fitting in an early morning swim session. I can now make all my local leisure centre's early lane sessions (Monday, Wednesday and Friday), which made building the new plan much easier.
Requirements
The new plan covers 12 weeks, divided as eight 10-day cycles and a short 4-day taper leading up to race day. For each cycle my objective is to include the following sessions:
- Running: long run
- Running: intervals session
- Running: tempo or hills session, alternating each cycle
- [Running: easy recovery runs home from work as required]
- Bike: long ride
- Bike: sprint session
- Bike: short ride (usually to and from 5-a-side football)
- [Bike: easy recovery rides home from work as required]
- Swim: long steady swim
- Swim: sets
- Strength & Flexibility: 2 sessions
This looks like a lot of sessions to fit in to 10 days, but bear in mind that if I run or bike to work then those days automatically include the recovery session to get home again.
The other challenge with this plan is that I have three holidays to fit in (one full week and two long weekends). During these I won't have access to a swimming pool or a bike so they have to be largely running based periods.
The New Plan
So, the final plan is shown below. Colour scheme is: pink - strength/flexibility, purple - run, green - bike, blue - swim, light yellow - other sports, grey - holiday, yellow - triathlon specific training, cyan - rest day.
Conclusion
So, you can see that everything fits together pretty well. I've got (just about) enough rest days and I've managed to be flexible around holiday periods. There's also some scope in there to swap things around as needed.
Overall, the 10-day cycle training plan has worked out really well. I was expecting it to be less easy to build given the amount of sessions I'm trying to fit in. I was plesently surprised and I'm happy to commit to continuing with the 10-day approach beyond this plan.
