So at the beginning of the summer my wife challenged me to a triathlon. I am fat and out of shape, swam competitively growing up, raced bikes about 12 years ago so figured I'd give it a go and see what happened. I'm a teacher, so summers off which allowed me to pretty much train as much as my body would let me. I had a few focuses during the 8 weeks or so of training before the tri. I used the swim and bike to develop my aerobic engine, and trained the run to slowly build up enough of a base that would allow me to run the 5k. So basically no run intensity to keep from getting hurt, and all the intensity came from bike and swim workouts.
We completed the tri yesterday and I had a blast. It was a .4 mile swim (maybe a little shorter, was supposed to be .5 but they shortened it because of a lot of waves/chop). Time was 11:41 (~1:40/100y) and the 41st/507 swim spit. Bike was rolling and averaged 18.5 for 70/507, felt decent the whole way, kept something in reserve for the run but probably could have pushed a little harder on some sections (NP for the 24 minute effort was 235), the run sucked like I thought it would. There was about a 1 mile climb that was horrible for me and I walked for maybe a minute 3/4 of the way up, that was the only time I walked and I had a 28:40 minute 5k split that was where I figured I'd be, but was 312/507. Overall time 1:08:29 for 109th overall and 1st in open clydesdale (I'm 6'2 and 225). Overall I hit my goal of where I thought I'd be if everything went well, and I had a blast. See lots of room for improvement on the run and bike and would like to give this sport a go next season, and probably focus on olympic distance (no longer than that for certain)
So here's my questions, 1. My swim is solid and I feel like my time could be better spent improving the other two disciplines, how many yards/days would you do if you just wanted to sort of maintain your swim ability? 2. I am a terrible runner, zero background in it and am heavy. I'm working on the heavy part and my biggest goal for the next half a year to 10 months is to lose the fat, so if that is the goal, will just simple base running, slowly trying to increase distance while keeping injury free be the way to go about it? I figure time will come off just from getting lighter and having a better aerobic base. I feel like I can get my intensity from the bike with healthy doses of threshold and sweet spot work during the winter and then ramping things up next spring before races. I am a little worried of trying to do too much, too fast and burning out, getting hurt, losing motivation all while trying to drop from 225 --> 185 or so (maybe not that low by next season).
So to sum up:
How bad of an idea would it be to swim 2x a week (focus on getting endurance to be able to swim 1.5 k at a decent pace), run 3-4x/wk almost all just slow pace with very little intensity, and do a trainerroad sweetspot base program through the winter (Oct-Mar) all while trying to lose ~1 lb/wk? If it was you in my shoes, how would you do things differently?
USAT Level 1 Coach
Team Next Level
http://goteamnltri.com/
We completed the tri yesterday and I had a blast. It was a .4 mile swim (maybe a little shorter, was supposed to be .5 but they shortened it because of a lot of waves/chop). Time was 11:41 (~1:40/100y) and the 41st/507 swim spit. Bike was rolling and averaged 18.5 for 70/507, felt decent the whole way, kept something in reserve for the run but probably could have pushed a little harder on some sections (NP for the 24 minute effort was 235), the run sucked like I thought it would. There was about a 1 mile climb that was horrible for me and I walked for maybe a minute 3/4 of the way up, that was the only time I walked and I had a 28:40 minute 5k split that was where I figured I'd be, but was 312/507. Overall time 1:08:29 for 109th overall and 1st in open clydesdale (I'm 6'2 and 225). Overall I hit my goal of where I thought I'd be if everything went well, and I had a blast. See lots of room for improvement on the run and bike and would like to give this sport a go next season, and probably focus on olympic distance (no longer than that for certain)
So here's my questions, 1. My swim is solid and I feel like my time could be better spent improving the other two disciplines, how many yards/days would you do if you just wanted to sort of maintain your swim ability? 2. I am a terrible runner, zero background in it and am heavy. I'm working on the heavy part and my biggest goal for the next half a year to 10 months is to lose the fat, so if that is the goal, will just simple base running, slowly trying to increase distance while keeping injury free be the way to go about it? I figure time will come off just from getting lighter and having a better aerobic base. I feel like I can get my intensity from the bike with healthy doses of threshold and sweet spot work during the winter and then ramping things up next spring before races. I am a little worried of trying to do too much, too fast and burning out, getting hurt, losing motivation all while trying to drop from 225 --> 185 or so (maybe not that low by next season).
So to sum up:
How bad of an idea would it be to swim 2x a week (focus on getting endurance to be able to swim 1.5 k at a decent pace), run 3-4x/wk almost all just slow pace with very little intensity, and do a trainerroad sweetspot base program through the winter (Oct-Mar) all while trying to lose ~1 lb/wk? If it was you in my shoes, how would you do things differently?
USAT Level 1 Coach
Team Next Level
http://goteamnltri.com/
Last edited by:
gregkeller: Aug 26, 19 10:45