Hard to tell from your workout descriptions, what is your planned bike time per week?

You can throw in some aqua jogging or elliptical workouts to replace the running.

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Let food be thy medicine...

Similar to you, I had a stress fracture in my heel and also tendinitis (diagnosed in December 2022) and have Ironman Lake Placid in July 2023. Here are a few suggestions:

- Definitely try aqua jogging. It seems like this is for "old people" or "people with injuries", which matches your situation. Try running for 10 minutes and then try closing your mouth and only breathing thru your nose for 10 minutes while aqua jogging. It's a tough workout and you can always extend to 30 or 40 minutes.
- You mentioned a foot injury, but not the specific injury. If you can move your foot, you may be able to use an elliptical. Not as strenuous as running, but if/when you can move, work on an elliptical machine.
- My savior is the rowing machine. Even with the boot on my foot, I could use the rowing machine. What an aerobic workout for your whole body (arms, shoulders, legs, core).
- On a mat, do 100 "dead bug" exercises. Really works the core and you can do this with a cast/boot (which makes it harder with the extra weight).
- Try yoga - just do the exercises that you can do and don't fret about the poses that you are unable to do. Once I was able to do a complete set of yoga (including leg movements, one leg, etc.) for a month, then I started walking on a treadmill.
- Once you're able to run, use the treadmill or a soft track, but avoid the concrete.

Similar to you, I've run Boston 10 times and running is my strength, so I know that if I can do the swim and bike as strong as possible, that the run in Lake Placid will hopefully be muscle memory and not muscle misery.

YES rowing machine is the best thing I found after the foot injury.

Bike 250-300 miles per week
Swim 16-20K per week

 

for foot injury..... water running and eleptical machine is what i used mostly with my group. LEver on the treadmill as a step further into the recovery process.

but those bike workout.... ouch...they are hard.... i would say harder then needed to for developpement and improvement. i dont even think my elite/professional would survive such regime of intensity for a long time before burning out.

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

Is there quality in every single ride? Without the running I would add in some more easy riding. Maybe on Monday and/or Thursday. Agree to give aqua jogging a look -- could maybe add that to the two swim only days instead of another bike. I wouldn't be too concerned with the strong marathon but timeline matters. It can take a while to rebuild running fitness. It doesn't take a lot of time to lose it. Hard to get the heart rate up in the same way with just swimming/biking. & you run last in triathlon so it's tough not being able to train for that.

Is this more/less the training plan until the race or just until you can run? I would build that long swim & long ride and think about more 140.6 specific workouts over the last 2-3 months.

It is for the next 3 months, and hopefully I can run in August.

^This^

But lean more towards aqua jogging as the elliptical can cause another injury if you're not used to the exact motion.
Been there done that. Good time to spend extra effort on your core as well. Come back stronger.
I ran a marathon off of 2 months aqua jogging & then only 2 weeks of road running & finished only 5 min. slower than the other 2 marathons I had done previously (which were 30 sec. apart but 15 years "apart" from each other).

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Nothing sucks worse than aqua jogging as I did that for 8 weeks after a stress fracture in my foot.

I can't imagine there is any good substitute for running as a lot of the benefit is as a weight bearing exercise. I find I run at 10-15bpm higher than I bike IM so I would attempt to replicate my run heartrates in other activities.

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Swim - Bike - Run the rest is just clothing changes.

I didn’t say it would be fun 😜. I had to aqua jog for 2 weeks with a stress reaction in my left shin 4 years ago.

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Let food be thy medicine...

I dealt with injuries all last year, my only commitment was to finish Kona. I have trained for a few IM with little to no running, if you will only walk the race, no jogging you could just do no run training, but if I were to do it over I would do all the prescribed runs in the pool, aqua jogging will help you maintain some of your running fitness, and for some odd chance your body says you can run then you then you will be in good place to try and run... sucks for sure.

Ari Klau just did an excellent video on his fitness lost (or not lost) during his run injury period where he continued x-training bike and swim, with lactate data on intervals as he's come back to running recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvfO1flbMSc


Haven't watched it in detail yet, but it seems that he maintained his aerobic level almost unchanged after his time off through x-training (which for him is like mid5 min/mile). His VO2max at LT thresholds were the ones that took the hit from the time off running, and will require more run training to get back to where it was. Very interesting stuff.