So I've read a bunch of the BarryP stuff, his stuff and the awesome success stories, and I'm gonna give it a go. I'm a new triathlete with a swim and bike background and zero, I mean zero running background. I finished my first sprint tri last weekend, had a blast, was 40/507 in the swim, ~90/507 in the bike and then 322/507 in the run (28:48 5k). So obviously I need to improve in the run.
Next year I'm going to try olympic distance races, so want to tailor my training to that distance (especially building up my run endurance to handle the 10k). So here are my questions:
1. What should my goal "long run" be if following the BarryP plan if I want to focus on olympic distance races, and I am 100% certain there is NOT a 1/2 distance race in my future next year.? Is this not the correct thinking? Should I just keep continuing to up my mileage until I can't anymore? As I'm training for tri, I'm trying to balance all of my swim/bike/run training into a limited amount of time. I recognize that my overall times will get the biggest improvement if I run more, but there has to be a limit right? Like I wouldn't do 100% running at the expense of the other two sports. I plan on getting my intensity primarily from the bike workouts.
2. How often do you "refigure" your training zones? Because of scheduling and having 2 kids and an endurance athlete wife, my schedule is not very flexible, which means I get most of my running in on a treadmill. It's really nice for keeping things in the perfect zone, but also means I can become too much of a creature of habit. Right now, my easy pace should be 11-12 min/mile, and I'm wondering when I should bump those up? Is HR an acceptable metric to use to quantify the effort? Like I did my medium run today (2.4 miles) and my HR was steady at 132 bpm. If I notice in a month that the same pace has my HR at 128, should I increase the speed until HR returns to that 132? Is that thinking about this too much, and just run easy? If now easy is at 5.4 mph, and in a month bump it to 5.6 and see if that feels easy enough?
USAT Level 1 Coach
Team Next Level
http://goteamnltri.com/
Next year I'm going to try olympic distance races, so want to tailor my training to that distance (especially building up my run endurance to handle the 10k). So here are my questions:
1. What should my goal "long run" be if following the BarryP plan if I want to focus on olympic distance races, and I am 100% certain there is NOT a 1/2 distance race in my future next year.? Is this not the correct thinking? Should I just keep continuing to up my mileage until I can't anymore? As I'm training for tri, I'm trying to balance all of my swim/bike/run training into a limited amount of time. I recognize that my overall times will get the biggest improvement if I run more, but there has to be a limit right? Like I wouldn't do 100% running at the expense of the other two sports. I plan on getting my intensity primarily from the bike workouts.
2. How often do you "refigure" your training zones? Because of scheduling and having 2 kids and an endurance athlete wife, my schedule is not very flexible, which means I get most of my running in on a treadmill. It's really nice for keeping things in the perfect zone, but also means I can become too much of a creature of habit. Right now, my easy pace should be 11-12 min/mile, and I'm wondering when I should bump those up? Is HR an acceptable metric to use to quantify the effort? Like I did my medium run today (2.4 miles) and my HR was steady at 132 bpm. If I notice in a month that the same pace has my HR at 128, should I increase the speed until HR returns to that 132? Is that thinking about this too much, and just run easy? If now easy is at 5.4 mph, and in a month bump it to 5.6 and see if that feels easy enough?
USAT Level 1 Coach
Team Next Level
http://goteamnltri.com/