Success stories / Piero
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A time crunched athlete
Piero is a triathlete and runner, born in 1988.
In 2021 he has focused mostly on triathlon for the first half of the season and then moved to marathon training with his goal of competing in the Firenze Marathon as a season finale.
He managed to complete few triathlon events, with the highlight of the olympic distance (5i50 Ironman) in Cervia.
He was committed to follow a demanding training plan despite a full time job and 1 (soon 2!) daughter and a very busy life.
He managed to overcome all his challenges, adapt and hold on to the plan to get the result he wanted.
CASE STUDY - Road to firenze 2021
Training Load
Piero finished his triathlon season on the 19/09, and undertook marathon training straight after. Not ideal, but race planning will improve overtime!
However, he clocked almost 60km per week for 10 weeks, peaking to a 100km week. He has spent ~6.5 hours per week to get to his final result. The majority of his training - as expected - was in Z3 but, factoring in the right amount of intensity helped his upper end, 'dragging' his base fitness to a good level and perform as planned.
Load & Peak
His training load steadily increased up to a peak of ~58 running CTL. He got to the marathon not too tired, so that he was able to perform despite other stressors due to travel and work.
Progress
As you can see, improvements were made on the upper end (up to 1min effort) and lower end (90min +). Piero consistently trained throughout the year therefore margin to improve during this season was quite tight.
Firenze
Not the perfect conditions in Florence for a marathon, but things went - almost - by plan for Piero. After an encouraging first 1:40 split (4:46'/km) he completed the second half in 1:50 (5:03'/km) making it a 10% positive split.
He could probably be faster in that 2nd half but being only his first marathon, that was a bang-on performance. Not only he was satisfied with the result, he was also fresh, uninjured and ready to celebrate at the end.