Be particularly careful with your running volume. Many athletes run far too much for ironman-distance racing. Remember that the best place to build endurance and aerobic fitness is on your bike. Running beats you up, and the greatest challenge for most folks training for ironman-distance racing is how fast they can recover."

"You will find that threshold and anaerobic exercise greatly increase your recovery needs. This type of training also increases the risks of burning out, illness, and injury."

"You should target three key sessions each week (one for each sport): one long swim of 75-100 minutes, one long ride of 4 to 5 hours followed by a 20- to 30-minute transition run, and one long run of 90 to 150 minutes. Everything else is filler." (I added the bold for emphasis)

"Until you have the aerobic fitness for this task, "going hard" is likely a wasted opportunity for futher endurance training."

"Although high-intensity work is essential for elite athletes, 90% ofthe field in any race is average age groupers. Consistency beats intensity in nearly all age group situations." (I added the bold again for emphasis)

** the above excerpted from Going Long, Friel and Byrn, 2003

Thanks for the post and thanks for including something more than anecdotal "I do this and I think it works."[/reply]as far as i can remember, that's a pretty accurate description of going long.

Your original question asks whether there is value for most IM age groupers to do intervals. I jumped ahead and suggested that most people don't have a complete running program to begin with and there are other components that would probably benefit them more than intervals. It's not that intervals are useless, I believe they compromise other aspects of your training, jeopardize consistency and that the risk is not worth the reward.

It's easy to get distracted from the topic; obviously cycling, execution, etc. impact performance, but I'm sticking with the run program for now. I took the liberty of assuming that the next logical question would be: If not intervals, than what or how do you get faster? I responded with frequency, volume, duration and consistency, which in turn builds strength, durability and economy in running.

To answer one of your questions: I prefer to keep the weeks balanced rather than intentional reduce the cycling and swimming just so you can run more. This might mean re-thinking what a balanced week looks like; I've always emphasized the run.

What is "needed to pull off that "crème de la crème" sub 3:30 Ironman run split". I think it takes more than 3-4x per week and 4 hrs of running, especially when one of those runs is your weekly long run of 2 hrs (and a few other runs of 30 - 40 min). It takes more than 12 weeks to build a solid running program. I picked those numbers because it seems like that's what most people are doing to prepare for IM; Most people don't run to their potential at IM.

I think for most people to run to their potential at IM they need to change the way they look at their running program. Most will need to run 5x at a minimum; many of the bigger weeks should include 6 or 7 runs. The duration of the runs should build to between :50 - 1:20 so the weekly volume might be as high as 7 or 8 hrs. Long runs are not required every week. Too many people get a false sense of security from their long run and use it to beef up their weekly volume so they don't have to run so often. But when your frequency is lacking you'll feel it during an IM.

I believe strongly in this protocol. I've had the pleasure of seeing my IM marathon time improve every single time (save one) over the last 7 years. Almost every athlete I work with pr'd last year including a 9:53 first time IM with a 3:23 run and Lori Travis running the 3rd fastest in ag (3:38) run split in Kona.

Mitch