3 Beginner Training Mistakes To Avoid in 2022
My first year seriously training for a duathlon was in 2018. I was still a smoker back then but I was determined to race at Tri Key West that year. My dad had just passed away and I had started a new job. As if that wasn’t bad not enough, the whirlwind relationship I was in had crumbled AND I had face-planted on a training ride. Talk about bad news bears. If you want the full back story on this, you can watch my Youtube video called, “The Crash, The Career Flux, and Last Goodbye to Dad”.
In an attempt to wash away the bad juju, I trained. And trained. And trained. I had no idea what I was doing but every day, I ran from my apartment to Margaret Pace Park and back, which was approximately 5 kilometers and I would ride one lap in the key. I was preparing for my first sprint duathlon which is a 1-mile run, a 20-kilometer bike, followed by a 5k run. I had no idea that I would become an addict after this.
By 2019, I was a training machine and learned to tolerate the burn and torture of my muscles cramping. I embraced 5 AM mornings and prided myself on racing just about every local sprint duathlon event. I had transformed into a new being - someone who was disciplined, dedicated, and a regular on the podium. But slowly, my body was rejecting this new “gassed and maxed” lifestyle more than it ever rejected the “drink and party til’ 5 AM” lifestyle, which I avidly practiced for almost a decade.
I started getting slower, skinny fat, and generally felt like a crabby patty all the time - everything annoyed me.
Here’s why:
Increasing training volume without periodization
Exercise without nutrition.
Blowing up your recovery days and going hard just because you feel good.
What you can do:
Get a training plan by a reputable and experienced coach - you don’t have to invest in 1-1 in person, they can create a plan for you to follow along for a very small investment, Don’t be cheap with yourself on this if you are going to be asking your body to perform at higher levels!
Don’t discount the impact of nutrition on your training. Learn everything you can about eating for your specific sport and body type. When to eat. What to eat. Crappy fuel = crappy long-term performance.
Keep your recovery truly recovery days. Z2 can be a mind-numbingly boring pace but as coach Ivan Dominguez once said, “the difference between a pro and an amateur is the that the pro knows when to rest.” Don’t go hard on your easy days just because you feel good or see a pack of cyclists going by or see the “close the gap” text on Zwift. Learn to ignore those and do your recovery miles at a recovery pace.
I hope these tips will help you perform better, longer. It’s great to have one good season but to have many great seasons, strategy is necessary. Think about driving across the country. You wouldn’t just get in your car and go as fast and far as you can until you run out of fuel, right? You’d look at the total distance, estimate how much you can drive each day, where you would stop for fuel, food, and rest. This is what a training plan does for an athlete. Whether that is body-building or half marathon, planning is key for success.
If you found this article helpful and would like me to create a training plan for you, just drop me a line here.
