There needs to be a structure to the given time. Within that 60 min there should be some specific paces (or pace ranges) to target. If it is just run for 1hr or bike for 2hrs it is a waste of time.

If a coach is prescribing workouts based on time, they should know their athletes abilities & paces, so although distance may not be specified, the workout will fall within a distance range. For example, today I have a run of 1:40 that's broken up into segments - when I finish I should be around 13.5 miles, so I have a pretty good idea of what the mileage will be.

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Agreed. Us old farts had a course from every location and distance and we knew our pace and PR for each course. The old DT YMCA even had maps we made with 4/6/8/10/13.1 miles in every direction; hills, flat, one with a view: Co-Ed's at BSU, and not.

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STIndiana
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While I agree with you to some degree, once we throw snow and ice into the run, then all distance metrics are out the window and there is no point chasing the same loop for a known distance etc....then time is a fine metric. Same thing if you are doing a trail run....distance can be meaningless. Also if you go to your local health club, almost no one runs with the incline function on the treadmill because it penalizes total distance or if they want to do the same distance, it just takes longer.

Again. Agree. However race day can be anything weather and we need to prepare for anything. -20 to 105 has been seen by many. Then time/distance still matters.

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STIndiana
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Matt Fitzgerald's plans use time for the duration of the workout instead of distance, and I assumed it was to make the workout applicable to more fitness levels. For example I can cover ~10.5 miles in an 80 minute long run. For someone starting out 10.5 miles may be by far the furthest they run, and would take a lot longer to run 10.5 miles, so maybe they need to run a bit less during that duration. Sure you can tell them to run 10.5 miles anyway, but getting them to run 10.5 miles may wear them down to where they can't meet the quality of their next workout. On the flipside someone much faster than me may be able to run 10.5 miles slower, so he'll need to run further to feel the same level of load.

However he does give a target effort level for these workouts and does the same for intervals within them.

I think there is a place for distance. Everything cannot be by time as you say, race day is about distance (well minimizing time over distance). For example, yesterday, I did an XC ski race in snow storm in minus 20C over 50K. My fastest time at that distance is 2:30. Yesterday was 4:29. Same distance, entirely different conditions, and using classic technique vs skating, but the distance must still be covered....it just takes a ton longer if really bad...so maybe a better way of looking at it, is that you need the physiological adaptations to deal with the worst case prolongation of time over the distance if the conditions get really horrible. Now the question how do you make those adaptations happen? Distance based and time based workouts all have a place in the quiver of the weekly grind. I think you need a mix of both. Also if you think about biking, perhaps your better metric is total kilojoules for the ride and certainly not distance....just putting on aero gear on race day, and having no stop and go can dramatically change things, so kilojoules and total duration (I guess that gives you your average power too) are more meaningful than distance.

What is your point? Why don't we really get simple...train as much as you can handle, some hard, never easy. Why think about strokes per length, just get in and swim til your arms are too sore to keep going.

And who is 'we'

It matters in the 100/100 challenge. Distance does not matter there, nor does pace, intensity etc. (only time).


No one metric matters, so planning either a time or distance goal without some sort of "difficulty" being built in makes no sense to me.

Eh, I think a good % of triathletes would be better runners if they did a BarryP style plan, all in minutes, all in Z2.

Run 30 / 60 / 30/ 60 / 30 / 90 minutes, all z2(easy).

So simple. consistency, frequency, duration.

So many are for this stuff that when I look at their overall training means nothing. Unless one is training 12 months a year, the person is really not that serious to be the best they can be.

When I jumped in my lake yesterday in 55 degree water, the last thing I was worried about was distance per stroke or stroke rate or pace. I just got off my ass and got into that
cold water and swam for 20 minutes or so. Now the question is can I get off my ass again today. (Maybe my wetsuit will still be wet :) )

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

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

Yes because saying "go for a 60 min run" is so much more complicated than saying "go run at x paces for y time and it just so happens to equal 60 min". He'll even Daniels prescribes most of his runs based on a time.

Coming from a running background. I first found it odd that all tri training plans were in minutes for bike and run. Marathon plans I've used are still in miles.

As an "old guy" runner myself, I find I'm constantly converting a "minute" plan workout into x number of miles.

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Proud Member of Chris McDonald's 2018 Big Sexy Race Team "That which doesn't kill me, will only make me stronger"
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Over-simplifying has as many limitations as over-complicating things. If you have ambitions to be fast (whatever that is for you), doing the same thing day in day out for 12 months is not a great idea. There isn't a single elite athlete that actually trains that way. They all modify and adjust the plan through the year and take some down time. Taking a mental and physical break is something the most serious athletes do, they understand the importance of being focused when it is necessary. If you don't really push that hard on a weekly basis, you can get away with doing the same level of training 52 weeks a year.

Because everything else in life is in time and not distance. I have to pick up my daughter in an hour, not in 12 km. Work starts 2 hours from now, not in 50 km. While you should have paces prescribed within the time, this is a hobby and a way for us to spend time in a manner we enjoy.

"So when did the world change to 'my coach/workout calls for a 13.5km run'? What the heck is that?"

Cheapest "gadget" around is a simple wristwatch. Least affordable is a GPS watch to tell you distance. Somewhere on the cheaper end of the spectrum is a HR meter. There's nothing wrong with using distance, either, but both coach and athlete have to be clear which metric takes priority.

With a time-based plan, coupled with RPE or HR, I can perform a given workout anywhere and achieve a pretty similar level of adaptation (assuming we're not talking about top-end speed on the run). If my HR stayed on-target but I covered less distance, it may be because the terrain was harder, but a 1-hour Z2 run is going to get you similar aerobic benefits whether at 4:30/km or 5:00/km, and if the latter was slower because of hills, then what you lost in speed you regain in strength. Cycling is the same: In 3 hours, I can squeeze in 90km of flatland riding, 70km of climbing, or 50km of singletrack MTB. Is one inherently superior because I covered more distance? No, not in the grand scheme of things. Closer to the A-race, it makes sense to prefer the specificity - the rest of the time, mixing it up isn't bad.

There's also a practical side to time-based training: If I have 1:45h between classes, a set effort and a time-frame are easier to meet than "cover X distance".

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Yep, which why racing a lot can deal with this concern

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

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Lions don't lose sleep worrying about the sheep

What concern, and how does racing a lot help deal with it?

I agree that any time based workouts shouldn't come at the expense of knowing things your 10km run time etc, but there is a lot to be said in favour of "time in the zone".

It is time at a certain intensity, rather than distance at an intensity, that gives the best indication of the physiological impact that a session has.
Proper fitness training, when boiled down to it's basic level, is just a series of efforts that are designed to promote a physiological response. Do too little and you won't make effective physiological change, do too much and the same may well be true.

Cycling has, in many ways, already been converted to time based training with the advent of power meters.
This is because we can now quite accurately measure the amount of work that the body is doing (work done per unit time x total time = total work).
When was the last time you saw a power based training plan that said anything along the lines of "xx miles at xx% of FTP"? You don't see that because there are too many variables that can change the effort required to complete a given distance, and therefore will alter the training effect of the interval in question. Somebody above mentioned snow on a run, which is a great example of how conditions can affect the effective difficulty of a given course on a given day.

Fair enough, on race day the race is won by whoever completes a given distance first. But training is about preparing your body to complete that distance in the minimum amount of time, and optimal physiological adaptation is rarely achieved by using distance as the primary measure of training volume.

Having familiar routes which you can test yourself on is a useful tool to track progress (to an extent - headwind vs tailwind makes comparison of results much less useful), but is not always best for day in day out training.

Liam

You are complaining about over complicating a simple process...but you seem to be describing an over simplified process.

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You complain that others complicate things and need gadgets and in the same breath you complain about people with just a simple wrist-watch running for time. Many beginner plans use time because the point is exactly what you say: Distance over time. Most beginners don't have the metrics to do much of otherwise. Time-based workouts is good to help people get comfortable with the duration of exercise. Using a time-based workout is good for beginners because they are intended to build endurance. They are going to have to be able to run 40 minutes before they run a 10k. Endurance needs to be built before speed and building endurance at a comfortable Z2 is a good way to do that.. Did you actually get the big picture from your friend, or did you just get a snapshot, not understand it, and complain about it?

The world is dynamic and so is the study of human performance. Don't sit in a static state and complain about it progressing. Go eat some crabs or drink some coffee and don't worry about how other athletes train so much.

The downside to this argument is that, however annoying, h2o is at least in the upper ranges of subelite... showing that at least for him, the year round time based training is all that he needs to be awesome at tris. Does that mean most people should train that way? IDK...

I give all my athletes easy runs in time, with the instruction of "run easy". I dont care about pace nor distance. Its just about volume. I prefer them to run the distance workouts on trail or at least gravel in the woods. Forcing an athlete to hold pace on easy runs would just be stupid and potentially dangerous.

For the pace work I always give pretty narrow pace targets and exact distances. Those are the workouts where I care about performance and the athlete will need to push themselves.

For swimming its all very fixed targets, even easy swimming have send off intervals.

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

Were you at the Birkie?

I was confused about this also, thinking that going to time based work outs was a way to sell more expensive watches. When a watch that simply gives you time is about the cheapest piece of equipment that you can buy.