WINTER TRAINING TO IMPROVE
"Base with Appropriate Pace" sessions, this is to make sure your base training is at a pace you can consistently maintain. Remember the pyramid - base before strength before speed. The more complete athlete you develop yourself, the better you will become; become adaptable and when it is really time to increase the intensity you can. BAPs are "base with appropriate pace" sessions. Appropriate base sessions are easy, economical and efficient workouts.
EASY means going as much as 50% slower than you hope to go in a race next year. Use your past season's speed as your guide and be honest. This refers to at least 80% of your weekly solo training. Biking - due to winter conditions you will go much slower than in the summer (air temperature has a real effect on speed) so racing at 21 mph means averaging 14 mph now or 18 mph racing speed means averaging 12 mph. Running - racing at 7 minute mile pace must be 9 minute per mile now. Or racing at 8.30 minute per mile pace means 10.30 minute per mile pace. Swim - Please note Ironmate does not advocate BAPs with the swim discipline due the environment being constant and the lower muscle stress means you can maintain a higher level of intensity throughout the off season.  Ironmate can hear the "that's sound really slow" brigade. Remember the better you can go slowly, the quicker you go fast. You can't mentally bash your self against a brick wall every week for months on end. "But I don't train hard all the time!" Accumulation of tough training over many months will lead to mental fatigue and de- motivation. Going slower can seem uncomfortable because you are using different muscle groups and energy systems. For long distance racing it is vital to teach your body the different paces that you will inevitably go through during the race. This is the only time of year that you can develop this part of your racing armory.
ECONOMY AND EFFICIENCY (the two "E"s) are so important. You can only maintain the two "E"s when you are not tired. There must be no mental strain. Your thoughts need to be relaxed so you can fully concentrate on one feature at a time i.e. a smooth form, a relaxed comfortable pace or keeping everything very easy so you can learn not to let your mind drift. When you race, your sole concentration is about being fast, other competitors will distract you and without learning to be efficient you will get caught up in their race. There is too much to think about when racing, so the two "E"s must be learnt to become second nature, so during any race you can go on automatic pilot and concentrate to provide a true saving of energy.
BASE - The bigger the base, the higher the peak but increasing effort and hours at the same time leads to illness and fatigue.
TRAINING - Many training schedules work with 3 weeks on and then 1 week recovery.  Ironmate advocate that at this time of year, your training cycle be 4 weeks on then use the 5th week for recovery with a reduction in hours trained. This is 4 weeks of easy progression in "time" not effort! If you are having the fourth week as recovery it means that the previous 3 weeks were too hard. As you progress through your training cycle you will move to a 3 week/1 week cycle. E.g. If are currently training 6 hours per week (360 minutes) add no more than 12 minutes each week for the next 4 weeks:
Week 1 - 360 minutes
Week 2 - 372 minutes
Week 3 - 384 minutes
Week 4 - 396 minutes
Week 5 - Reduce week 1 time by 50% (180 minutes)
Week 6 - Repeat Above - this is meant to feel easier the second time around Concentrate on increasing the hours not the effort for the next 10 weeks and aim for consistency rather than nothing during the week and all training at the weekend - better to do an hour a day with a day off than 4 hours over 2 days.
 Once you develop consistency you can progress to increasing the hours of your individual sessions.