John B.'s Kona 2022 Plan

We have something a little different for you today. We’ve put together a short case study on how one of our athletes prepared for Kona in 2022, after a sub-par trip there pre-pandemic. We’ll also share with you the training hours necessary to put in a sub-10 performance on the Big Island, and talk a little bit about how we coach athletes to these performances. Mostly, though, we’ll let the pictures do the talking today.

John had a solid career in triathlon already when he came to us, but he wanted more. He wanted to have a strong, consistent performance at Kona.

This is THE question of coaching. What needs to be altered with an athlete’s training? Asking questions is what every coach should be excellent at, and if your coach ISN’T asking you questions, then you should have some questions for THEM.

Another classic concept. Again, make sure your coach looks for these aspects of your game.

We figured out what we would do in each discipline, and then set about making those changes.

Most of our work on both the swim and bike was about improving fatigue resistance rather than adding speed. At this distance, fatigue resistance trumps speed ANY day.

We raised the amount of time John spent on the bike in the 11 months before Kona, and he finished up around 300 hours of riding during those months.

On the run John DID need some speed, so we added some pure speed work to his program along with the fatigue resistance we focused on in the other discipline.

John shaved almost an hour off his Kona time, getting down to a very quick 9:38 at Kona 2022.

So what were John’s numbers for the 11 months leading into Kona?

Swim: 143 hours
Bike: 297 hours
Run: 154 hours
Strength: 44 hours
Total Hours = 638 over 11 months, or 14.5 hours/week.

What would we do differently next time? John has a busy full-time job and he recently got engaged, so he doesn’t have a ton of extra time in his calendar. We didn’t make a huge improvement in his swim time, so we would focus even more on trying to nudge his swim cadence up from 59-60 into the low-to-mid 60s and then spending time there so the higher turnover becomes his normal level of oxygen consumption and, therefore, a sustainable effort.