Slow, intermediate or fast – fitness lapper or Ironman, this article will help your swimming. My objective is to get you to concentrate on the three most important day-to-day aspects of swim training: having a workout to follow, understanding training theory and a tech tip to concentrate on.

Floating at the base of a 200-foot-high sheet of glacial ice, it’s hard not to be humbled in the presence of one of nature’s true wonders. Patagonia, Chile offers a unique opportunity to get up close to the glaciers of the southern ice fields.
Photos: Kevin Jackson

By increasing the length of your long run during training, you can extend your endurance for any race distance. If you run slowly enough, taking liberal walk breaks, you can continue to push back your “wall” almost indefinitely with virtually no risk of injury or excess fatigue. The most exciting part of this, for most runners, is that longer runs tend to translate into faster times.

From the early training days of Arthur Lydiard, runners have used miles to log their volume of workouts for a week. How many miles per week you ran were like badges of honor worn on your chest.

With the northern hemisphere right in the middle of summer, heat injuries are on the increase. Although heat injuries are one of the most common forms of sports injuries to effect athletes, they are totally preventable.
Photos: John Segesta

The following is a five-month Half Ironman training program to ramp up for a Half Ironman Triathlon. Shown below are mileage expectations for the build up period leading up to the race. Doing the mileage described probably won’t be enough to qualify you for Hawaii, but it will provide you with a solid foundation for a great racing experience. This is a general guideline. Depending on your skill sets, you will need to make some adjustments. For instance, if you are aquatically challenged, then you will need to do more yards than I have shown.

It’s difficult to put into words the feeling of reaching the summit of a 14,000-foot peak, but a common response when asked is, “It is something you have to do.”

In a prior article, I introduced a notion that training for sports competition at the elite level was the antithesis of a healthy activity. Since many people seem to think that athletes are almost by definition healthy, I thought I might develop that idea a bit further in this follow-up article.

In her new book, Run Your First Marathon,Grete Waitz, nine-time winner of the New York City marathon, points out one of the wonderful draws of the marathon. “No matter who we are,” she writes, “at some point we are all first-time marathoners. All of us share that. That’s the beauty of the race — Olympians and all-comers share the same event.”

I'm don't remember exactly when I joined my first running club, but I have vivid memories of the club itself. It was the Ann Arbor (Michigan) Track Club, and someone I'd met at a race must have persuaded me to attend a track workout.