HOW TO APPROACH IRONMAN TRAINING DURING RACE WEEK VS. 10 WEEKS OUT
Long-time Quintana Roo employees, Hunter and Calvin, are preparing for their first IRONMAN 70.3 in our "Joes to Pros" series. To help them see the bigger picture and understand the purpose of their differing training schedules, their coach, Coach Conrad Goeringer of Working Triathlete, explained how athletes should approach race week differently than when they are still ten weeks out.
Conrad Goeringer: Two athletes can target the same race distance, but have very different focuses. We experienced this at Quintana Roo last week with two of our athletes: Calvin Serban and Hunter Halleen. Calvin was preparing to race IRONMAN 70.3 Little Elm that weekend, while Hunter was still ten weeks away from IRONMAN 70.3 Chattanooga. Both would be swimming, riding, and running that week, but the way they needed to think about training during that week could not be more different.
One athlete was finishing the work. The other was still building it.
That contrast highlights an important reality of endurance training: your training focus, both physiologically and mentally, should look completely different depending on where you are in the training cycle.
Using Calvin and Hunter as a lens, here are five important differences in how you should approach training depending on whether your race is ten weeks away or you are just days from the start line.
1. Building Fitness vs. Expressing Fitness
Ten weeks out, your primary focus should be building fitness.
Training during this phase is designed to create physiological adaptations that will reveal themselves weeks or months later. The overall training load gradually increases and, with consistency, improvements in aerobic capacity, muscular endurance, and durability continue to accumulate.
Forging fitness requires work. Ten weeks out, you should structure your life in a way that allows you to do that work consistently. The training you complete now will largely determine how you race in ten weeks.
At this stage, the focus remains on progressive overload. Session length gradually increases, and intensity is strategically varied. For many athletes, this can also be an effective time to include a high-end fitness block, in which training becomes somewhat polarized to raise the aerobic ceiling.
On the bike, that might include VO₂ work such as 40–20 intervals at around 120–130% of threshold power, or longer threshold work like 4×8 minutes at around 95%.
As the race approaches, training gradually becomes more race-specific. Longer tempo or race-pace intervals become the cornerstone of key cycling sessions, such as 2×20 minutes at roughly 85–90% of threshold power. In this way, ten weeks out, you raise the ceiling, and over the following weeks, you begin filling it in with race-specific work.
Race week, however, serves a different purpose.
By the time race week arrives, the goal is no longer to build fitness. As we often joke with athletes during taper week at Working Triathlete, the hay is in the barn. The work is done, and the focus now shifts to expressing the fitness you have already developed.
Expressing fitness is what Calvin is striving to do this week. His job is no longer to build the engine. It is to arrive at the start line ready to use it.
Hunter, meanwhile, is still building the fitness that will allow her to reach that same point ten weeks from now.
2. Accumulating Fatigue vs. Shedding Fatigue
Ten weeks out, fatigue is not only normal but expected.
Training stress is gradually accumulating as the workload increases, and some days will naturally feel harder than others. That fatigue you feel is one of the signals that adaptation is occurring. Avoiding burnout is important, but building fitness requires accepting that you will not feel fresh or springy every day. Some sessions will feel heavy, and that is part of the process.
Recovery is still important, of course. The goal is not constant exhaustion, but a careful balance in which training stress gradually rises. At the same time, recovery is strategically integrated so the body can absorb the work and get fitter.
Race week reverses that dynamic.
Instead of allowing fatigue to accumulate, the objective becomes shedding it. Training load decreases so fatigue can dissipate while the underlying fitness remains.
Race week typically involves reducing overall training load by roughly 40–50% compared to a normal week. If a key bike session normally lasts 90–120 minutes with about 40 minutes of tempo work, race week might reduce that session to around 60 minutes with roughly 20 minutes or less at tempo. Supporting sessions also become shorter and more controlled, often lasting only 30–60 minutes with brief intervals at race pace to maintain neuromuscular sharpness.
When the taper is executed well, athletes often begin to feel noticeably better in training. What they are experiencing is not new fitness appearing suddenly, but the removal of fatigue that had been masking the fitness already there.
3. Developing Capacity vs. Executing the Race
Ten weeks before your race, your goal should still be to develop physiological capacity.
Training during this phase should target the key determinants of endurance performance. This includes improving aerobic efficiency, raising max lactate steady state, increasing VO₂ max, and building durability across longer sessions. As these qualities improve together, race pace gradually becomes more economical and sustainable.
Race week, however, shifts the emphasis to execution.
At this stage, most of the physical work has already been completed. The focus moves away from developing new capabilities and toward executing the race well with the fitness you already have. Ideally, the tactics for the race have already been practiced during the preceding weeks. The final week becomes a time to reinforce those tactics, rehearse them mentally, and make sure nothing has been overlooked. Confirm that your pacing strategy is appropriate for race day conditions, revisit your fueling and hydration plan, think through transitions, and reinforce the cues that help you stay aerodynamic on the bike and efficient during the swim and run.
The goal is simple: arrive at the start line with a clear plan for how you intend to race.
4. Long-Term Process vs. Race Week Details
Ten weeks out, success is driven by relentless consistency.
Your job is to complete key sessions week after week and build momentum across the training block. One imperfect workout rarely matters. What matters is the accumulation of months of training and the ability to string together dozens of solid training days.
In practice, this means building a daily and weekly routine that makes doing the work almost automatic. It also means, as the adage goes, embracing the process.
As the race approaches, your priorities begin to narrow.
During race week, the work itself is largely finished. Your focus should shift toward the details that help you arrive at the start line rested, organized, and mentally clear.
Sleep, nutrition, equipment, travel logistics, and race-day planning all become more important. Small decisions during this week can influence performance.
With the athletes I coach, we emphasize the importance of reducing overall allostatic load during this period. Give yourself permission to postpone stressful decisions or non-urgent matters until after the race. As race day approaches, simplifying your schedule and doing less often helps athletes perform better.
In other words, Calvin’s week is about rest, clarity, and organization. Hunter’s is still about consistent execution of work.
5. Evaluation vs. Commitment
Ten weeks out, part of your psychological task should be evaluation.
Training provides constant feedback on your fitness, and you should pay attention to it. Use workouts to understand where you are improving and where you still have room to grow. Notice whether intervals are becoming more manageable, whether race pace feels more sustainable, and which aspects of performance still need development. When there is still time to adjust the training process, such reflection is valuable.
Race week, however, requires a different mindset.
By the time you reach race week, all of the fitness you will race with has already been established. Continuing to analyze whether you are ready or second-guessing the work you have done rarely improves performance.
Instead, the final week should be used to replace evaluation with commitment.
Clarify your pacing strategy. Revisit your fueling plan. Visualize the key moments of the race and how you intend to handle them. By the time you arrive at the start line, the plan should feel simple and obvious, enabling you to race on instinct.
Training rewards thoughtful evaluation, whereas racing rewards clarity and decisiveness.
Same Race Distance. Very Different Focus.
During his race week, Calvin’s job was straightforward. Arrive at the start line rested, organized, and ready to execute the race he has spent months preparing for.
At ten weeks out, Hunter’s job is different. Her focus is still on building the fitness that will allow her to race well ten weeks from now.
If you are training for a race yourself, the lesson is to do the work during the training cycle so that when race week arrives, you have a reservoir of fitness to express. When that work has been done well, taper week often brings a sense of clarity. The plan is already in place, the fitness is already there, and the focus shifts to executing the race you prepared for.
Conrad Goeringer is an Ironman Certified Coach based out of Nashville, TN. He is the founder of Working Triathlete and author of the book The Working Triathlete. His passion is helping athletes of all levels and with all schedules achieve their endurance goals. Reach out to learn more about coaching packages and for a free consultation.
