Mark Allen’s Hawaii From Home Workout: Week 1

Get ready for Hawaii From Home with these weekly workouts from 6x Ironman world champ Mark Allen!

August 31, 2021 Emma-Kate Lidbury

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Welcome to Week 1 of our Hawaii From Home workouts, which will be brought to you by six-time Ironman world champion turned coach Mark Allen.

What is Hawaii From Home? Thanks for asking!

As athletes prepare for their 140.6-mile challenge from Oct. 4-11, Allen will provide one key workout each week that is designed to get them ready to tackle the big race week. Of course, you’ll still need to do plenty of swim, bike, and run training in addition to these key workouts, but view it as one of the most important sessions of the week and try to avoid doing any hard bike or run workouts the day before.

This opening week’s workout is a 50-mile ride, which Allen said should ideally be “moderately rolling,” with more terrain change than a flat ride, but “nothing that would be considered steep climbing.”

He said: “One key to having a great Ironman Hawaii race is developing the ability to build your effort throughout the day. This is often the opposite of what takes place for people in the race. They are strong for the first part, but then fade as the day goes on. Here is a bike workout that will help you instill the ability to get stronger as you go, which again is the ideal thing to have happen in any race, especially an Ironman. It is a key bike workout that will help prepare you for your virtual Hawaii From Home week!”
Allen said it is important to pace the effort of the first half of the ride, aiming to keep effort at a “fairly steady moderate” aerobic effort, which should be about 6-7 out of 10 RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion). He said it is then important to build on that through the second half of the ride and—if you feel good—add in some moderately anaerobic efforts that are sustained for five to 10 minutes at a time. He added: “Have the total amount of time that you do those harder efforts within the second half of the ride at about 25 to 30 minutes total. So if you end up doing a five-minute push, you could do about five of them total. If you tend to hold that faster pace for closer to 10 minutes, aim to do three of them. In between these efforts keep the pace moderate but back it down just enough to get ready for the next faster effort.”

The overall goal here is to teach your body to go faster in the second half of the ride than you went in the first half, he said, adding: “This is the key to having a great bike split as well as setting you up for a solid marathon.”

Sign-up for Hawaii From Home here.

If you’re looking for more guidance as you prepare for the 140.6-mile, seven-day challenge, be sure to check out our Six Weeks to Get Race Ready training plan and our printable training plans for Triathlete and Outside+ members. Outside+ members also get access to hundreds of personalized training programs on Today’s Plan. Not an Outside+ member yet? Become one today.