devashish_paul wrote:
I say you ditch the 2x20 min entirely.
Here is why. You will be on a run focus. You need to mentally shift your brain to run focus and forget about losing bike fitness. You only have so much mental horsepower to spread between work, family and training. 2x20 min just distracts from the overall mental focus units you have to apply across life. Don't underestimate how much mental energy all this training takes. It's not just all physical, you need all the mental horsepower to focus on the run focus, so that when you arrive to key run training sessions, you are mentally fresh to deal with that training in addition to physically fresh.
One of the biggest challenges to age group triathlon success is arriving at the daily start line of training ready to perform, having moved life out of the way for that block of time. This takes mental energy. As soon as training is done, the next challenge of the age grouper is to shut off the athlete brain and turn on the "everyday man" brain and have physical and mental energy to perform in day to day life. We can't be depleted from training and non perform in day to day life. Why? Because if we are impaired and slow in getting everything else done, we lose support, and we are slower at everything we do, which means the chance of showing up for the next workout ready to roll becomes lower.
In the training logs that I get to see for the athletes in my group, the guys who hit their workouts are mentally together. They get EVERYTHING done, not just workouts. In the world of fighter pilots or sales guys, they are "closers". If you are going to do a run focus, then do the run focus. 2x20 min is just a distraction and you'll be watering down the run focus. The cycling fitness will come back fast.
I totally get the idea that once I do a run block - I should do it properly and not just 90%-ish in fear of loosing bike-fitness. This is my number one priority - to get my running to a level as high as possible without any hickups, injuries etc. Given that i currently "only" run 35 (will be close to 40) kilometers pr week - I feel that I still have pretty much free training-time. 35-40k running is about 3.5 hrs pr week, which leaves me with plenty free time to spend. Following Barry P means I have 3 short runs pr week, and currently my short runs are so short I would like to get something else out of that training-day as well:)
As things sit right now, I feel that I both have the mental and physical freshness to do my weekly 2x20. I´ve read alot about 2x20´s and how taxing people feel they are. In my experience, once you get "into it" -(i.e. have sufficient bike-fitness and gotten used to the feeling of pushing for 2x20), 2x20 is not really that bad. Actually - right now I look forward to my 2x20´s! :) I am probably running them in the lower end of the spectrum (big difference from doing 2x20 @ 92-3-4% to 96-7-8", which some do!), but I have gotten into a rythm where I ride my 2x20 pretty steadily at around 285w, which feels pretty allright (guesstimating my FTP at somewhere right above 300-310w right now, so this puts me a little under 95% for 2x20). I make a point for myself not to ride them so hard that I really have to go into the darkest places of the mind to complete them, and so far this works ok:)
I totally see that once I get to a point where my run-milage is higher, I could feel that the 2x20 is more taxing (both physically and mentally!). I´m currently leaning towards keeping my 2x20 session once a week until I feel it is hard to keep up with my run-milage. Currently I feel like I need to really hold back on running, because my head would like to run more miles than I know I should, considering my historic milage :) (I guess this is how every training-probram works - eager at the start and the going gets tough somewhere down the line!). If I get to 50k-60k a week and need to drop the 2x20 I will do so (and I´ll let you know Dev so you can go "told you so":))
I also get the point of balancing training and work/family - and having 2 kids (2+4 yrs!) and a full dayjob this is the hardest part for me (finding the time I mean!). However, as long as I have a rythm where I can find the sufficient time (which for me usually means somewhere 8-10hrs/week), I kinda feel that I am overly-motivated to work out! I dont know if anyone else can relate to the feeling, but I kinda feel that my training is MY time, so once I am into my lycra I really feel energetic and wanting to get "spent", knowing that once I´m done its back to work/house-chores/kids, etc :) For me the most important life-lesson sports has tought me is to be 101% present in what your doing right now - regardless of its working, cleaning your house, hangin with the wife, of (most important ofc!) working out!