Benefit more from your marathon training or triathlon training without increasing training time

There’s no doubt that marathon training, triathlon training and the like are time-consuming pursuits. And as you begin to flesh out your endurance sports goals for this New Year, you might be wondering how you’ll ever find all the training time you need to achieve those goals. But before you start to look for ways to increase the quantity of your training, first determine how you can increase its quality. That’s because most endurance athletes can get more out of the time they’re already spending on their marathon training or triathlon training programs by simply bumping up the quality of some of their workouts.

A high-quality training program should be well-rounded and include a real mix of workouts every week. Endurance athletes often waste time by doing too many similar workouts—lots of prolonged, steady, moderate-paced aerobic workouts—and not enough threshold work, speed intervals, technique work and/or resistance training. If you’re a cyclist or a runner, make sure your training program includes three quality workouts per week—two high-intensity sessions and one long endurance session. If you’re in triathlon training, do two quality workouts—one high-intensity workout and one long endurance workout—per week in each discipline.