How to Optimize Your Triathlon Training on a Limited Time Budget | Natasha Van Der Merwe

That Triathlon Show

Mikael Eriksson

Health, Swimming, Endurancesports, Run, Cycling, Health & Fitness, Fitness, Ironman, Swim, Bike, Sports, Running, Sportscience, Triathlon

4.9 • 596 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most triathletes are limited not by their physical capacity to train more or harder, but by being time-limited, so we’re constantly looking for ways to make more out of the time we have to train. Nowhere is this challenge greater than when training for Ironman or other full distance triathlon races on a limited time budget. In this episode, coach Natasha Van Der Merwe joins me to discuss how to deal with this challenge in the context of age-group triathlon training.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to That Traflon Show, the podcast presented by scientific Traflon and hosted by me, Michael Erickson.
0:15.8	On today's episode, I'm joined by coach Natasha Van der Merva from NVDM coaching.
0:37.8	Natasha, welcome back to the show and how are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing great, thank you. So glad to be back. It's been a while since we had a conversation. So excited to join you. Yeah, I checked. It was April 2022. So it was a while ago. I'll link that in the episode, of course, for the listeners.
0:41.2	And in that episode, we go deeper into your background.
0:45.0	You have a background in tennis, which is something we talked about, which was very interesting.
0:49.8	And we talked about things like your coaching philosophy, training principles, etc.
0:58.5	But for today, instead of doing that, we have a couple of main topics in store and we'll take some listener questions as well.
1:04.6	But is there anything else that we should discuss before we jump into our first question, our first topic for today?
1:07.6	No, I'm excited to have this conversation with you. Let's do it.
1:13.2	All right. So the first big topic is how to maximize training outcomes,
1:19.7	training, return on investment, let's say on a limited time budget. And we'll be using 10 to 12 hours for the purpose of this episode as an example. Or I guess if there is a particular reason,
1:24.8	we can we can throw in other examples as well but let's take that as
1:28.0	our as our template for for today so what are your thoughts there yeah so i've actually been fortunate
1:34.6	enough to be in this position where i have athletes that have 10 to 12 hours and they want to
1:40.4	qualify for kona go like a low nine Ironman, how do we maximize that time that
1:46.0	they have available to train? And it starts with, I'm sure like yourself, McHale, like,
1:50.8	excellent communication because most of my athletes are remote. And so every single week,
1:56.7	they are laying out specifically exactly how much they time and how much time they have every day.
2:02.3	And honestly, it changes every single week because of their travel for the most part.
2:06.4	And so me getting as much of an understanding in that ahead of time.
2:10.8	And then from there, it's an understanding of what are the athletes needs as well as, okay,
2:15.7	what are the goals to get that example?
	...

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