CVL on the Road to a Pro Card

CVL lives in Iowa City, IA and his dream is to be a pro triathlete. We started working on this goal when he was just out of high school. I have coached him for about 5 years--with a break in the middle when he went to college to compete in cross country, track, and swimming.



He did a single-sport bike season in the fall to get his cycling up to par. (These pictures are from when he visited TN to help me get ready for IMAZ.) Now he is in winter base training. Although he is training to specialize in non-drafting Olympic distance, what most people don't realize is that you can do almost unlimited base building even for short course.



His most recent training week was as follows:

30,000 yards swimming
40 miles running
6:15 cycling
3 x strength training

He is building towards the base training goal of:

35-40,000 yards swimming
50-60 miles running
200-250 miles cycling
3-4 x strength training

As base training this training period is almost exclusively Zone 2/3---low to medium intensity, focusing on efficiency and technique. My stomach turns imagining trying to fit in all this training myself---in fact it is more than most iron distance triathletes. But this is not unusual for a pro/elite short course specialist. This will set the stage for when he starts doing intensity training--look out.