pmatos wrote:
So, I assume you end up doing at least 2 workouts per day, and this is not even counting strength and conditioning, right?
Assume you just to improve your time a bit, and not qualify for a world championship, don't take all of the over the top advise some people give to serious. Of course training more will help improve the results, but I guess if you would be extremely bored you would be training more already.
For normal people with lives outside triathlon would suggest to aim for 3 sessions in each sport. If you want to cut somewhere, do only 2 swim sessions, on a HIM we are talking about 2-3 mins probably that the 3rd training session can give you, you can lose much more in cutting the other disciplines. And concentrate most of the sessions on the weekend, better than planning your whole day around working and training.
For run aim for 1 session with intensity (for example 4km warmup, 6x1km at 10km race speed, 2km cooldown), one one-hour run, and one easy long run on the weekends (min 1.5h, better 20k). Same structure for bike, 1 intensity session maybe on a trainer (for example 1,5hrs with 5x3min at FTP with 5mins rest), one long easy ride on the weekend, and the third somewhere in between (longish, potentially some short sprints or a little more pushing up the hills). Strength and core stability just build in before or after your sessions ( strength before, core after). Also would be nice to combine a ride and a run as brick, to also train what the body is going through during a race.
So lets say, on Saturday you start with a swim, in the afternoon you do a long ride. On Sunday you first do a longish ride, then the long run in the afternoon. You will have lots of hours in, and it leaves a swim, a trainer session, a 1hr run and some run intervals. That's 4 sessions for during the week, so it gives you a recovery day too. That's one workout during the week, 2 on the weekends (not counting strength etc). And this will make you faster!
Important thing is to not start right away with this but ease into it. if you always run 15miles a week and now some people are suggesting you to run 40-50, sure way to an injury. Start with lots of slow base miles and don't increase by more than 10% per week.