Ditch the dull workouts: 10 tips to keep tri training fun

Training is uninspiring in the off-season months, right? It doesn’t have to be. Here are 10 fresh and free ways to boost your fitness while bringing the variation to the tri-training party. Time to prepare for zombie attacks, Cyndi Lauper, and raw-dogging.

1. Get lost!

Remember orienteering from school camp? I do, and it was great fun. And then I forgot about it for 30 years. But I’ve just rediscovered it, and it’s still a blast, offering a test of mind, map, and compass as participants navigate around rural or urban events in search of control points.

Local clubs run most orienteering events (some are free, or expect to pay around £3-12 – British Orienteering has a list of clubs) with a range of colour-coded courses depending on the length and difficulty.

The course lengths (i.e., 2.5km) might sound short to tri folk, but you’ll likely run much further than this depending on the route you choose between the control points.

There are also permanent and virtual courses you can follow independently for free. It’s a great test of making decisions under pressure, and once you’ve mastered the use of a compass and legends on the map, you can progress quite swiftly in the sport.

2. Go raw-dogging

Zwift, Rouvy, and other gamification apps may have revolutionized indoor training, but with Zwift costing £17.99 per month, they’re way too indulgent for these wallet-friendly tips. So, it’s time to go old school.

Admittedly, its name sounds a bit dodgy to us, but the TikTok-savvy of you may recently have noticed ‘raw-dogging’ popping up on your feeds.

Embraced by bionic footballer Erling Haaland, the ‘sport’ often finds the protagonist doing absolutely nothing but staring at the in-flight map on a long-haul flight.

Yet triathletes were ahead of the curve on this, with indoor riding once conducted to the sound of nothing else but grunting. We’ve gone back to this method over the winter and, once the urge to stick Ludwig on the iPad dwindled, believe it’ll prep us well for race-day suffering and those low, lonely moments on the bike leg of triathlon events.

‘Fun’ might depend on how self-masochistic you are, but if you’re struggling, play The Traitors bingo and start those 2-mins-on/2-mins-off intervals whenever you hear a contestant say the words, “One hundred per cent faithful!”

3. Take your gym outside

Sweaty benches. Stale air. Someone else’s hair in the shower. I detest the gym, and that’s before the monthly membership costs that I could be spending on better things like peanut butter and running socks.

So, take things outside and use nature as your gym, building your core strength in the fresh air while topping up on those essential, age-defying supplies of vitamin D… and all for free.

Find a secure branch of a tree and hang on it, walk over a log to improve your balance, or carry rocks back and forth across your garden.

As with any strength and conditioning sessions, keep it safe, controlled, and start slowly. Also, look out for outdoor gyms in local parks for perfecting those pull-ups. Wildstrong has a range of courses and downloadable guides.

4. Keep it social

Entering the same triathlon event as friends has helped me hugely in the past in terms of inspiration and accountability, as well as adding a dose of healthy competition. Seeing my neighbor go on his Sunday morning run gives me all the motivation I need to brave the outdoors as well.

“When it’s deep in the off-season, having the commitment to meet with friends helps so much with training consistency,” says Graham Wadsworth of the Bristol-based personal trainers My Life PT (mylifept.co.uk).

“Think about joining a swim masters group or a local running club. Or make a regular time each week or two to train with some sporty friends – what you do isn’t as important as the fact that you regularly commit to the same time each week.”

5. Navigate naturally

GPS bike computers and smartwatches have made long rides and runs safer, more controlled, and precise. But have they numbed our senses to the great outdoors and, well, made things just a little boring?

How about trying to negotiate that big weekend trail run or ride only using natural clues such as the sun, clouds, wind, and trees? Natural navigation as a concept is pioneered by Tristan Gooley, the author of best-selling books such as The Natural Navigator and The Natural Explorer, which have plenty of guidance for cyclists and runners alike.

Head to your local library to pick up a copy, and you’ll soon be going full Crocodile Dundee, complete with your new knowledge of the movement of the sun, cloud behavior, and botany. And you can always turn that computer back on if you get truly lost…

6. Play the bleep test

Perhaps a sign that I was destined to be a triathlete is how much I relished the bleep test at school. My dislike of pool swimming has ensured I’ll always be an average triathlete (among many other reasons), but help could be at hand with Wadsworth’s bleep test-esque swim set.

“Add descending time sets into your swim sessions. For example, do 50 meters off descending recovery – 50m off 75sec, 50m off 74sec, 50m off 73sec… – keep going until you can’t make the going time.

“Much of the set might be at a comfortable pace, allowing you time to focus on technique and achieve a base of aerobic development.

“Towards the end, it’ll get very, very hard, however, pushing you to your current limit and spiking all those happy hormones you get from feeling like you’ve challenged yourself.”

There’s also a free bleep test app if you want to party like it’s 1995.

7. Flee the living dead

Holding onto that age-group spot but fearing a rival emerging from your tri-suited shadow? Fear not, because help is at hand in preparing you for that scenario in the form of the free app Zombies, Run!

Simply download the app, don headphones, and head out on a training run. Soon, the storyline, set in the fictional apocalyptic world of Abel Township, will add zombies into the mix, forcing you to up your tempo and run, well, like the living dead are shaking their flaky complexions behind you.

Free versions of Zombies, Run! are available, or it’s £6.99 per month if you want to unlock some of the virtual races the app offers.

8. Perfect that playlist

Music has been scientifically proven to lift psychological spirits when exercising, with the ability to reduce the perception of exertion by up to 12%, according to research by Dr. Costas Karageorghis at Brunel University in London.

Karageorghis found that the optimal beats per minute is in the 135-140bpm range (Cardi B’s I Like It) for maximal work, 120bpm (Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun) for more endurance work, and anything down to 80bpm (David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust) for warm-ups and cool-downs.

9. Start jeffing

So hot right now is Jeffing, a more standardized version of Fartlek pioneered by Olympian Jeff Galloway in the 1970s. Great for those recovering from injury, Jeffing has a heavier emphasis on walking, with short run intervals (1-2 minutes) and 3-4-minute intervals of walking over a 20-minute period.

10. Add competition

Compared to its single-discipline swim, bike, and run components, triathlon is very much a racing sport. A season without a triathlon event feels empty to me.

“Aim to add some friendly competition with your mates into your pre-season bike sessions,” says Wadsworth. “The main thing is not to take it too seriously – enjoy the flat-out hard effort and don’t worry about the result!”