Welcome to Build Week 1, team, and welcome to the speed phase. 🚀

Before we talk about going faster, let’s take a moment to look back at how we got here.

Remember those winter mornings?

The dark starts. The cold car park. Pulling on another layer before the long ride. Laps in the pool that felt steady rather than thrilling, and runs where the only goal was to keep it comfortable.

Then there were the gym sessions. The squats, the lunges, the core work. None of it felt very “triathlon” at the time.

And if we’re honest, some of you probably wondered at some point, “When do we get to go fast?”

Here’s the thing. Every one of those sessions had a job.

Why we built the engine first

Think of your body like a car.

Over winter we weren’t driving it hard. We were building it. The endurance work built a bigger engine: a heart and lungs that can deliver more oxygen, and muscles that can keep working for longer. The strength work built the chassis: a body strong enough to hold its shape, protect your joints and absorb the load of harder training.

That order matters.

If you put a big, fast engine into a car with a weak frame, something eventually breaks. If you try to race a car with a tiny engine, it overheats the moment you push it. That’s why we don’t start the season with speed. Speed without a base leads to injury, burnout, or sessions that fall apart halfway through.

You’ve done the building. Now it’s time to learn how to drive it.

Now we learn the gears

The speed phase doesn’t mean every session gets faster. It means we start using different gears, on purpose.

Most of your week stays in an easy gear. A few key sessions ask you to shift up to a harder gear for a set amount of time, then back down to recover. Learning when to shift, and how long to hold each gear, is the skill we’re building now.

Your test results are your speedometer

The swim and run tests we’ve just done, like the time trial in Recovery Week, aren’t a score and they aren’t a judgement. They’re your speedometer. They tell your coach how fast you are right now, so each session can give you a pace that’s right for you. Not the person in the next lane, and not the pace you ran three years ago.

Here’s how that looks in each sport:

🏊 Swim: Your test gives you a CSS (Critical Swim Speed). That’s your steady-hard pace, the fastest pace you can hold for a long time without falling apart. If your CSS is 1:50 per 100 m, then 100 m at CSS pace takes about 1:50, and 200 m takes about 3:40. Work out your CSS pace here.

🏃 Run: Your coach turns your time trial into a training pace. It’s usually a little slower than your all-out test, because in training you’re doing several efforts, not just one. Hold that pace, not your race pace.

🚴 Bike: Bike sessions use your bike numbers, either power or effort. Your swim and run results can’t tell you how hard to ride.

The rocket start (we’ve all done it)

Picture the first hard set of the block.

The coach says “go”, the adrenaline kicks in, and off you fly. The first effort feels amazing. You’re flying!

By the third effort your arms are heavy, your breathing is ragged and your technique has gone. By the last one you’re hanging on and you’re slower than the pace you were given.

Sound familiar? It happens to almost everyone.

That’s why the golden rule of the speed phase is simple: hard sessions should feel hard, but controlled. You should be able to finish the last effort as well as you did the first. If you can’t, you didn’t try too little. You started too fast.

A good speed session isn’t the one where you set a personal best on the first effort. It’s the one where every effort looks the same.

Easy days are part of the plan

This is the bit most people skip.

Your easy sessions matter just as much as the hard ones. They’re when your body repairs and adapts. That’s where the fitness actually gets built.

If you push your easy runs and rides, you arrive at the next hard session already tired, and that session suffers. So keep them truly easy. On the run or bike, you should be able to chat. In the pool, it should feel smooth and unforced.

Easy days easy. Hard days controlled. That’s the whole secret.

New to this? Just remember three things

1. Know your target before you start. Check the pace in your session. If you don’t have one, ask your coach before the set begins, not halfway through.
2. Take the full rest. The recovery written in your session is there for a reason. It’s part of the workout, not a break from it.
3. Keep your easy days easy. Always.

One squad, different journeys

Whether you’re training for short course, long course or your very first race, everyone follows the same idea. The difference is the amount.

Our short course athletes will see a bit more structured speed work. Our long course athletes keep endurance as the backbone, with speed added carefully around it. Our first season athletes keep building confidence, technique and consistency. Your coach sets the right mix for you. Your job is to follow your own plan, not the plan of the person beside you.

Want the bigger picture?

Listen to Ollie and Michelle talk through the whole season in our September Training Phase guide and podcast, or revisit From Base to Speed for the background to this block.

You’ve built the engine.

Now let’s learn to drive it. Patiently, with control, one session at a time.

See you at training.

💙💛
Team TA