[hamish_martin]

Hi guys,

I’m about to purchase the L2 Ironman training plan to help with my schedule this year. Races this year are the Edinburgh half marathon (30th May) – C priority, Cholmondeley 70.3 (20th June) – B priority, and then Ironman Tallinn (7 August) – A priority. Ideally I would start training next week (i.e. 8 February).

So I guess two questions here, how should I extend the 23 week course so it is 26 weeks, and does the timing of my half marathon, and 70.3 work, or does it negatively impact the programmes timing at all?

Also no swimming at the moment due to lockdown here in the UK, but I will use the blogs advice around changing this.

Many thanks!

Hamish

[David Warden]

Hamish,

Welcome to the forums! really happy to hear about your 2021 schedule. What a fantastic setup for the year.

To extend your 23-week IM L2 plan to 26 weeks, repeat weeks 1, 2, and 4 at the very beginning. Then start over in order. For example, set your end date for the IM, and you’ll have 3 blank weeks before the plan starts. Copy week 1, 2, and 4 to fill those week and, voila! 26-week plan.

David

[hamish_martin]

Hi David.

Thank you so much for this – very helpful!

I have now purchased the plan and have a couple of follow on questions which hopefully you can help me with:
– Testing: most of the CTs in the plan are CT31, for these I propose keeping the WU and WD elements and just swapping the 24 mins threshold for the 20 min all out test. Then for the CT25 which has 32 mins of threshold, perhaps I could swap this for the 30 min all out test? Then for the running, they are almost all RT19, I will swap the 20 mins tempo for 20 mins all out test, it will make the 50 mins of Z2 to follow difficult, but I guess that is the point?!

– Weekend cycle: these are usually a workout involving some Z2/ZX, but on the occasional weekend I would like to go on a long cycle with my fiance who is slower. Can I move the Z2/ZX sections from those weekend rises to a midweek recovery ride and replace with Z1? I wouldn’t do this every weekend, just on a couple.

– For the Edinburgh half marathon, I assume I can just do this in the place of RAe10 on the 30th May? Then for the 70.3 on June 20th, I would imagine swapping CT31 on the 17th and STT1 on the 18th for something more gentle, then no workouts on the 19th and 20th. Is it also worth missing a run the following week?

– Finally the race is on a Saturday (7th August), so I was thinking of skipping the SSI1 on the 4th of August, and moving everything from the 5th-7th a day earlier?

Thanks again, really appreciate your help!

Hamish

[David Warden]

Hamish,

– Yes, this is an excellent system if you want to test every rest week. There are multiple ways to do this, but your system will work really well. Don’t be afraid of swapping the 30 on the CT25 with 20 minutes, which has the potential advantage of you performing the same test every time (the 20 is more likely to be consistently performed than the 30, in our experience).

– For sure. You can think of each Zone segment as a block of time that you can move around independently in the week. Of course, we think the current arrangement of those blocks is optimal, but you have the flexibility of shifting those around. Plus, we all know your fiancé is going to be faster than you soon, and she’ll be on the forms later this year asking how to adjust her plan to accomodate her slow husband.

– For the HM, I would actually swap out weeks 12 and 13. That way the HM falls on a rest week with the HM replacing the 90-minute RT9. The CT31 becomes just a Zone 2 that week. Yes, change the CT31 to a Zone 2, but you can keep the STT1. It’s not that fatiguing. Maybe move it back a day. Skip the RCI1 the following week.

– On the final week, keep the SSI1, drop the RF3 and move everything back a day from Thursday on, keeping Monday as a rest day.

David

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