My first input is I am 6'5, 160

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

I'm more of an endomorph than an ectomorph. The only way I'm getting to 160 or its equivalent for my height is by destroying significant muscle mass.

Edit: Who am I kidding? I'm pure endomorph.

I understand. But since our sport starts with most folks being pretty thin, was just trying to maybe set your expectations, since there are not many very tall folks like us, let alone very very tall folks like you that have a normal body weight.

Just have fun and train as a hobby, unless this sport is putting food on the table for a family.

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Depending on your goals, "destroying significant muscle mass" can be a good thing. If your goal is to get faster, that would be one of the most efficient ways to do so. Remember that muscle mass is not the same thing as strength.

If your goal is to maintain said muscle mass and go sub-3, your bike plan looks solid to me. I'd personally replace 2 of your 3 strength/flexibility sessions with a swim and a run, so you can at least be doing each of them every 3-4 days. if you're trying to maintain any kind of swim or run fitness, 1 session per week isn't going to cut it.

That's fair, and is part of why I'm skeptical I'll ever get to 4 W/kg. My FTP test ~4 weeks ago was 225 (~2.25 W/kg).

What is the point of your posts? When did the OP suggest this wasn't a hobby he wanted to have fun at? You don't do this as a hobby, you just spent 2 years focused on oenticton so you could post about you 'legend' award...

How many times per week were you running and swimming this year? A dramatic reduction in those sports and increase in biking is hard to make progress if you are at fairly low volumes to begin with. Once a week is well below what most would suggest to maintain fitness in those sports. I'd suggest more frequent workouts running and swimming, but keep them fairly easy. That leaves the harder efforts for the bike.

Two questions:
1) Do you agree this is where I should be focusing my efforts?
2) Does my offseason plan make sense?


1) No.
2) No.

You need to run more...shoot to get up to a minimum of 5X a week. If that means ditching the strength/flexibility stuff due to time constraints, so be it. You don't need more muscle.


If you want more specific suggestions, you should post what you are doing in a typical week right now.

Thanks. During the tri training I was swimming and biking ~3x/wk and running ~4x/wk. While training for the 10k I dropped the swimming and biking to 1-2x/wk and running 5x/wk. Are you thinking 2-3x/wk for swimming and running?

As many others have stated previously on many other threads, you have to clearly define your goals. It sounds like your goal is to go sub 3 hours in an oly event. In my humble opinion, that is a very reasonable goal if you do the following this winter:

swimming once per week will be fine.
if you swim twice per week, you might gain 30 sec to 1 min on a 1500k swim.

Do the sweet spot base on trainerroad, followed by the appropriate build phases at the appropriate times. As you do this, you will also lose weight as your FTP increases. The beauty of the early stages of a triathlon "career" is that your gains will be significant and your watts/kg will improve dramatically. Gains will be harder to come by in the following years, so enjoy.

Establish a running base before moving on to any type of speed work. run 3 times per week minimum. I'm sure others can chime in on the specifics of those three runs, but based on your original post, I would make all of the base miles (easy miles)

Do strength training once per week in the off season. this will pay dividends as you move onto the build section of your training year.

In summary...three (maybe 4) sessions on the bike, 3 run sessions, and 1 session in the pool is a full week. throw in a strength training session, and you are maxed out for the week.

last comment, I am an amateur athlete, and not a coach. Have fun and good luck.

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Not everything is as it seems -Mr. Miyagi

I'm interested in why you think I need to focus more on my run than my bike. If I compare my sprint splits to the target splits I would need to hit for a sub-3:00 Olympic, the bike is the only one that I wouldn't be able to hit if I scale my current times.

This is the most recent plan I was following: http://ironman.timex.com/...Timex-BD.pdf?cid=TPN Next year I was planning on using a plan from Matt Fitzgerald's Week-by-Week Training Guide.

That seems reasonable. Thanks.

Is running that much at that weight smart in the long run?

Now, off to my 6th run of the week, 9 miles in the hills. Got to keep the weight off :)

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Dave Campbell | Facebook | @DaveECampbell | h2ofun@h2ofun.net

Boom Nutrition code 19F4Y3 $5 off 24 pack box | Bionic Runner | PowerCranks | Velotron | Spruzzamist

Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Welcome ST where conflicting information is the norm...
Now let me add to it: a 15+ min 740m swim means "needs improvement." That'll translate to a 31-ish 1.5K. Spend some time in the water over winter. Take some lessons. Work a little on technique.

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

You've just listed the two factors that probably have the best return on investment for bike performance. At your weight and average speed, you'd probably losing around 20 watts worth of extra resistance with Gatorskins and butyl tubes compared to GP4000IIs and latex tubes. Imagine if your FTP was instantly 10% higher. Just as an anecdote, I saw this exact effect loaning some wheels to a cycling teammate at a race weekend a while back. He went from struggling at the back of the field on the first day to easily joining breakaways and controlling the front of the race on the second day.

If you had a pair of clip-on aerobars and were comfortable in the position, that ought to give you substantial gains as well. This is a great thing to work on while you're on the trainer this winter, too. Of course, the fastest option would be to get a triathlon-specific fit and get a bike based on that, but now we're talking a pretty substantial purchase. If you'd rather stay with the road bike, a spare seatpost and saddle may help you get into a pretty good position on the clip-ons while keeping it a fairly simple swap to go back to your road position.

I'd say it's safe to say you would have been capable of a split around 42:00 with these changes, and a fair chance you could have managed around 41:30. Does that change on how much you want to focus on your riding?

I'm not a coach, but I'll echo some of the other feedback here and recommend that you not reduce either swimming or running below twice a week. You have just as much improvement to make in swimming and running as you do in cycling. How flexible is your timing for getting workouts in? I'll often do two short or less intense workouts back-to-back just to reduce the impact to my day of needing to prepare and clean up multiple times. This could help you get in more sessions than the 10 per week in you mentioned, so you might be able to swim and run three times each, ride four or five times, and still get in some strength and flexibility work. I doubt the strength work will make you faster, but I still support doing a couple of short sessions for general fitness. Make sure you're getting the sleep and recovery time you need, too.

Plenty of people are successful without being quite as lean as Dave, but he has a point. I'm somewhere between him and you as far as build goes (6'4", low to mid 180s). I tend to see an improvement of a couple of seconds per mile at race pace for every pound less that I weigh, though of course I can't say how much is from the weight shift and how much is from better fitness. I'd guess that you could race at around 210 next season without sacrificing too much. It might get you a minute or two off your 10k time, and the lower load on your joints ought to reduce the risk of injury.

To be fair, all of my times are in the "needs improvement" range. This year I improved my max swim speed from 2:20/100scm to 1:59/100scm, so definitely making progress.

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful reply. Some of my thoughts below.



I knew there would be some benefit, but that's bigger than I thought! I'll have to dig into latex tubes more. I would love to upgrade my wheels, but finding decent wheels built to support my weight for a decent price is not easy. I destroyed the stock back wheel I had within ~1,000 miles.


I actually do have a pair of clip-on aerobars, but I've been told by multiple people that it's a bad idea to use them on a road bike because you can cause yourself hip issues. Also, the course I was on was constant hills, so not a lot of time to get into aero. Even with that level of improvement, though I still think the bike is my weakest event. Most of the people who finished the Chicago tri in ~3:00 finished the bike in ~1:18. A flat course will help with the time, too, but not sure it gets me 10+ minutes.


Yeah, I definitely need to get better at taking out the fixed time associated with workouts (getting changed, getting there, etc.) If they're easy I can probably do a run and swim back to back. I find that doing a swim followed by a strength session does not work very well, but maybe some core or flexibility work.


I think 210 is realistic. I'm sure the weight loss played a part in me going from 9:38/mi in my first tri this year to 8:49/mi in this one. Although part of me does want to stay at 220 so I can race as a Clydesdale...