After swimming and cycling, running will be the ultimate challenge for your physical capabilities--- Why running will become "the hammer" after you thought it couldn't get any worse --- At a certain time you simply may want to stop. You might think that you got it, that you have done every humanly possible thing that your body was expected to do: there was the swimming, the cycling, the changes and all those people around you shouting "Go, Go, Go. Faster!" and pushing you to ever growing peaks of performance ...and that's it, no? But you are wrong. Now you've come to the hardest part of all. Running. But here is the good news: If you prepare well there is no need to be afraid of this station at all. It will just seem to you like a natural extension of this interesting experience for your body, mind and soul, called Triathlon. You might think about how your life is going to be after you finish the Triathlon. And if this is your first competition you probably will think that this is going to be the last time you ever punished your body with doing endurance sports. Good. This is quite normal and will stop after a while. No need to worry. The opposite is likely to happen. You could become addicted to it. The real problem you and every other athlete have got in common is the simple fact that with the third discipline you enter the second type of sports in a sequence that stresses your legs heavily. It will feel a bit like walking on eggs or being drunken. Check out my running tips article for some ideas on how to avoid this. And your cardiovascular system adds to it. If you didn't practice the transition from bicycle to feet it is rather possible that you experience a kind of dizziness in the beginning. To improve the accommodation of your body to this peculiarity of Triathlon I would recommend that you train this by combining some low impact cycling units with quick runs at the end or you do some very intense cycling and finish your training unit with a run at rather low intensity (so called "brick" or "transition workout"). My simple approach and general guideline for the running training though is that "you do it as you feel it". What I mean by this is that even after doing endurance sports for nearly ten years now I still occasionally do some breaks during the run and just walk a few steps. And yet I consistently improve my times from year to year in a very relaxed way. Don't rush your fences. Here is some excellent information on how to enrich your workouts with
cross country training sessions and races.
|