If you read only one book this year make it Joe Friel's "Triathlete's Training Bible". Five Stars.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

Clearly Friel's book "Triathlete's Training Bible" is the one to get. I would be surprised if almost everyone on this site didn't say the same thing.

yup, that's the one!

Totally disagree with above posters. I have Joel's Training Bible for Triathletes and it's greek to me. Don't get me wrong there is some good info in there but I find it very confusing to put a training plan together from that. Especially if you're a beginner.

I like Gale Bernhardts Training plans for Multisport athletes. It's an easy read for beginners to Ironman.

I agree with Hershel, Joe Friel's book is good, but I think it makes things a bit more complicated than they need to be. I've read it a couple of times and understand it, but especially for the beginner, probably more info than most people really need. One of the first triathlon books that I read was Dave Scott's Triathlon Training book and it was invaluable. I still think it is the best book on how to train that I have read.

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Mike Plumb, TriPower MultiSports
Professional Running, Cycling and Multisport Coaching, F.I.S.T. Certified
http://www.tripower.org

The Complete Guide to Endurance Training by Jon Ackland. A lot better than the TB in my opinion.

Triathlete Training Bible by far.. great depth and detail.

FYI.. for all you types that wanna automate the creation of a training plan based on Friel's methods.. try www.trainingbible.com, I've been using it since the start of my training season. Great (almost) substitute for a real caoch.

mike

I would recommend that you check out Triathlon 101 by John Mora. I used it when I was first starting out and it has a lot of great stuff that you might not think about when new to tri. I also have the Triathlete's Training Bible and Gale Bernhardt's Training Plans book and think they are both valuable resources, but as stated by other posters, they take a bit time/experience to understand the concepts to a point that you can apply them.

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Embrace the suck--Anon.

Eagles Race Team--Napa CA

Absolutely! I'm w/Tom. Joe Friel "The Triathlete's Training Bible" If you want to know HOW to do triathlon, this is the source.

I think it depends on where you are in the sport. My first book on the subject was "Serious Training for Endurance Athletes" which was an easier read. Friel's book is always on my nightstand now, but I needed to work up to this one.

Looks like the Training Bible has greatest consensus of the group! Although I'm sure there are many good books out there!

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JT3

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Keep your head up, and enjoy what you are doing.

Joe Friel's and Gale Berhnardt's books are both published by Velopress, and they both acknowledge that the books are intended to complement each other. The Training Bible is sort of the step-by-step "how-to" build your own training plan (plus tons of other info) and Gale's book essentially takes these principles and creates some predefined workouts for those that understand Joe's book but don't want to take the time to build their own plan. I have both, and I've usually started with a plan from Gale's book and used the principles in Joe's book to modify the plan to suit my needs. Saves me a lot of time vs starting from scratch.

I found "Time Saving Training for Multisports Athletes (Fitting Workouts into Workdays)". Really good as a starting point. Training Bible has a wealth of info, but I think it's a little overwhelming for a beginner.

Another good one is Marc Allen/Julie Moss's book - "Workouts for Working People"

Two books: Training Bible--though it doesn't get specfic enough. I am just about to start following Gale B's "Training Plans for Multisport Athletes" next week. Training for my 1st IM.

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Jon Bergmann
http://jonbergmann.com