When I started putting together LiverMan 100, I was nowhere near in good enough shape to take it on. I was coming off of a year of surgeries where staying active was really difficult and I was drastically limited in what types of activity I could even do. While going from 0 to 100 is a daunting endeavor, if I can do it. You can too. It takes two things: a real desire to do it and consistency. It wasn't ever about any one big workout, in fact really the opposite. It was playing the long game, avoiding injury and burnout and slowly building up my base. It took a lot of time (for me at least) and it was worth it.
While I'm obviously not a certified triathlon or endurance coach, I'm sharing the plan that I put together and used to train for LiverMan 100. It's hard to figure out where to begin if you're in a place similar to where I was: out of shape and trying to get back into exercising regularly. For me, it was really helpful to start by looking at the end goal and working backwards. Where would I comfortably want to be a week out from the race? And then where would I need to be the week before that? A month before that? 2 months before that?
Here's what I ended up with...
November: Wanted to ease into it, build a strength base and get used to swimming again. Was also dealing with knee issues and couldn't really hike or bike.
- Swim 2x/week (first swims were slow and around 1000 yards)
- Lift 4x/week (2 upper body, 2 lower body)
December: Same as November, joined a swim group (shoutout to Denver Squid!) to swim with good swimmers and get a little coaching.
- Swim 2x/week (1000-2000 yards each)
- Lift 4x/week (2 upper body, 2 lower body)
January: Similar, added a swim day and started biking. Knee was getting a little better here and tolerated easing into biking.
- Swim 3x/week (1000-2500 yards)
- Bike 1x/week (7-10 miles)
- Lift 4x/week (2 upper body, 2 lower body)
February: Added another swim day. My thought process was to really dial in the swimming while my knee was still giving me trouble.
- Swim 4x/week (1000-2500 yards)
- Bike 1x/week (10-20 miles)
- Lift 4x/week
March: Dialed back a swim day to add a run day. Was really short and slow.
- Swim 3x/week
- Bike 1x/week (10-20 miles)
- Run 1x/week (1-2 miles)
- Lift 4x/week
April:
- Swim 2x/week
- Bike 2x/week (1 slow, long ride to build up, 25 miles to start the month and adding 5 miles each week)
- Run 2x/week (1-3 miles)
- Lift 3x/week (2 leg days, 1 upper day)
May:
- Swim 1x/week
- Bike 3x/week (long ride started the month at 40 miles, ended at 54)
- Hike 3x/week (realized running wasn't ideal since it would all be hiking, stair machine or hiked 1-2 hours), Mt. Morrison is great for this if you're in Denver area
- Lift 2x/week (1 leg day, 1 upper day)
June:
- Swim 1x/week
- Bike 3x/week (got one long ride in before the race, 60 miles and after a Mt Morrison speed hike)
- Hike 3x/week
- Lift 1x/week (1 leg day)
About 10 days before I started to taper which meant I cut most of my mileage in half so that my body could start to rest and recover and be ready to go on race day. And then I had my last workout 2 days before so I could fully rest and be ready to go!
There are without a doubt better ways to go about this: hire a training coach, follow an IronMan training plan, etc. This is just the plan that I cobbled together and what worked for me.
Things to note and some things that could have been better:
- On days where I was just worn out or didn't have it in me, I rested.
- Should have done more "brick" workouts. I don't know why they call them brick workouts but it just means two triathlon legs back to back, so in this case a hike and a bike back to back. Or a bike to a swim. These are great for getting a feel for what it will be like on race day and getting your body accustomed to doing that much volume.
- Should have started hiking earlier in the year.
- Did a ton of strength training, mostly because my knee and also because I didn't want my upper body to totally shrivel up.
- Maybe find a swim coach earlier on to dial in technique.
Learned a lot here and it was really fun and feels great to be active again. LiverMan 2025?
