Training Tips for intermediate/advanced
(Hywel Davies)

I see that Ade has put down a few ideas about training and now that I have to reside behind a computer for the short future I thought I should give you guys something to aim for.

Question?

Do I want to win or do I want to just finish and do well? I feel this is what separates myself from others like Lee, Keith, Kirk etc.

There was a time where I would win everything that I entered, hey that was not far away but since then I have looked for greater challenges than cross training could give.

When I enter cross training I know I will win so the training that I do gives me that self belief. Whatever you do will be effective to some extent but how effective depends on how hard you want to push yourself. I would go to maximum repetitions in every set whether bench press or treadmill intervals. We are talking max heart rate every session.

If you want to just get around you have to make sure that your training has convinced you of this, if you have any doubts then you will fail. Take for example the easiest of the Xtraining events, Tropicana. You should be ready to do 30 chins, 100 hip flex, 200 step ups, 60 bench press and run at your race pace. Then you know that you will have the strength to get though.

Ask yourself, if the first time you run a marathon distance is during the race then you cannot expect to finish strong. I do not agree with doing the courses in practice because you get complacent and think you can do a certain time and when you don't get it you go round telling everyone the judging was crap.

By all means put a few exercises together but way over what you have to do in an event so that it then feels easy on the day.

Take for example rowing, I still have 6.22 to my name back in 1999 and I have never wanted to try and beat that as I have more enjoyable things to do. I did not just row lots of 2 km time trials and hope on the day that I could beat my PB instead I did intervals of 200m at 1.35 pace, then 300, then 400, then 500 then start dropping the rest time until I could keep the same pace for 1000m then 2000m. This hurt because I was increasing the intensity over and above what I was used to.

Going back to the original question of what you want to achieve, I still believe in what I put on the Net fit Website: if you chase 2 rabbits at once both will escape.

Do you want to be good at Tough Guy, X training, Rowing, Running Triathlon? I took up triathlon not to win but to keep fit though the summer but then I started doing well and moved up to iron man distance. That presents new challenges but I can still come back and win tough guy races and ultra fit.

It is all to do with specificity, I do not doubt that Lee Rankin would have run me close at Tropicana if I did it last year but I was training at 2.40 marathon pace and had no speed or power for that sort of event. I was also training for the Utah adventure race so I was up to doing 10 hours of running if needed. Tough guy as a result was very easy. I had trained specifically for that event not just stayed fit all year round. When I train for X training, I obviously do not run marathons in the week before.

As you are planning out your year give yourself at least 2-3 months of specific training for that event and forget everything else. Fitness comes back very easy; it just feels hard for the first few sessions. Since I have been resting??? I have taken 40 secs off my 400m swim. There we go Specific training….. I can do bugger all else at the moment.

Enjoy

Hywel