2012 Training - A Season in Numbers

2012 brought another two Ironman finishes - bringing the total to six - including a new Personal Best time.  

I thought it might be quite interesting to look into the training that went into this and play around with the numbers.

The headline numbers: 

Swim 
From January to September, I clocked up 192.1 kilometres in the water spending 57 hours and 40 minutes over 74 sessions.  The average session was 46 minutes long, averaging 2.6k for each session.


Bike
I spent 203 hours on the bike in the first 9 months of the year, clocking up 5976k.  I got on the bike 116 times, with an average session lasting 1 hour 48 minutes and completing 53.5k per session.

Run
On my feet and running for 96 hours, reaching 1181k.  The average run session was 59 minutes and 12.1k per session.

Weekly Averages

During the year I averaged 9 hours and 16 minutes of swim, bike and run each week.  The table below gives a good breakdown of activity.  
 

 Obvious things to note:

• Running volume was very low to begin with.  This was due to a calf injury.  Extra bike and swim sessions were scheduled instead.
• Bike volume dropped in April as my enthusiasm to pick up running again increased!
• Volume dropped in July following Roth, including a complete week off everything
• Swimming only resumed properly in September

Even the longest average week was 11 hours and 34 minutes - almost 1 hour 30 minutes less than my average week in 2011!

An average week contained 7.5 sessions, though this ranged from 9.5 sessions per week in February to 4.2 sessions in July. 

I was interested to understand how this year compared with previous years.  I know I spent less time outdoors on the bike this year, partly due to the weather and partly because I really like riding on the Computrainer, so I was interested to see if that had much of an impact on training time.

2012 (January - September) has seen an average training week of 9 hours 16 minutes.  This really surprised me.  You hear stories of how people train 15-18 hours per week to train for Ironman.  An average week of 9 hours - really?  This is in comparison to 12 hours and 58 minutes in 2011 (Jan-July) - roughly 3.5 hours more than 2012!  Even my 2010 season covered 9 hours 30 minutes.  In short, I trained less hours than each of the previous two years.

The big difference in training this year compared to last year is the time spent on the bike - almost 3.5 hours (63k) more per week in 2011 than 2012.  The average session on the bike was almost 24k less in 2012 than 2011. 

2012 also saw less running time per week (25 minutes) and volume per week (6k) - this is due to the injury in the first three months of 2012.  However, the average volume of each run session was almost 2k more in 2012.

My training changed pace during 2012 - particularly on the bike.  In 2011, the data tells me my training was slower on the bike than 2010 - dropping from 2:10 per kilometre to 2:25 per k.  This may have been the additional hill training and long rides in preparation for (and during) the LEJOG adventure.  Training in 2012 picked up and averaged just over 2 minutes per k (2:02) which is almost 30kph.  This will be explained by the breakdown of training.  More than 2500k was completed on the TT bike attached to the Computrainer, 2000k outdoors on the TT bike and less than 1500k on the road bike.

Running was the same sort of pace as 2011, whilst swimming was slightly slower this year.

Swimming pace includes any rest intervals during the session

So there we have it. 10 hours 58 minutes at Challenge Roth and then 10 hours 19 minutes at Challenge Barcelona achieved on an average of 9 hours and 16 minutes per week over 39 weeks.