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Preseason Success...

Friday, 06 February 2015 00:10

By Dave Burgess (usatriathlon.org)

With the offseason behind us, we can now look ahead to the training and racing that we'll be doing in 2015. And to start off training properly, solid preseason work is required. But what are you really looking to accomplish in the preseason? What's the goal? What sort of work should be done?

Most individuals require work on their aerobic base as they come off their offseason. And, most people think that this requires boring, long and slow training. While base-building training isn't the most exciting, it does have great benefits. And it can be structured to not be all about long and slow efforts.

The primary goal of this lower intensity base training is to help build up the power plants in your muscles. By that I mean mitochondria. I'm not going to get overly scientific, but the goal here is to increase the number of these, building a bigger ...

store of energy — allowing you to then train harder, and race at higher intensities down the road. This is why the majority of the work done during this phase is aerobic in nature. No threshold work. No VO2 max work. Just aerobic efforts, or approximately 55 to 75 percent of lactate threshold.

For reference, let's compare the anaerobic glycolysis system versus the aerobic system: ....READ MORE