The triathlon tests speed and endurance in a three-part race.
A half-ironman triathlon consists of a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run. Preparation for a half-ironman involves building your endurance, learning proper nutrition, and finding the right balance of nutrition and speed to ensure that you can finish the race. A half-ironman training program can last anywhere from 10 to 20 weeks once you have a good level of fitness, and usually requires about 12 hours a week at minimum.
Race Experience
In order to finish a half-ironman, you must be in excellent physical condition and be knowledgeable about fueling your body. This experience can come from running shorter races like Olympic-distance triathlons. Amateurendurance.com recommends that you have up to a full season of races and be able to swim for 45 minutes without stopping, bike for two hours and run for one hour, though not all at once. If you can’t, work on your trouble areas until you can meet those benchmarks.
Heart Rate
Monitor your heart rate while training to ensure that you are in an aerobic zone and that your body will use calories and oxygen at an optimum level for endurance races. Check your heart rate often during workouts, and develop a pace that will allow you to maintain an aerobic heart rate. There are several methods for optimizing your heart rate, but most recommend exercising at 70 percent to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate to build aerobic fitness.
Swim
Most triathlon swim training takes place in a pool.
Swim training for a half-ironman should initially focus on building correct form and endurance through longer swims, and then gradually introduce shorter distances to improve your swim speed. Professional triathlete Matt Lieto recommends at trifuel.com that you break up your swim workouts into intervals of 200 to 500 meters so that you can push yourself to swim faster than you would during a race. Try to emphasize swimming with your arms, because you will need your legs for the bike and the run.
Bike
Practice getting on and off your bike for safety and to save time during transitions.
Bike workouts are usually the longest of the three, and trinewbies.com recommends focusing on biking within your desired heart rate and improving your endurance through progressively longer rides. As you near the middle of your training program, trifuel.com recommends adding brick workouts. A brick workout involves a short run, usually 15 to 25 minutes, immediately following the bike workout to prepare your legs for the transition.
Run
Keeping the right pace will allow you to slow depletion of your energy during the race.
Training for the run is as much about mental toughness as it is about physical fitness. Once you are comfortable running for more than 60 minutes, adding running workouts after your swims can help prepare you for the fatigue factor you'll experience in the race. Near the end of your training, you should be comfortable swimming for about 50 minutes and then running for 50 minutes immediately after.
Nutrition
Dried fruit can provide much-needed sugar during a race.
Although every person has different nutritional needs, there are some benchmarks that you can apply to your nutritional training. Sports nutritionist Nancy Clark says at beginnertriathlete.com that exercise sessions between one and two hours require 120 calories of carbs per hour, and exercise lasting more than 2.5 hours requires 360 calories from carbs an hour. You may be on the course for six hours or more in your first half-iron and find it impossible to consume what your body needs, so the goal is to race at a pace that slows the depletion of your energy reserves.
Sugar is one of the best ways to supply your body with energy, and that includes things like sports drinks, gels and dried fruit. Sports drinks serve the dual purpose of keeping you hydrated. Vary your sugar sources for the best results. Train with the same foods that you will be eating on race day, so that you can bike or run while you eat, and to ensure that your digestive tract can handle them while you race.
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