I think in general, a course, your strengths, can affect an outcome quite a bit, from day to day-race to race. If you have 1 distance you'll race at or type of course, train specifically for that. At ITU World's last year / 2019 I trained specifically on the bike up a canyon just a few miles away that was almost identical to what the World's Course was...but if I did not have that, I'd use the trainer for it. I couldn't train the run much though as I had an injury that kept me from running much, but still ended up having the 2nd best bike time in the AG. My run which is my strength actually kinda dashed my hopes-- but whatever, it's in the past.

For basic training I would just get as fit as you can in both sports, and make sure you can pace it so you're not overly cooked after the first run, have a fast transition (so practice the snot outta those), and then make sure you're not so pooped out after the bike you can't turn over your legs on the last run. The rest--is just racing...those bike intervals of various lengths & different grades are gonna hurt like hell, but as long as you're recovering daily to get some quality from being rested, will go a long way to regular improvement. I'm older then you but raced faster in my 40's than my 30's. Experience will take you a long way & you'll figure it out what the body can take. My best 5k was at age 40 only 12 days after an Ironman...so you can improve well into your 50's. Good luck!

PS: Lots of guys will chime in with times, HR zones to hit & interval lengths with rest suggestions...I won't do that. Just get quality stuff in & track it. If you see a decline, switch it up, maybe do longer blocks of bike, or run, or cut intensity or add a rest day, change your diet if you see "holes in it" and get plenty of sleep. Common sense stuff really. Includes also--proper bike fit & good equipment, finding that sweet spot for your rpms (gearing) and in the end, what all that I just said boils down to: KNOW THYSELF. Learn how to & when to push it and when not to, what makes you tick and what you can alter to go faster. It's a puzzle. Gather data & study it. Analyze it. Ask more questions. Hell, PM me, I'll help you out with some questions.

Good advice above so I'll just throw out a few more thoughts.
1. Duathlons are generally at least an hour, so remember that volume is way more important that speed when you have to be out there for a while. I was pretty clueless at training when I was younger and did way too much speed, then not enough. If I could go back and do it over, I'd probably do a long steady-state run on Monday (something like sweet spot for bike intervals), a basic 2x20 FTP bike workout on Wednesday and then some sort of threshold run (my preference is 12-16x400 on 10 seconds rest over continuous tempo) on Friday, with a long run (90 to 120 minutes) straight into a med ride (3 to 4 hours) on Saturday. With as much volume as I can stand in between. Something like that would have eked out the last 10 percent for me, I suspect and would have been the difference between winning and high placement.

2. If you are not a bike geke then you need to find one and make friends. Early on I was clueless about that and made some huge equipment errors (I'm talking to you Tufo tubulars with Tufo glue tape pumped up to 160 psi). 15 years of trial and error and now I can ride nearly as fast on flat courses as I did when I was 35 and probably on 30-50 watts less power. It does not require 10,000 dollars either. I'm still riding a P2C that is 13 or 14 years old. It is all about the details.

3. Pacing is key and as the above post-er said, know yourself and what you can do. During my two best finishes at duathlon nationals, I was no better than 15th or so on the 10K run but generally passed a lot of people during the last half of the bike and the second 5K. I would lose 30-60 seconds on the first run to folks and then beat them by three or four minutes in the second 5K because they overcooked the 10K and the first half of the bike.
When I started riding watts, I would ride by feel for about 10 minutes and then back off my output by 10 or so watts and always had good rides and second runs.
You really have to believe in yourself when all those people are ahead of you, but you blow in a duathlon, its usually abrupt and painful.

I wish I lived where they still held duathlons. They are a dead carcass in SoCal.

Thanks to both of you for the feedback. In terms of speed vs. endurance, I've definitely always been an endurance guy, I've averaged right around 4000 miles a year for the past 5+ years solely running and my sweet spot for racing is 15k-half marathon distance which is right around the time it takes to race most of the du's near me.

Rocky, thank you for the offer to PM you, I may take you up on that in the future.

For the bike just go ride, lots.
Don't worry about intervals necessarily until your 6-8-10 weeks (depending on your fitness/previous training) away from your first event. Just rack up as much aerobic volume as possible. The nice thing is if you do it right the recovery costs aren't nearly as high as doing intervals 2x week on the bike. And while you're initial FP climb won't be as impressive as someone doing intervals, as the season drags on you'll be better positioned to make larger gains surpassing theirs.

Since you were a Cat 3 the riding will come back pretty easily. Having killer 2-5 min power isn't really a necessity in duathlon or triathlon for that matter. Having an ability to ride at 90+% of FTP and still have a good second run is the necessity. Gear your cycling training around that goal

The coolest thing about duathlon is the training is so much easier than triathlon from a scheduling time point. No driving to/from the pool. You can do a second run a few days per week, run 7-8x per week, ride 4-5x per week and still have less overall time invested than a triathlete riding just as much and running 10 miles less per week. That leaves more time available for napping

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

The advice depends on what distances you want to race. Many ways to get to the same goal.
Running and cycling training is very similar on paper.
Ive been a duathlete since 1984 and after a lot of trial and error in the beginning my training for the last twenty years has essentially been the same.
You can get as techy and complicated as you want but it isnt really needed.
If your interested PM me.
Welcome to the world of run bike run!

Thanks Brian. It’s funny, I live about 400m from the Atlantic Ocean and don’t even need to cross a street to get there, but I’ve never liked swimming and certainly am not very good at it. But yeah, I really have taken a liking to racing on Zwift recently so I’ll probably keep doing that and having fun rather than focusing on a specific plan until late spring. My goal races are late summer/early fall.

As far as recovery goes, one thing about cycling I’ve always liked is that while I may feel a workout/race in my legs for the rest of the day, it doesn’t linger in the joints the way a run workout does.

And as I type this I’m laying with my 18 month old son napping on me. Something I get to do every weekend and all summer. Can’t beat that.

Dudaddy, I’m PMing you. Thanks

For the bike just go ride, lots.


Agree with Brian here.

There's a tendency to make Bike Training OVERLY complicated. Just get out there and ride - as much as you can. Short rides. Long rides. Rides with others (if you can in the pandemic).

Cycling is a sport that benefits BIG TIME from a big boost of volume in the early stages of training, and because of the lack of weight bearing, and assuming a good fit on the bike and decent biomechanics, you can toss out some of those rules of volume progression.

Just take a few months - 2 - 3 and call yourself, "a Cyclist". Sprinkle in a few runs here and there, to stay in contact with the running fitness and mechanics. Check back in and let us know how it's goes!

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog