Joe Friel - Training bible
aoneill69
Posts: 206
in General Chat
after living and sleeping with my 2 beginner tri books for last 6 months i ordered Joe Friel triathlon training bible - WTF!...would take me a year to read/understand...so have gone back to my pieced together training plan and forum lists ...anyone recommend a 'beginner to improver' book ?
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Comments
Use the forums to ask questions if you do not understand something.
It will make you a better triathlete in the long run - just be patient!
I'm sure my performance would improve if I took a more scientific approach to training but as I'm a recreational triathlete, albeit one intent on getting better, I think there's a better balance to be had between structure & intuition.
In fairness, the whole point of a "bible" is that it's not a rigid prescription to follow the book from page 1 to the last page, it's there for ongoing reference and in many areas it hits the spot. For example, when I refer to intuition above, I think most self-trained athletes would be potentially prone to overtraining and the section dealing with how to recognise overtraining is very good.
I was out of action last November so spent a couple of weeks reading it cover to cover. It helped me plan the season ahead - and understand a bit more about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Now I find it a really useful reference book.
"Triathlon Start To Finish" by Sam Murphy is quite good. It's very simple to follow.
maybe it works better of you've 600 hours a year to train with, but at 350 hours a year some weeks were 5 hours training, including weights. I know its intended as a guide rather a strict plan in itself, but I had no idea where to go from the skeleton that does get (excellently) explained and led to.
didds
Eric Harr - Triathlon Training in Four Hours a Week - this is very 'american' however gives you a very good intro to the basics, some training plans, nutrition and also adds stretch/weights examples to add to the mix....if your lacking motivation at all it has a load of 'reasons to do a tri and motivational stuff'...surprised me because it does help when you feel you are going backwards or the world is against you...i.e. crap run/swim/punctures/ etc..
2nd book was Joe Beer - Need to Know Triathlon - far more british - factual but also a great source of info...(and some extended training plans to follow)
I too have Coneheads book, girlfriends reading it at the moment, I maybe should have mader her buy her own copy!