Switching Up: A Dialogue

Another in my series of call and response from the Endurance Nation forums. Someone (quite accomplished in Ironman; two Kona qualifications after yeasrs of progressive efforts at improvement) recently wrote:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
–Einstein (poss. misattributed)

Consistency is Key.
-Triathlon

…  I’ve exceeded any expectations I ever in had in multisport as a direct result of (mostly) following the program, year in and year out.  However, as I give more and more thought to continued growth in the long-term – looking at my development as an athlete over three, five or 10 years – coupled with trying to leave no stone unturned for natural improvement – I’m curious about whether consistency, and coming back to any one program in the long-term is a blessing, or a curse.   (I’m not planning to leave – I’m just exploring unknown unknowns here.)

In the pro side of the ledger, we have consistency.  … Create a program and the conditions that will let you keep doing The Work, until days become weeks become months become seasons.  The Work should be Work, so you grow…  You’ll probably keep growing for a bunch of years…

But wait … on the con side of the ledger we also have consistency.  Huh?    Not the type where we come back day after day and grow, but the type where after, say, 3000 days, we grow, but but after repeated growth cycles, there emerges some kind of rut.  And in the quest for natural speed, that rut has an opportunity cost.   By analogy, after six weeks of a v02 microcycle, you’re tapped and the adaptations hit a ceiling, so you need to switch up the stimulus.  Think of my question in terms of a macromacromacrocycle, where after 10 years (or whatever), the adaptations hit a ceiling, and you need to switch up the stimulus.

My example: I follow certain flavours of workouts arranged in a certain progression over a repeating cycle.  At certain points in this cycle, I have a pretty predictable w/kg, or vdot.    I know this work is absolutely necessary to prepare to the level I need to, but I wonder if there’s a point where The Work might have run its course, or need to be substituted for some other kind of work that hasn’t been a flavour I have used in the last 3000 days.    A closer example:  Over a full cycle (epic week included) building to my first IM of the season, I will do between 22 and 25 five-hour rides.   I think these are the most sound preparation for me to efficiently race an IM.   But what if all of the possible adaptations have been totally maxed out my body, and no matter what I do, these will continue to give me adequate preparation, but not the *best possible preparation?   What if after a number of years,  these have created a ceiling based on my genetics?   And what about the opportunity cost?   So instead of, say, weekly EN-flavour 5hr rides,  I did a 180 mile ride every 10 days at .76 once a month?    Or instead of the faithful 5h/45min brick that I do every Saturday during in-season, I did, say, a four hour ride at ABP at an increased cadence of 100, and then a 10 x 1 Hard Mile brick on the track?   Or I took every sixth week completely, totally, off?

I’m tossing these examples out as crazy outliers because they seem completely gonzo, but is gonzo what the body needs, after doing similar sessions season after season, in order to grow to a next level?”

And, my response:

Oh, man, what question are you asking here?

  • After ten years of consistent Ironman training, is there any thing I can do to continue my upward progression, to keep getting faster (or, if over the hill age-wise, to retard the slowdown?) My answer: I doubt it.
  • Does repeating the same training focus, season after season, inevitably lead to a downward trend? My answer: Yes.
  • Are the training needs of someone who’s been consistent over 5-10 years different from someone who is in the upward arc of the improvement curve? My answer: Yes.

Having given my not-so-humble opinion above, I’ll share my own experience, and see if it provides any value to the discussion. I’ll limit this to triathlon, and the question of how to get as fast as you can and sustain that as long as you can. After a year’s acclimation, and my first Ironman, I gave myself a five year window to try and get to Kona. I did not, however, have a grand macromacro strategy for how to get there, other than to show up every day. Each year, without much overall strategy except to improve my limiters, I found myself adding new elements to my training. EG, the first year, I started doing track intervals, the second year I added tempo runs, the third year I emphasized marathon training (using Boston as a goal), the fourth year I added altitude training, the fifth year I began doing hard intervals on a trainer. (This is just a sampling of the stuff I began adding over time.) If I had tried to do all of that all at once, I probably would have flamed out pretty quickly. I also injected something different from rote training and the same races over and over, like multi-day bike tours with like minded friends (not triathletes), mountain biking and Xterra racing. My point is, as Dave is suggesting, I was consistent in that I did something everyday. I was switching it up, in that my training log would not look the same from year to year, even when examining, say, the 10 weeks before an IM.

I did meet my five year target (actually, KQ’d 4 years 10 months after my first IM.) For the next 6 years, I maintained a high level of performance, with a series of AG wins and KQs. I was still switching things up, first by refining my race execution strategies (following proto-EN rules), and then following EN training plans. But remember those training plans are not static. From year to year, they have been changing – adding this, tweaking that, dropping the other thing. The only thing that I can rely on being the same from year to year is the swim workouts. In addition, I kept switching things up on a regular basis as I always had.

But I think my improvements in terms of time stopped after about 10-12 years in. It’s tough to gauge this, as I have to discount the “normal” slow down which we all face at my age. So this is where Dave’s query starts to apply.

My advice would be: by all means, do something different this year. If you’ve been doing a lot of longer rides, maybe what you need is to emphasize shorter, harder ones. From my playbook last year: Go find some 6-900 vertical foot “hills” @ 6-8%, and power up those on Tuesdays. Find a traffic free course of 5-7 miles or so, and hammer out 2-4  repeats on Saturday. Or what I did 10-15 years ago: Bike commute to work, and throw in an HIM + (70 miles @ HIM pace) on Saturdays.

No question humans crave novelty – in our friends, in our entertainment, in our environment. I suspect our bodies thrive on novelty as well.

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