Intensity distribution

B,

I wish you’d give me a more difficult question, like why e^pi*i = -1. But, since you’re throwing softballs, I’ll be glad to reply.

First, the 90 minutes of weekly moderate to high intensity recommend is specifically linked to the total workout duration for the week. If you have approximately 8 total hours of endurance training, then 90 minutes (20%) of that time should be moderate to high intensity. There is nothing special about 90 minutes, it just must have been linked to the weekly hours I was discussing on that podcast (and I don’t recall the podcast, I’m on so many! #humblebrag). If you train for 10 total hours, the its 2 hours of moderate to high intensity and so on. That’s the core of 80/20 training.

Second, this also does not mean that that your 20% of moderate to high intensity needs to be done in a contiguous block. That 20% is spread out over multiple days and multiple workouts, and through intervals in a given week (or any macro period: 2 weeks, 1 month… but a week at a time helps ensure you’re not going too far off track).

Although not necessarily implied by your question, that 20% does not need to be maintained in every workout. Some workouts are 100% easy, and some workouts are 50% hard. The aggregate duration for the period (a week, usually) should come up to 80% easy and 20% hard.

To address another of your questions, an athlete can handle 3-4 high intensity sessions per week if structured properly. This is possible because, as mentioned above, we spread those moderate to high intensity sessions out and also, we recommend them to be performed in intervals so that you are only consuming 2, 5, 8, 10 minutes of high intensity at a time. This distribution allows for a greater frequency of moderate to high intensity. If you were doing just 2 sessions of 40-60 minutes non-stop high intensity, then that can only be maintained perhaps twice a week.

So, let’s take a look at your sample week. Using the lower end of all of your workout ranges, you have a total of 17.5 hours of swim, paddle run, and kayak (holy s***). This gives you much more room to add moderate to high intensity! That allows for 3.5 hours of moderate to high intensity (20% of 17.5).

Additionally, you don’t need to put all the high intensity together in a single, non-stop block. Spread them out over 3-4 days and performed in intervals. For example, here is how I would modify your week. Your original schedule above above is hard to read, so here it is as an image:

https://ibb.co/ws1tWSS

and here is my modification, where HI = high to moderate intensity and 3×15 would mean 3 intervals of 15 minutes of HI on maybe 5 minutes rest:

https://ibb.co/HrSbKg0

This puts you at 3.5 to 4 ours of moderate to high intensity, and right on that 20% mark. It is 4 days of intervals, 3 days easy/off, and covers each sport at least once. The 2x interval day is with a swim, which is so easy to recover from that you can have 2x interval session if one is a swim. There is LOTS more to this art, and I recommend you review Chapter 8 of the book 80/20 Triathlon for a full review of how to build a custom week.

Of course, when you do your race in October, you won’t perform that in intervals! You’ll certainly want to change your training in the Specific phase (final 8-10 weeks) where the intervals switch to more race-specific intensity and duration. If your event is 10 hours long, for example, you won’t perform any of that higher than Zone 2, and you might not have ANY moderate to high intensity during the Specific period where you are simulating race intensity. In the General phase, however, you do want to include some intensity (20%!) to build base thresholds.

Now I need a nap.

David