Wanting to quantify the situation I inevitably turned to the logs, totalling training hours over the past sixteen weeks – a sufficient period for an Ironman build. Unsurprisingly it was less than previous races, but my perception that I’d barely trained was equally far from the truth. Over the four month period I average roughly ten hours per week. More than nothing, but less than I used to do.

Although hours give a limited account of preparations, I couldn’t resist comparing with previous races. Only my recent run training approaches the volumes of my more successful endeavours. But perhaps comparison with last year is more relevant, overall training volume is closer; should I expect a similar swim, a slower bike, but a faster run?

But it’s not just how many hours you do, it’s how you do them. The 2010 Ironman World Championship or ITU Long Distance Worlds in 2009 demonstrate the point – performances failed to live up to the investment. It may be reassuring to know I’ve trained more than I imagined; it just doesn’t say much about how I might race. And that perspective on performance is what I’m after.

Those slim blue lines that pass for swim training worry me. I vividly remember my arms abandoning me during the second half of the Challenge Henley swim; and I suspect I may be lining up for a similar experience. I am concerned enough that I made a rare visit to the pool. With a Wetronome beeping under my goggle strap I performed a set of 200s hoping to gain a feel for my current race pace. The choice of 200s over 400s says it all; it’s depressing to think how I would have cruised through that set in 2010. That’s what you get for dodging the water. I might – with careful pacing – manage around a 1:10 with minimal suffering. It could be worse.

The cycling and running I do is of good power and pace, but I lack the volume I’ve had before. With less data to guide me I turned to another source of information – the disastrous race of 2009, when an abscess kept me out of the saddle leading to a 6:18 bike and a 4:30 run. I am confident that being able to sit and pedal for the entire 180km course will see me circuit the island faster than that; and last season assures me I can run a better marathon. It remains unknown what will happen when I combine those two and throw in a swim, but I’ve dragged myself through enough tough days to get the job done.

Race day remains a mystery. But I can put the spectre of a nightmare day to the back of my mind. I am less prepared than at previous races, but there’s been sufficient work to get me to the finish time in a respectable time.

The presence of the word Art in the title is telling: this is a book built on experience and a genuine passion for good running. It isn’t a manual of tables and charts from which you can build your own training program; you certainly can develop a program, but the book requires the reader to engage and understand the principles behind it. The Art of Running Faster is divided into two halves. The first focuses on the fundamentals of run training with an emphasis on achieving efficient technique, the second looks at refining training to peak for a race. This is about training smarter – Goater repeatedly stresses the need for running to be skilful and every session to have a purpose. There are no references to percentages of heart rate and volume is mentioned in asides; what matters is how you run and how directed that running is.

There is little to disagree with here. All too often run training is viewed as a matter of going out and logging the miles, and while that is part of the process, running faster takes more than clocking up the distance. I appreciated the emphasis on technique and developing good run form, having put a lot of work into this area myself. But I wonder how easily the descriptions can be followed if you hadn’t been coached towards better technique. The chapter on stretching uses photographs to illustrate each exercise, and a similar approach would have been helpful for overall technique. Those concerns aside, guidance is practical and firmly based on experience, as Goater freely admits.

A long run, a fartlek run, a hill session or some speed work are the staples of the week and in the second half the book outlines how to use the latter two. Readers are not handed a set of sessions, but rather talked through the purpose and process of using this form of training along with how it might vary through the season. Each new concept is wrapped in an anecdote – stories from Goater’s own history or that of runners he has known – evoking the feel of a trackside lecture from an old-school coach. The chapter on the mental approach to racing is a prime example: it stands out as an insight into elite racing more than a guide to sports psychology.

There is nothing groundbreaking here, but concepts are clearly explained and the abundant anecdotes make the book much more than a dry, technical manual. The tools to build a training program are provided with minimal hand-holding; all the principles are there, but it’s up to the reader to develop their own plans. As an experienced runner I was relieved to be left to my own devices. For those that need it there is an appendix with a few brief example training plans, but the book itself is mercifully free of tables of paces, heart rates or familiar training sessions.

This definitely isn’t a “run your fastest 10K in eight weeks” book. Novice runners might find that the information isn’t explicit enough for them to build a running plan from. Those with more experience, looking for ways to gain an edge, will likely pick up a few new tricks. And if not, the insights into British running history will keep you entertained along the way; there are the makings of a separate biography in here. I certainly gained some new ideas and finished the book eager to train.

My copy of The Art of Running Faster by Julian Goater and Don Melvin was kindly provided in eBook format by the publisher Human Kinetics.

It’s no surprise. After all, earlier this year I made the decision to train for pleasure and as a consequence my fitness is where it deserves to be. I have done a fraction of the cycling I would normally do, a minimum of swimming and only made any form of progress with running. Whether I look at it in hours or draw up more complicated charts simply stated – I am unprepared.

So forget the taper – recovery requires fatigue. It’s better for me to continue training, keep practicing and developing the limited fitness I have. I am unlikely to do enough in the next two weeks to significantly impact the result in either direction, but I can at least bolster my confidence. I’m going to line up behind the start line, memories of watching last year’s swim start in my mind, hoping that four years experience and training is enough to bluff my way through the subsequent 141 miles. If it’s not I am in for a very rough day.

Leaving the criticism aside for now a lot of positives have come from the challenge. Thirty runs of at least thirty minutes over thirty days has enforced a level of consistency on my training that had been absent so far this year. I am unequivocally fitter for it and my perception of running has changed for the positive. If I draw a Performance Management Chart (PMC) for run training so far this year, the blue fitness curve has reached a level I haven’t seen in eighteen months, a level I have successfully raced at.

Consistent, steady growth in fitness; sustainable, but hard to take further with a mere thirty minutes a day. Of course the challenge allows me to go further, volume and pace are unrestricted, but doing so while cycling and swimming is another matter, especially when coming from a relatively low level of fitness. You could view the last month as the creation of my run base – building a platform on which I can properly develop as a runner. After eighteen months of inconsistency it remains an ongoing task, it will take more than a series of homogeneous runs to complete this journey.

Nineteen hours covering roughly 223 km (139 miles) at an average heart rate of 131 beats per minutes, an average speed of 12.3 km/hour (7.5 miles/hour) and an average cadence of 90. The first week varied in distance and duration, but after that each session was largely the same; speed, heart rate and cadence track each other – lower for easy sessions, higher for the harder ones. Not that I ever ran hard. This frequency was new enough without adding any additional stress, I was happy to complete the challenge in the simplest – easiest – manner possible. Up till now I’ve lacked the confidence to push myself further.

It feels like I’m damning the exercise with faint praise. It did its job and delivered exactly what I was looking for – I am fitter. As a tool the consistent run challenge has always worked to lift fitness and to bring me into reasonable running shape. On its own – as it was this April – it has never brought me into my best run form. That takes more. The first time I tried this approach I used a mix of distances and speed, racing every week in addition to the daily run; the second was much the same, but this time it would have been reaching too far. Next time, quite possibly in June, I will push for more, and I’ll do so on a firmer foundation with the confidence to achieve it.

Having seen I can comfortably run every day and feeling the benefits of it I need to focus on endurance and pace. I feel an urge to race again.

The core Lanzarote training day included swim, bike and run, I completed it five times. I never took a full day off, but I didn’t train as heavily as on previous trips either – the first week over twenty hours and the second in its teens. Shorter sessions with bursts of higher intensity when I attacked hills offered a different stimulus to the long steady-state rides of past seasons. Daily training load – the cumulative work done – was lower, but when I worked, I worked hard. I could have done more, I possibly should have; with Ironman Lanzarote less than three weeks away I feel unprepared, perhaps I went too far in my desire not to do too much.

The ‘enough’ debate remained open the entire fortnight and I found myself arguing for less. Not specifically for myself – I could handle more, but my hard efforts were sufficient – but Gill’s need to hit a volume didn’t always match her ability to handle the load. On occasions we crossed the line: an extra rep up the Donkey Trail that left both our legs sore or over-extending (and under-eating) a ride and limping home; not the most productive uses of our time. I felt those sessions in my daily run, compromising pace to ensure I would complete my thirty days of running challenge. More can be good, but not when it sees you abandoning other workouts or struggling to complete a session with reasonable form.

Sometimes we got it right; four Donkey Trail reps for me to Gill’s three proving a decent workout on an easier day. Despite the overall lighter load it was enough to leave me feeling tired, to wake with aching legs and a desire to sleep more. There was never an exact answer to the question of ‘just enough’, that manageable sense of fatigue was my guideline and I erred on the side of caution. The balance wasn’t perfect. I hoped to push both bike and run further than I did, but the interplay between the two, and the obvious impact on my legs, never allowed it. Gill would have benefited from running more, a better compromise with riding could have been achieved. But the result is we’ve returned home fitter and without the need for a recovery week.

The fortnight comfortable bridged training camp and holiday, delivering on both fronts. When I wasn’t training – which was a lot of the time – I relaxed, I lounged under warm, sunny skies a fully loaded Kindle and review copy of The Art of Running Faster to hand, it’s been a while since I’ve taken a break like that. I can’t regret training less because I’ve come back refreshed and motivated.

A good pattern is often the basis of successful training, a routine that works – that leads to progression in fitness and performance. While these routines share common ground, they equally possess subtle differences, unique patterns tailored to our individual needs. I have examined my routines in many different ways – charts and analyses that attempt to model the impact of my training, abstracting swim, bike and run to numbers. I know that for many unfamiliar with the system and tools I use it can be confusing and doesn’t give a strong sense of what I am doing; the pattern of training isn’t clear. So I’ve tried a different approach, considering only one variable, duration, and focusing on it’s pattern over time. We’re revisiting four years of Ironman training data, but this time in a much simpler way

All you need to understand is the following: in the charts above each square represents a single day and the darker the square the more training I did on that day. You can pick any square and immediately see how it stands in comparison with any other: 2009, week 35, day 4 was a moderate training day, consisting of (you’ll need to open the full-size image to pick out details) a swim, bike and run. It’s at the larger scale I find the heat maps more interesting – you can clearly see distinct blocks of training, patterns of volume relating to my focus at the time.

The pattern of a working athlete in early 2008, low volume in the week paired with busy weekends. Then dense, dark periods preceding big races, followed by pale patches of recovery as I solely train through 2009 and into 2010. A shift in 2011, less darkness, but frequency, many more moderates volume days, consistent over a longer period of time (excuse the swim record, it’s inaccurate, I honestly did swim more than that). Leading to an uncertain 2012, slowly finding its feet along similar lines to the year before.

In the hunt for a ‘good’ pattern, what do I find? Unsurprisingly those periods where I densely train – where few light squares appear – are the most productive. The big days – those dark squares – can be beneficial, but too many tend to break up those dense blocks of training; a scattering seems to work well. A different, pictorial, approach leads to much the same conclusion as more complex routes. Train regularly, sometimes train long, beware of doing too much.

The wind has been one of the constant features of my many trips to Lanzarote and while it remains ever present this time round there are changes. The days still start with a swim, after a large breakfast a bike and finish with a pre-dinner run, but beyond this my spartan approach to training camps has been abandoned. Two of us in an apartment that has previously held three, now I’m upgraded to a real bed, the sofa a place to sit, reading or working with a glass of red wine on the table in front of me. The larder is well stocked – ample food to tide us over between training sessions and of course the aforementioned wine. I’m attempting – unsuccessfully – to keep our lounge uncluttered, a place to relax after the day’s efforts, but already discarded kit (my own) is making its presence known. After dinner we stroll along the beach front browsing tourist shops, we seem to have created a strange union of training camp and holiday.

Beyond these superficial changes, I am abandoning the ethos that ‘more is better’, and instead hoping to do ‘just enough’. I want to return from this camp fit and healthy, I don’t want the post-camp slump that has often followed. To that end rather than attempting to simply accumulate training until I crack I aim to complete a manageable volume every day with two easier days to help absorb the load. Perhaps I can stretch myself enough without breaking.

Some things remain the same. Rules. Over breakfast Gill and I discuss how we will eat in a bid to shed a little unneeded weight. Plans are formulated to allow treats, effectively access to desserts or alcohol on the basis of daily performance, a certain amount of work needs to be done to contemplate these items. And further rules define our days – we will get up each morning and swim, at least thirty minutes, but preferably sixty; we will bike on all, but one easy day and three to four hours should be the minimum; I of course will be running at least thirty minutes a day as part of my thirty days of running, unfortunately Gill strained her ankle the day before we left so we wait to see what she can manage. Differences in speed necessitate a system for riding together – waiting at major turns, hill climbs become reps for me, I accept a certain slowing of pace knowing I will work that much harder elsewhere.

But I remain struck by how things change. A few principles remain, but the practice is very different. It feels positive, I am striking a better balance between training and enjoying that training. I am relaxed in my approach. It is a pleasure to not stress about how many hours I’ve achieved or how hard I’ve gone (though I remain acutely aware of the potential Strava records). I could get used to this training camp-holiday hybrid, should I avoid that post-camp slump I will be sold.

I was quite willing to reduce the system down to four simple zones reflecting the major regions long distance triathletes train, but practically a five zone system like Friel’s (ignoring his division of the fifth zone) makes life easier – athletes are familiar with it and my main coaching tool, Training Peaks, readily supports it. In practice additional layers of detail are needed, defining workouts by heart rate, power, pace, RPE and descriptively to help guide an athlete through the session. Seemingly simple systems mingle and the result is additional complexity, intent lying somewhere in the overlap of differing zones. I write about the value of perceived exertion in guiding training, but it takes time to develop confidence in our interpretations; for each of us feel is distinct.

From an idealistic start with four zones, I’ve settle on many more. Laying ten levels of perceived exertion (RPE) and seven or eight descriptive names over the top of the five zone system; taking terms from power training that sat awkwardly between heart rate zones and ordering them from recovery to max effort. Rather than referring to sweet spot as the bottom of zone 4, or perhaps the top of zone 3, I give it its own space, clarifying heart rate, power, pace and RPE. The system is led by RPE and names, because to me they are more meaningful divisions, session plans are built targeting a particular region – a sweet spot session, a threshold session, an endurance session; then I build a workout and determine zones.

The world doesn’t need more zones, but I need guidelines to ensure consistency. I am happy for my athletes to work with zones, but I still want them to appreciate their training in more descriptive terms, to have an understanding how their zones feel and relate so they can intuitively work towards appropriate goal. I want there to be a clear distinction between training at an inappropriate intensity and being on the borderlines, not serious concern when they are a watt or two off target.

To clarify my own thoughts as much as advise my athletes I developed the above chart, a (very) rough guide to how different levels of intensity and differing means of measuring them align. I can’t claim originality, I’ve blended a number of sources and mixed with my personal experience of training. My personal bias may limit its value for others, individuals vary, sports vary, but for those I coach I hope defining my terms and relating them to several methods of measuring effort will help guide the way they train. Perhaps giving them the sense that if it felt like a threshold effort, and perhaps the heart rate or power were close to the right figures, then it probably was good enough.

Of course the many charts and analyses in this blog are a testament to the fact I do still worry; not in the moment, but after the fact, then I study the numbers to gain an awareness of where I stand. At some point we all need reassurance that we’re training appropriately, whether that’s best achieved through race results, test results or through micromanagement of how we train is a more pertinent question. For me race results and occasional reviews of training data are sufficient, but not everyone likes such a casual approach.

Coaching has pulled me back into the mess of training zones. The numerous systems may frustrate me, but they serve a purpose – communication. What do terms like recovery, easy, steady, hard, threshold, or max effort mean? Every athlete has their own interpretation, many need a precise definition. If you’ve invested in a coach you want to be certain you’re training correctly. A lot of my communication, especially in the early days of a coaching relationship, focuses on training zones and intensity. It’s not just a question of how hard to train, it’s how to measure it. There are numerous ways to measure effort – power, pace, heart rate, RPE – and they don’t necessarily agree; where one system says we’re on target, another claims it’s too much.

My own training data confirms as much. A comparison of heart rate and power during 2009 (data I had to hand) show clear signs of the disparity between my heart rate zones and my power zones. On the left I divide the chart by Friel’s power zones (derived from Coggan’s zones) and on the right Friel’s heart rate zones, unsurprisingly they match poorly. Where power is simply the work we are doing, heart rate is a response to it, it lags and is influenced by external factors and our own condition, the correlation between the two is weak. So back in 2009 heart rate zone 1 encompassed both power zones 1 and 2, and heart rate zone 2 was more comparable to power zone 3. No wonder I felt inadequate! Two years on, I’m sure the relationship looks different.

So how to deal with this? Follow one system – if you have power use power, if you have pace use pace and if you only have heart rate use heart rate; even then always be aware of feel (RPE). The relationships may – at times – be weak, but none of these measures stand in isolation, there is a slight hierarchy rather than a union, but it pays to be able to observe them all. After years of doing that, I came to the conclusion that while heart rate and power often disagreed, how I felt was rarely wrong.

Thirty runs of at least thirty minutes in thirty days.

The appeal was obvious, I liked the rules, I liked the simplicity and I liked the symmetry around thirty. I knew there was nothing special in this number, it was an arbitrary choice, about a month of regular running without interruption. Focussing on frequency, its significance came in the form of discipline, demonstrating a willingness to just keep training. Tired, hungry, wet or miserable – I would still have to go out and put one foot in front of the other. But there was nothing to stop me running further or faster should I feel inclined.

Of course I adopted a hardline approach: I had to run – or at least run/walk – every day and it had to be for at least thirty minutes. There was no banking extra runs to earn a break, I could run once, twice or even three times in a day and I would still have to run the day after. There was no dividing the time, I couldn’t top up a twenty-five minute run in the morning with five minutes in the afternoon, thirty continuous minutes, one after the other. There were no free passes. Break the rules just once and the game was over. Awareness of the impact of training became heightened, the choice to train harder or longer having added implications in light of the need to be consistent; the benefits of frequency and consistency balanced against those of intensity and duration.

Challenges are part of my motivational repertoire – trying to go further or faster, or increasing rank on a Strava segment; chasing small milestones on the way to bigger things. Thirty days of running laid out a new template that came to define many periods of training; not necessarily optimal, but whenever motivation waned, effective. Forty kilometres of swimming in a week, fifteen in a day, forty days of cycling, or riding the length of a country in two weeks, the same pattern – a given workload in a given time. Simple, easily measured targets – how far, how often, or how long – no real pressure, just switch the brain off and train.

The concern, of course, is of injury or perhaps junk milage. Certainly injury is a genuine risk, any form of excessive overload can present it, and potentially this is excessive. I jump into a challenge carefully, when I feel I am ready, I measure out my effort over the timeframe, and I accept that at any sign of injury I will abandon my goal. And junk mileage? Sometimes the training is slow or easy, but it can be hard, or long, or any other combination that strains my body. There are quality sessions, and then on the days when I might have rested, I train again. There may be more effective, more targeted approaches, but when I am becoming bogged down in the minutia of a plan, this works – I can simply enjoy training; a few sessions that some might term ‘junk’ is a small price to pay for the overall gain.

So the first of April – a month of thirty days – in a year when, lets be honest, my motivation is not at its peak is the perfect time to play the game once more. Thirty runs of at least thirty minutes in thirty days. I will run every day in April, even a second weekend of birthday celebrations for my girlfriend didn’t stop me completing run number one; it was slow and I did have some concerns about my stomach, but I started as I mean to go on.