A question we get asked a lot is how I train with my partner or a group without sacrificing my own personal goals.
The short answer is easy-be selfish and train by yourself. 😉
The real answer is a bit more complicated- you still have need to be selfish, but you can train with others!
Coach Helen is training for her first Full Ironman, a daunting task for sure, especially with being a single parent and 3 kids-one of which is only 6 years old. A small business owner and a “real” job. I (Coach Dom) am not training for Ironman-I already did mine years ago and I have different goals than her (in fact we routinely over the years always have different goals) for instance the past 3 years I’ve been heavily invested in endurance mountain biking and Xterra’s-off road triathlons, yet we train together all the time and we also train with our athletes and various groups that sometimes are doing distance races and others that are definitely not.
So how do we do it? Well she follows her plan and I follow mine. For example let’s say she needs to do an hour run at an aerobic effort, yet I need to run 39 minutes of 6 x 1 minute all out sprints with a 3-minute active rest and a warm-up/cool-down. So, for the first 10 minutes we will run together then when my watch beeps to go-I sprint ahead for my minute, then I turn around and jog back towards her for the 3 and back and forth we go. When I’ve finished my sprints, we will jog together at her pace back to our starting location. Where I then hop on a cruiser bike to spin my legs out while she completes her workout. We’re running “together” yet doing our own thing.
This works on group bike rides also with you either powering ahead or falling back at various times as long as you know the course and the people you’re riding with are made aware of it beforehand.
We have successfully been doing this for the past 5 years with little tweaks here and there. If you would like further help in how to do this or, if you have a partner that has different goals than you do but you want to train together, message us and we would love to help you figure it out.