Its hard to say what to change without knowing what you did. You mention what sounds like LSD training...What did you do with regards to threshold and tempo work?

Maybe describe your typical training week / key workout makeup?

When you say "resistance training" what do you mean (strength / weight-lifting? or low-cadence / hill-climbing)?

Sports specific strength training. Hills.

---

Twitter
Instagram

The longer race, the more important muscular endurance is relative to cardiovascular endurance, with lower HR on race day due to the long duration of the race.

More volume is usually the main thing, with sprinklings of speedwork to further increase your aerobic capacity. But the volume is the big thing - analyze your results and see whether you need more bike volume (which helps both the bike and run) or run volume if you're lacking there.

Doing more super-high intensity anaerobic or all-out VO2max workouts will be less productive at the IM distance since you won't be racing at that intensity, and there's only so much VO2max gain to pull up the floor.

I'm in a similar boat, my plan is to bump both the intensity & duration of long rides up a little.

I.e. Provide my body with the stimulus I want it to address.

Lots of volume over a period of years.

I'm in a similar situation, beem racing short course for the last three years but am having a go at a half soon. On my long rides my legs just feel fatigued at a low heart rate.

The best thing to do is quite simple. Train consistently, slowly increase your mileage, incorporate hills into both running and cycling and repeat. It probably shouldn't be any more complicated than that for most people.

so what you're saying is you lack endurance.

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

It's not that your legs muscles don't have endurance....Tyler Hamilton proved that every time he got a blood bag, his legs suddenly got "stronger" and he could put out more watts for longer with "more endurance". This has nothing to do with muscles strength since forces are very low (someone's 90 year old grandma can put out that muscle force that Chris Froome puts out for a few pedal strokes.....the problem is repeating that pedal force 90+ times per minute). The challenge is delivering oxygen to the working muscles. It's all about cardio and oxygen delivery (vascular as in arteries, mitochondria density, veinous return) and improving that system.

Yeah but I don't know if it's intrinsic to my body preferring shorter efforts, endurance shouldn't be a problem training 10-15 hours a week.

yeah but how long have you been doing the 10-15 hrs/ week,

also some people just never really get beyond a certain level, where as others can do ridiculous things on next to no training...

How much of your weekly training is at similar or higher intensity compared to your race?

Close to a year.

It's just interesting as i have a brother who does almost the same training schedule as me. I tend to have higher w/kg over shorter intervals and it shows in short course races where i can drop him on the bike. But then on longer training rides it seems to even out much more, he seems to be able to ride at a certain level for a long period but dies quick when going over that.

3-4 hours in the saddle just brings a different kind of fatigue compared to a 90min interval session.

Ride/run tempo at the end of long sessions when fatigued.

Good article about it here:

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/the-role-of-fatigue-resistance-at-the-tour-de-france/

I agree with this article. I got faster at the longer distances when I worked on my "fast finish/negative split" workouts.

For example, I was struggling to crack 3 hours in a marathon and finally did it with a number of hard long runs. The most memorable was about 3 weeks before the race. I entered a hilly half marathon and ran to the race (about 8-9miles) at endurance pace. Then I jumped in the start and ran the first 4-5 miles around 6:50/mi (eg: sub 3 hour race pace), then just went for it on the rest of the run (ended in 1:28). This "workout" gave me a lot of confidence and muscular endurance when it counted...2nd half of the race. For cycling, TrainerRoad does a pretty good job of making you push through some very tough intervals on the bike at the end of each session to train your body/mind to deal better with finishing strong.

Also, someone mentioned Hills. I try to run hills in the middle/end of the long runs to help me push through when I'm already a little tired. This usually "wakes" me up more and I'm able to push a little faster until the end.

What about brain endurance?

---

http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

what is your height and weight?

how you do those hours also matters

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

It may have given you a lot of confidence as it's a pretty stellar workout.

It also increased your fitness/increased your fatigue resistance/increased your endurance ability but it did not increase your muscular endurance.

It's endurance. Period.

Not muscular endurance, strength endurance or insert your fav type of endurance. Physiology doesn't happen in a vacuum.

These descriptive terms should have stopped being used around the turn of the century if it ever should have been used in the first place.

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

That's what Halo is for. I don't want to train mental strength myself

---

808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

All kidding aside, there's a better way to train it than using the halo.

---

http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

I'm happy enough with my performance, I'm far from a BOP athlete. I just feel i do better at short course than turning the pedals for hours on end, part of it is boredom.

I get it. I have several athletes like this. Crush short course and not so much crushing on LC, at least in the beginning. It's been a process to maintain that sc speed as they transition to LC over the years.

It can be done though if you're racing. IMO it's easier to take a short course athlete and make them fast over LC than it is to make a LC guy fast over short course.

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Yeah it's a process for sure, I've been racing and training for short course for around 3 years and haven't done a 70.3 yet. It's taken me 3 years to AG podium in a Sprint so i don't expect to be awesome overnight, it's just interesting having a brother to compare with and the differences in physiology.