Beginner's Luck

"I've got a triathlon coming up in (fill in the blank) weeks," I hear quite a lot. "Can I adopt your schedule to that time frame?"

This depends on your capacity for swimming. Mostly I'm interested in your technical ability. Were you on a youth swim team? If I were to say, "Do six 400s––short-course yards––on the 1:20 base," would you know what the hell I was talking about?

If the answer is, "Yes, I not only know what you're talking about, I could actually do that workout once upon a time in another life," then I know two things about you: that you'll be back in fine swim shape within six weeks, and that you have the capacity to be a fine triathlete once we get those (insert appropriate number) pounds of your frame; ventilate all the tar, pot, or whatever out of your lungs; re-animate your atrophied quadraceps; and wean you off your Super Star McWhoppers with double-cheese fries.

You're going to read all the installments in the Beginner's training schedule because there's lots of stuff that you need to know even if you skip over that particular week's workouts.

But we're going to put you through boot camp and get you to the starting line of your race––which can be anything from a sprint to an Olympic distance race (Olympic being 1.5km swimming, 40km cycling, and a 10k run)––in half the time. That is to say, we're going to get you there in 12 weeks.

You're going to have to be the judge as to how far gone you are. The first seven weeks are going to be exactly the same as the rank beginners are doing, so I know you can do that much unless you've gone some really bad thing going on inside you––bad heart, cancer, tuberculosis, so on and so forth, which, of course, you ought to do your best to make sure you don't have before you start anything like this.

Then we start to skip around, and while you'll pay attention to the helpful hints contained on all 21 weeks of the beginner's program, you'll just limit yourself to the workouts contained in each of the weekly installments below, and in the order in which they're listed below.

If you get to, say, week 10 or 12 and you just aren't getting fit quickly enough, then no big deal. There are other triathlons that'll come along––dozens every weekend in this fine land. But any once-fit formerly athletic person ought to be able to get from here to there in 12 diligent weeks.

One thing, you former swimmer you: Don't be a wimp. I give a wide latitude on swimming yardage in these workouts, and that's because some folks just aren't going to be able to go 2,000 or 3,000 yards if they're new at sticking their toes in the water. Not so you. I'll expect you to be on the upper end of this range.