“About a year ago I listened to a podcast by Dr. Stacy Sims.   You may have heard of her – she is a leading researcher in women’s health & fitness.  I can still hear her voice ringing in my ears.  She explained that, as women get older, they are not able to maintain their desired body composition by doing hours & hours of low intensity cardio.  I felt like she was talking directly to me!  As an endurance athlete, I was spending hours swimming, biking, & running, but not seeing any changes to my body.  Her message?  If we want to see change our body composition and/or maintain (and even build) our strength as we age, we need to do interval training.  To be more precise, we need to experiment with low-volume, high-intensity training.

My Training Dilemna

This put me in a dilemma.  How could I do more interval training & still get the endurance I need to complete a long cardio event?   I met with Coach Michelle & we decided to do an experiment.  We would trust the research & follow a low-volume, high-intensity training plan for Napa Valley Long Course Triathlon.

Low-Volume, High-Intensity Plan

So, what did this look like?  Each week my key bike & run workouts included 30-sec intervals of varying intensity.  I found the intervals to be quite fun – I mean you can do anything for 30 seconds, right?!  And who doesn’t love a 02-min recovery?!  The tradeoff was that since these workouts included higher intensity, they were quite a bit shorter in duration than the racecourse I was training for.

I must confess…I was quite nervous to see if this plan would work.  My longest bike ride during training was 35 miles; my longest training run was 6.5 miles.   Would I be able to bike the full 56 miles?  And would I be able to run 13 miles after that?

Race Day Experience

The day of the race was cold, but beautiful.  I swam a bit off course & ended up swimming 2 extra buoys.  Oops!  Still feeling good & optimistic, I headed off on a gorgeous 56-mile bike course that included 4,200 vertical feet of climbing.  I realized that, even though I hadn’t done much hill training on the bike, my interval work had prepared me for this type of course.  I was surprised to see that my heart rate never soared too high, even on the steepest sections.  I attribute that to the intensity of the training intervals.  I made it to the second transition, but I was still nervous to see if my legs would cooperate on the run.  It took about a mile or so, but I eventually found my running legs & settled into a rhythm.  In fact, the second half of the run course felt better than the first!

What did I learn from this experience?  I learned that low-volume, high-intensity training can work (I made it through the event just fine)!   I learned to trust the process.  And I am actually starting to see changes in my body composition!  Most importantly, I learned that it’s ok to experiment with different ways of training!  The results just might surprise us!”

If you’re ready to experiment with low-volume, high-intensity training for your next event, let’s chat!  Click to set up your 30-min FREE Consultation.  For more info on coaching, click here.