Making it up as I go along!
....but with a high level timeline/philosophy in mind....

I use TR and a running plan. This past season I went with BarryP. Mixed results, but I did drop ~4 minutes off my target Oly race this year.

Next year I'll probably stick with TR, but go to a more traditional running plan.

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Strava

Depends on how serious/competitive you are. I race as a pro but still coach myself as it is just a glorified-hobby. Overall, on the bike you need some V02 max workouts (think 5x3min), threshold, (eg. 4x10), supra-threshold (eg. 4-5 x 5min), sub-threshold (longer than 10min), easy/recovery, and long workouts. I try to cover these in a 2 week time frame, with emphasis on shorter stuff or longer stuff depending on the time of year. Running is similar, although i am very injury prone, so it's more like 1 hard workout (intervals), 1 brick workout, 1 easy run, 1 long run. (each week). Swimming I go with 1 distance workout, 1 speed (25's/50's), and 1-2 threshold (100-200's) with easy/technical focused swims on the other days. I have found this works for me, although everyone is different. I honestly haven't found that 'block training' yields any different results than covering all the bases year-round. (especially given that I want to be race-ready 6-8 months of the year)

I coached myself for a long time and probably reached 90-95% of my potential (and I also live in NYC). It's actually pretty easy:

1) Join a masters program and swim ~3 times per week (lots of em here)
2) Join TR and follow the bike portion of one of their training plans
3) Run following BarryP program 5-6 days per week

Set up the workouts in a routine that works for you (mine was Swim MWF, Bike T-Th-Sat and run in the afternoons almost every day).

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Strava

Learn how to search how you feel before a workout. If your legs are sore, swim. If your legs aren't sore, then bike or run. If your warmup is sluggish, go easy. If your warmup is quick and easily gets you up to race-pace speeds, then it could be a good day for intervals. If you've started a workout and notice that you feel soreness in those muscles, then they are still damaged and repairing, so doing intervals or any hard efforts would be dumb. Hard workouts damage the muscles so they can repair and come back stronger. Soreness means they are already damaged and you are delaying the repair cycle and you will take even longer to get faster or will plateau and not get faster at all. In that case go very easy and let the blood flow help repair the muscles and loosen things up instead.

Track everything and add comments to your workouts, especially distances, intensity, and how it made you feel. Then look for patterns where you are improving and you aren't tired all day. Repeat those patterns.

Start there and work up.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

Step 1: Read Books, inform yourself on Periodization. Triathlete Training Bible by Friel. Fast Track Triathlete by Dixon are the first two to start out with I think.
Step 2: Develop your periodized plan, a great companion to start is Friel's training journal. But laying it out on a spreadsheet is also great. Then input into training software if you want analysis afterwards.
Step 3: Be accountable to yourself.

Honestly, kind of in the same boat. Although I think I'll look towards finding a good coach. I think $200/month is quite a lot if your only interaction is through email and there's no face to face.

Coached myself this year, laid out what I thought was a great plan...and when I hit 15 hours in training I started to break. I figured it would be decently easy to get to 20 hrs/week since I used to do that in the Army all the time between PT, Lifting, and Rugby. Didn't really get back there. looking at it this year I need to do a whole lot of 10 hr weeks before pushing further.

For the most part when you're starting I think self coaching is difficult. But if you've had one for awhile, you have a big "framework" to work with.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Not as fast as you but I've tried a bunch of things. Actually did pretty well for myself on my own, but I do tend to overtrain, and not taper properly for race day which limited me.

Tried trainerroad for Olys, but the bike was too hard for me. I felt it was too hard in general for an Oly bike in the build - 1 VO2max workout that can be SUPER hard (lots of 120% FTP, and even spikes at 130% FTP!). The base Oly plan was fine for me, but I gained essentially close to zero on my FTP (<4 watts, within rounding error range) after finishing the full base - and was quite discouraged to find the ensuing build so hard that I dread it after 5 weeks and had to pull the plug shortly thereafter since my running was falling off a cliff. But that's for the Oly - folks here seem to have better experience with the IM plan, likely because that sort of intensity might be more manageable if you're doing a bigger base on wknds.

I'm doing Matt Dixon's book plan from "Fast-Track Triathlete" now. You should check it out, as well as his free podcasts which are in general, excellent. Plans for 70.3 and IM (nothing shorter, but you can adapt the HIM to an Oly on your own) and it's only a $15 book. Even if you don't use the plan, you'll gain a lot for knowledge and even stealing ideas from his plans into whatever you end up using. Worth a look.

How?

Read, a lot.

Don't be afraid to go in the opposite direction of what all your friends are doing with their training.

Start planning with round 10 in mind before you even get to the start of round 1.

There are a ton of good threads on ST by some really smart people. I'd read those. Yes some of the answers are snarky (i'm guilty of this haha), some of the answers you really need to step back and think about it like this thread. It's a great example of where the info was laid out in plain site if you thought about what was being written not just take it for the words written. Some people just didn't step back and think things through.
This thread has some good points as well where the OP is taking your route but didn't see the forest through the trees.

If it were me, I'd read several threads and figure out who knew what they were talking about then start clicking through threads they post on. I'd go back several years bc some of the smartest people in the exercise phys world & coaching world have been chased off this board/banned/got tired of the high ration of noise to signal.

I'd read some more then I'd step back and think about how person A's training info meshes/contradicts person B's info and how do they compare to person C, D & E.

There are no shortage of be a great triathlete on 10h of training per week books/articles. There are a shortage of triathletes who are good who train only 10h per week.

I'd find someone who knew how to correct your swim stroke and fix that. #1 way to reduce your margin of error when racing is expend a lot of energy to go slow in the very first leg.

I'd read some more, but hey I like reading. I once averaged >300 research articles per year for 3 years bc the company I worked for gave us a full subscription to pubmed. You probably don't have to go to that level. It wouldn't hurt though.

The # of people who coach triathlon/write about triathlon/come across as experts on triathlon is much, much, much, much > the number who actually know what they are doing when it comes to triathlon. It's tough sorting the wheat from the chaff if you're new to the sport.

Then and only then would I start to figure out how I'm going to train for the next season by starting with the end and working backwards. My other advice is annual training plans are bullshit. Do an outline of when you want to do what. That will serve you much much better than rigidily sticking to build 1 or build 2.

I'd pick up an exercise phys book used from the local book store. McArdle, Katch & Katch is a undergrad/grad school standard. When you read things that sound really good, you can cross reference it with the actual science.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Thanks all for the serious and helpful responses. It seems like I have a lot of reading to do. Main concerns for me are having confidence in the plans that I put together myself. Even if the coach doesn't know what they are doing its mentally easy to trust a 3rd party. Second is racing/training to my full potential. My training time is so limited as it is, working 60-80 hour weeks, the thought of leaving 20-30% of potential out there after putting the full time in just cause I am doing it wrong is what gives me the most trepidation. Lots to digest though and fortunately I still have a few months until my "in-season" needs to kick in.

Swim---use swim smooth
bike use Xert
Run- use train as one

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"see the world as it is not as you want it to be"

of course st has an article on this, cf for a decent overview,
https://www.slowtwitch.com/..._s_Toolbox_4321.html

never had a coach in anything, swim run or bike, was able to get myself to ITU AG championships a couple of times..
big problem with self-coaching, is now you have a fool for a coach and a fool for an athlete.. proceed with appropriate caution ;-)

hard days hard, easy days easy. About 80/20 easy/hard.

as desert dude says, read widely. I like Friel's approach in general.
Lore of Running by Dr Tim Noakes is still a great book for running, although Dr Noakes has since then gone a bit batty over keto.

The one thing I'd add if I was still training to race, is a HRV monitor. Like every other old endurance athlete, I used RPE with training logs: but got myself thoroughly overtrained on several occasions, so believe this is not sufficient.
Alan Couzens suggests a simple approach to detect overreach using HRV, submaximal HR, and cadence as an indicator of neuromuscular efficiency.
https://alancouzens.blogspot.com/...-help-you-avoid.html

Log these in the training log along with details of workouts, review the log on a regular basis, looking for patterns.
Remember that it's not just training stress, there will be a lot of stress from your 60-80 hour workweeks, which mean you cannot achieve your full athletic potential. That's why it's important to have objective measures like HRV to prevent overload and breakdown..

Follow @sweatscience on Twitter, to get excellent reviews of the latest research..
as he says,
"It’s always tempting to base your workout routine on the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally: you see someone with big muscles and think “I’ll have what she’s having. Somehow, though, copying someone else’s training plan seldom produces the same results for you as it did for them.”

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Lol

Weird

I read this exactly when I was watching Tyson Trevor burbick fight in YouTube

I am coaching myself using the 80/20 Triathlon plans found in the book. It is going well so far, but alas, I have never had a coach. So I don't really have something to compare it to. Full disclosure.

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- Jordan

My Strava

I would go for the $2 coaching fee option; and you will have $5 for beer. ;)

I coach myself.

Here is my simple formula.
Hard weeks:
3 swim workouts/wk:
1) Long yardage - (4000- 7000 yards.
2) Workout with hard intervals (3000-5000 yards)
(15 x 100s hard with 10 seconds rest)
3) Workout with 25 sprints and butterfly, back, breast

4 run workouts:
1) Long run 13-22 miles
2) Tempo run 3- 10 miles at tempo pace, (6-12 miles total)
3) Easy with strides or fartleks or strides (4-6 miles)
4) easy and fun (3-10 miles)

4 bike workouts:
1) Long 3-6 hrs
2) Hard with long intervals (more than 5 minutes) 1- 2 hrs
3) Moderate with short intervals (less than 1.25 minutes) 1 HR
4) Easy and fun 1- 3 hrs


The long runs and tempos vary based on my target race and increase in difficulty throughout the season.

3 wks hard

1 wk easy :
Same frequency as hard week. But every workout is 20 minutes- 1 hr. And easyish.

I coached myself to Kona and 70.3 champs qualifications.

I got a coach after this and did not have a very good experience. I did not qualify for either 70.3 worlds or Kona this year.

I moved in without him. Let’s see how things go at IM Florida.

Your success is going to depend on your intelligence regarding training and your ability to allow yourself to adequately recover.

Do you own a Trucker Hat?

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

First year doing triathlon seriously so I'm also trying to figure this out but have self-coached myself to good success for the past few years running, and (leaning heavily on the run!) to an AG win in a local oly this summer.

Things that help: reading a lot, joining clubs with people who know more about the sport/are better discipline-specific athletes than you are, having a temperament such that you enjoy planning workouts through the near future, but you can be flexible for injuries, weather, life events, etc. If you enjoy numbers and tracking your progress then great.

Things that hurt: it's hard to be 100% confident that you are doing enough, or to know when you are doing too much. The latter -- both getting better from injuries and knowing when to cut a workout or take a day off, are the places where I think a coach would help me most with running. Also harder to evaluate your form by yourself (primarily for swimming, IMO not very important for running, and with cycling seems like you can get good position/aero feedback online).

though I am not a tri-athlete I find this forum interesting from a cycling point of view. I have been thinking about training and having never had a coach so I can not truly comment to that but as someone who tries to self coach I think the big thing (other than expertise of your coach) is accountability. If you have a tacit agreement between you and a coach to do certain things then you become accountable to each other and I suspect that it improves results simply by the fact that the program is something you try to stick to either by accountability or accounting (meaning it costs you money and that is a motivator). I have considered thinking of some sort of on line group (which won't probably have the strength of accountability as a paid coach) as a way to coach and motivate each other. Many people have a wealth of knowledge or like me have taken coaching courses but live in places or in circumstances where paid "professional" coaching is not easy. Has anyone tried this sort of idea?

you mean something like Slowtwitch??

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Use this link to save $5 off your USAT membership renewal:
https://membership.usatriathlon.org/...A2-BAD7-6137B629D9B7

AlyraD wrote:

you mean something like Slowtwitch??

in PINK right?

I own several truckers hats- will they make me faster?

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"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."

Your comment got me thinking (in a very good way) - the importance of training all the zones without killing oneself.

Question what about tempo / mod- hard. What is your suggestion? Something like 3 x 20 min (on the bike).

I too am VERY injury prone, so I wouldn't do that for the run!