Starting: Swimming to Biking to Running

Triathlon is one of the fastest growing sports around the world. With over 1.5 million americans participating in triathlons last year and up 400k from the previous year, it's no doubt that this sport will continue to grow.

Many people like it for its variety. Others like it for the sheer challenge of the endurance aspect. What ever it's appeal to you is one thing is for certain: in order to compete or even finish one, you have to be in best shape of your life.

With this said, let us embark on the journey of beginning training. Like any training you must start somewhere, and well i would say this is a pretty good place to begin your triathlon training.

You know there are three sports you must train for: swimming, biking, and running. So in order to become sufficiently good at each of these you will need to train in all of them.

Take your strong point, what is it? Is it running, biking, or swimming? For example if it's running, and you are just beginning training we are going to emphasize the other two first, while still maintaining and even building your ability in running. For the first few weeks of training your going to want to swim and run on one day and bike on the other. Remember, this is your base phase so it calls for slower longer hauls--and yes i mean this for all three sports. Go longer, but slower in swimming, running, and biking. Get used to the feeling of sitting in that saddle and turning over, get used to being in water, get used to running. Once the base phase is over then we start focusing on quality workouts, in that i mean speed.

Base phase for us will be 4-8 weeks. Switching every day up: biking one day and then swimming and running the next. Make it interesting for yourself. Depending on how much time you have you may only be able to get in one training session a day:swim one day, bike the next, then run. What ever your schedule is, if you really want to complete a triathlon you WILL make the time.

To reiterate from an earlier post, the point of the base phase is to acclimate your body to what ever your doing. Don't take rests. Go slow, and go long. Keep your heart rate up and don't allow for your body to attempt to recover until the workout is completely finished. If you do this, the speed at which your body acclimates to the strains of each sport will increase. With the acclimation comes an increased metabolism. Yes, this means you can eat a little more. But chances are you already eat too much, seeing that most americans are overweight. Typically you'll want to be eating a 2000 calorie diet per day. But that's for the"typical" person. Depending on whether or not your an accomplished athlete or are trying to lose weight your going to want to either increase or decrease that caloric intake.

So this will be your first 4-8 weeks. Remember focus on making every work out long and not fast. You don't want to be killing yourself in the first 4-8 weeks of training when there will be many weeks after this to do that.

Remember, we're acclimating the body right now. Take it easy, but focus on the work that needs to be done in order to accomplish your goal.