2024 Weekly Volume Distributions

Below is a summary of the distribution of my weekly SBR volumes and total Training time for 2024:

Swim

We saw earlier that I swam 245,610 yards in 2024.  My average weekly volume turned out to be 4,723 yards.  Here is how my weekly swim volume was distributed:

My most frequent weekly swim volume was between 5,000 and 9,999 yards--this happened in 23 weeks in 2024 or 44% of the time.  I only had 4 weeks where my volume climbed above 10,000 yards--this is something that I'd like to change in 2025--perhaps 8-10 weeks is a good target to shoot for.  

Also, note the ZERO weeks--1 out of 4.  This is somewhat of a design feature of my training as I take a few months off in the fall/early winter each year.

Bike

I biked 10,471 miles in 2024--an average of 201 miles/week.  Here is the distribution of weekly bike miles:

My most common week was 200-249 miles and nearly 60% of the weeks I'm 200+ miles.  I had no ZERO weeks but had 1 week below 100.  That was in November when we were sailing around the Galapagos and during that week I snuck in 80 miles on the ship.  

I plan on getting a couple 300+ mile weeks this summer....

Run/Walk

I did 1,214 Run/Walk miles this past year.  This was a weekly average of 23.3 miles. Here is how the distribution looked:

My most common week was 20-24.9 miles and about 80% of the weeks I was above 20 miles/week.  I had no ZERO weeks and in fact had no weeks below 10 miles.  With Hadrian's Wall on the agenda for 2025, I suspect I have some bigger volume weeks this year.

Training Time

2024 Training time came in at 1,222.9 hours, or about 23.5 hours/week.  The distribution:

My most frequent week was 20-24.9 hours.  Over 80% of the weeks were above 20 hours.  I had no weeks lower than 10 hours of total training time.

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That's a lot of work for an old guy!  If anything, I AM consistent!

2024 Frequency Analysis: Days Working Out

 The above is a table detailing the number of days I did each of the disciplines as well as the number of days I did a workout of any kind.  Takeaways:

1. I don't take many full rest days--just 3 in all of 2024.  August 10th/18th and November 5th.  8/10 was a travel day from Minnesota where I went to help my brother.  8/18 was a travel day returning from Salt Lake where we had gone for a wedding.  Nov 5th was while we were in the Galapagos where we did plenty of physical stuff--just not what would qualify as the above.

2.  I Bike and Walk/Run close to 90% of the days.

3. I swim and do PT/Weights about 40% of the days.

4. Not counting double workouts in a discipline--which I do from time to time, I had 951 workouts in 2024--an average of 2.6/day.

Time to get Busy Blog-wise! First 2024 Review post

Sorry about the radio silence for a while--been super busy with end of the year stuff and now beginning of the year.  Over the next few days I plan to post several times reviewing 2024 and then I'll pivot to 2025 and my goals/plan for this year.

First off, here are several training volume summaries for 2024:

First up is my overall 2024 Training volume as well as per month, week and day averages:

This is obviously a lot of training time for a 67 year-old but I'm very pleased with this volume of work.  I wasn't sure at the beginning of the year how much my new knee could handle and its now pretty obvious, at least from an aggregate volume perspective that my knee is not limiting me very much, if at all!

Here are how the individual disciplines unfolded by month--first the Swim:

Several comments: 

First, this isn't as much Swim volume as I think is optimal.  I would like to see 2025 push up to 300k in total.  That would be about a 22% increase over 2024.

Second--you can see that I'm essentially a 9-month swimmer and I largely take October-December off.  I'm planning to do much the same this year so to get 300k, I'll need to get above 30k/month for most of the first 9 months.  Since I only did this for 3 months last year I have a lot of work to do.  In particular, I need to guard against the big fall-off I had in May/June, which is when I transition from the pool to OWS, which in those months tend to be in the high 50s and low 60s temp-wise--so either I suck it up more or make my pool sessions in those two months much longer.

I had planned to come out of the gate hot this month, but I've been suffering from a pretty debilitating right shoulder problem since mid October.  While, I wouldn't have swam much Oct-Dec, which is normally my off-season for swimming, by December, I basically couldn't swim at all.  I went through 5 weeks of pretty intense PT as well as saw a joint specialist when we visited Canyon Ranch last week and I seem to be getting slowly better.  This is obviously putting a crimp in my January 25 swim objectives and I'll likely swim less this January than last year but if my shoulder continues to progress, then I can ramp pretty quickly in February. 

I'm also considering 4-5 lessons if my shoulder progresses fast enough.  For the time being, I'm slowly getting back into the pool as my shoulder allows--an update on January volume shortly.

While 10,471 bike miles may seem like a bunch, it's relatively low by my pre-knee replacement standards--historically, I'm routinely above 1,000 miles/month, which is a standard I made in only three months last year--none after April.

This cut-back was not directly related to my knee but rather a result of taking long-course Triathlon racing off my agenda.  I'm also not planning to do any long-course triathlons this year but do want to get back to more outside riding--especially for May-September.  I'm going to add a weekly 50+ miler to my agenda come May and would like to see those 5 summer months all above 1,000 miles this year.

I was pretty consistent as far as run/walk goes in 2024.  I averaged 101 miles/month and was between 80 and 120 every month.  Most of this--over 90%--was walking/trekking as opposed to running.

For 2025, I see these numbers going up--both my aggregate volume and the % that is running.  I have a lot of confidence in my new knee and while I'm not going to go overboard, I do see a more focused effort to get faster running this year....I'm currently thinking through my goals for 2025 but am feeling that a sub-27 5k might be a good goal for me....more on this later.

One early goal, we are locking in on will be walking the length of Hadrian's Wall in England which would be 89 miles over the course of a week...more on that later as well.

My PT/weight training is principally concentrated during the non-Summer months.  You can see the ramp in December to deal with my shoulder, which has continued into January 2025, which will likely be higher than any of the 2024 monthly totals....

1200+ hours in total!  I average over 100 hours/month, 23:30/week, and 3:20/day.  I know this puts me at one end of the Bell curve, but obviously, physical fitness matters a lot to me.  

I expect to front-load again this year with January 2025 tracking above 120 hours and maybe surpassing the March 2024 high point above (125 hours).  I do expect to train more this summer, especially June-August so I would expect 2025 to see more training time when all is said and done.

One last look (for this post) is to review the time investment by discipline:

If one considers that a typical Triathlon racing split for me is about: 11% Swim/46% Bike/43% run, it clear I significantly over-index on the bike, which was nearly 60% of my SBR time in 2024.  This highlights the need for me to swim/run more (without biking less--I felt 2024 was a bit soft bike wise).  This is especially true for the Swim, where I compete in OWS races--more in 2024 than triathlons....

Onwards and Upwards!