In 2019 professional triathlete Cam Wurf showed some big improvements with his Ironman run with a 2:50 marathon split at Ironman Australia in May 2019.
I wanted to dig a little deeper within Cam’s run program from 1st January 2019 through to his win at Ironman Australia in May 2019 where he averaged a pace of 4:02 per km. Cam has been trying to establish his race pace to 3:47 per km that would give him a 2:40 marathon.
Looking at his training log, there are a few things that stick out.
- Cam spends a lot of his run volume at or just around his race pace/race effort.
- Cam’s fast efforts are very controlled and will rarely go faster than 3:15km pace and never faster than 3:00km pace. Most shorter intervals hang around the 3:25km pace.
- Cam isn’t afraid to take a rest day or take it easy if needed.
- During the peak run weeks, Cam was comfortably holding around 115km run weeks with 7 runs per week over five days.
- Key weeks he would have two track sessions and a long run that would be around 30-35km holding around 4min km pace
Cam’s Week
While it can be tough to create a template Cam followed, most weeks looked something like this.
Monday: 1hr run moderate effort or often time between 4min-3:42min km pace. A treadmill was used a number of weeks for this session.
Tuesday: Track Session 15-17km most of these track runs was spending longer intervals 1-2km holding 3:25min km pace. Afternoon was a mix bag between a 2nd run or a bike or simply rest.
Wednesday: Run – 1hr depending on the week, this could be easy treadmill run or a 1hr moderate effort run holding 4min km pace or a bike and swim session.
Thursday: Long Run day between 30-35km building and holding to around 4min km pace. Afternoon was often rest however a few weeks Cam jumped on the bike or would do another run that would be all easy.
Friday: Bike – 3hrs. Afternoon a 1hr run often descending in pace to around race pace/effort.
Saturday: Track Session – 15-17km with the focus on shorter faster efforts like 14x 800m @3:30 pace with 200 easy between with some sessions will include a spike of 3:10 pace towards the end of the interval. In the afternoon would be a bike or another run.
Sunday: Often a mix bag and rarely saw the same type of session two weeks in a row. Unless Cam was traveling through the week, Sunday was mostly a recovery day, sometimes full rest, others were active recovery through swim or bike or run volume.
TRAIN SMOOTH 