I wouldn't do a 9 hour day.
I would continue with 2 days of big training, and not take a rest day but do an easy swim in Monday.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess the real question for me is to BDT or not. For those that have experience with both leading up to a IM would you recommend a BDT to a first timer? or should I stop worrying and trust in the TF training?

You COULD do it. I wouldn't recommend.
I always found my best performances came from consistently plugging away at quality training.
BDT just seems like a way to make you tired.

do the 2 hr run the following day. no need for a 9 hour day. trust all of the consistent work you've put into this point.

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Toro Performance

Doing well at a race isn't about any one big workout or big day, it's about the big picture of the stuff you've been doing day after day.

I've had athletes go sub 8:30 on maybe a few 6-6:15 hr days and iirc none of those days involved 3 sports

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

There is absolutely no reason to put yourself through the wear and tear of a day like that. Im looking at that schedule and seeing two full days to recover from it in itself. The only thing you would be doing to yourself would be wearing yourself down.

Be consistent with shorter (longish) back to back days and you would be way better off.

As written, I think you might be losing more fitness than gaining.

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New Training/Racing Log - http://www.earthdaykid.com/blog --- Old Training/Racing Log - http://colinlaughery.blogspot.com

Biggest day I've done was a morning swim followed by 4 hr bike and 10 mile run. That was around 6 1/2 hours, and was probably overkill. You're setting yourself up for a longer recovery after that 'big day,' and taking a few days off could hurt fitness.

The thing that really makes the difference is CONSISTENCY! Day in day out, week after week, month after month, year after year. Doing one 'big day' won't really make any difference.

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Blog: http://262toboylstonstreet.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/NateThomasTri
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First of all, mixing metaphors for training can be a bad idea. I think it is usually best to follow one plan, not mixing and matching as you go allng - unless you did it beforehand with some sort of idea what you were trying to do. Each plan has a sort of internal logic of what it is trying to do and assumptions it is making.


Big days or big bricks are all about execution. It's about absolutely nailing down exactly what you need to do in terms of effort, nutrition, and hydration.

Particularly for your first, it can pay very large dividends, I'll take the exact contrary opinion to my old friend the Desert Dude and say that for some people this one workout can take an hour off of your finish time.

It is difficult otherwise to realize just HOW easily you need to go on the bike, just how many calories you need to take in. Also there are things you can do in terms of nutrition, pacing etc that you can do for 5 hours that you can't do for 11.

You are looking to avoid being one of those people telling the story of your first iron distance race and having the story go, "Everything was going fine until ..." The until is usually something about food not going down, cramps, legs not working right or something like that - but is usually just that you went harder,took in fewer calories than your body was capable of. but you didn't know what your body was capable of because you never went out and tried something representative.

To that end, I'd take the swim out, while it is something you have to do on race day - there are very few people who are walking at mile 15 of the run because they took the swim out too hard.

I noted something about assumptions above, I'll go ahead and list my own. This assumes that you have been hitting your weekly volume and not been crushed by it, you haven't had training stoppages due to overtraining symptoms, it also assumes you aren't fighting off any nagging injuries that flare up during the week.

If that is all true for you, then a big brick is probably ok to do.

Whether you should do it? Well do you your rides 90 miles and over end with you feeling like you had more in you or you could go faster for the last hour if you needed? And your long runs? Can you tell yourself exactly what your heart rate, power, pace is when you stomach shuts down? How many calories per hour do you take in on long rides and runs? Does it stay down when riding over 4 hours? Running over 2?

Those things give an indication but I've worked with plenty of people who for years simply fooled themselves into believing that they had it down - yet underperformed on race day.

If you are going to do one, and I've kinda laid out why might and why you might not - I'd do something like this:
40-50 miles easier than race day in terms of heart rate or power or rpe but nutrition and hydration at race day rate. After that on the ride bring it to iron distance effort. Your goal here is that your race day nutrition goes down easy and obviously stays down. If race day will be much hotter than your local conditions, ride in a couple of light layers or whatever you need to do in order to mimic race day heat. What you are going after is that in cooler conditions you might be able to ride at 180 watts and have the calories go down, but if it is hotter on race day it might not work.

On the run, 15 miles oughtta cover it, race day nutrition.

When you look back you want to see steady power, heart rate or both for the 2nd half of the ride, if they are dropping or power dropping / heart rate increasing you might have been able to do a little better on execution. The thing to look for on the run is that your pace was the same in the 2nd 30 minutes as the last 30 minutes. Once again if pace is getting slower at the end, it will be even harder on race day.

Oh yeah, light day 2 days before, day off before. If you feel like you need more rest than that, then your training may not be structured to accommodate a big brick.

After reading every comment thrice over and doing a lot of reflecting, I've decided against the BDT and will stick to the plan, as I do not want to push myself over the edge and get injured. I definitely feel like I've got some cumulative fatigue in my body, but somehow I find the inspiration to kick my own butt to finish each workout (screams not uncommon in the pain cave), so best to stay where I'm at and have a good taper. I'm always wondering if I'm leaving some on the table to improve fitness, but we'll see how it goes at IMAZ. I'll post how I did if I don't catastrophically implode ;)

Just wanted to say thanks all for the valuable input in this thread, and thanks for helping a fellow STer.