My season’s done, so it’s time to work on weaknesses. Yeah, it’s early in the year still and I kind of feel like Happy Gilmore stepping in the batting cage taking fastballs to the chest saying “Only 364 more days until hockey tryouts, gotta toughen up.”
For me (and many others?), this means way more focus on the swim and run. I am sure everyone in this position thinks the same thing I am right now… my god, I will lose all my hard-earned bike fitness and have to start over.
Well, how true is that? Share your tales of radically reducing your work in one (or two) sports and really hammering on the other(s). Did it work? How long did you do it? What was the “cost” to the others?
(FWIW, I’m cutting down to 1-2x rides, and stepping up to 3-4 swims, 4+ runs. Most of the intensity will be in the pool (tempo, 'cuz my HR is that high anyway when swimming), and then sprinkled into some running. Around October/November I’ll bring the bike back into it a bit more.)
Quit multi-sport racing about 12 years ago. Bike raced for several years after. Then stopped all racing, and did mostly weight training and some running. In the last year, I’ve been running more consistently, and riding a little more. Only two weeks before my race, I started swimming.
And I won that race in the swim. Came out of the water top 3.
okay, it was a small sprint tri the same weekend as Troika. But I thought it was funny that the ONE sport I had NOT trained in turned out to be my strongest of the three that day.
Definatly that thought is on my mind. I know my cycling fitness will go way down this winter (wisconsin weather). I will focus on swimming and running, more but i think i will be able to maintain a somewhat adequate fitness inside ont he trainer.
Last year I spent the fall focusing on biking and did no running at all for about a month. I think I made significant improvements in my biking, but my run really suffered, and I did not get back to my old running speed all year, and had a series of overuse injuries as I tried to up my run mileage. I also read Mark Allen say somewhere that it is a mistake to stop running during down time. Since it sounds like you will be doing a run focus, you should be okay, but I’m not sure what will happen to your bike or swim.
Depends on how weak your weakness is…swimming can be a fantastic way to strengthen your core and hip flexors (which can boost your other two sports), but if your stroke stinks and you aren’t actually USING your core to swim then it won’t do you good to double up your swims… as I said, it depends on you and where you are in each one of your sports.
Sometimes folks just need the mental break of getting away from a sport so they forget some bad habits or find the joy in something else for a change.
last year training for placid, i was unable to ride the bike (at all due to medical problem) feb, march and april. during that time i ran 6X/wk, swam and lifted weights. My running became a strength which was not surprising but what was is how little i lost on the bike. my second ride back was a relatively strong 56 miles on the placid course (my first was 5 miles around the block).
during the run focus, i topped out at about 55 miles/wk. I did hill repeats, some speedwork but mostly just ran - never under 60’.
I partially tore my left achilles at Pendleton last summer. It ws a good thing, since my cycling is the weakest part of my Tri, I’ve just been doing way more cycling. My times around the rose bowl and my speed up the Angeles Crest have dramatically iimproved. I’m just getting ready to do my first race (a sprint) in 2 weeks. I’m still not a great cyclist, but it (in some ways) had been a God send. (I should also credit Dr Dre’ for pushing me to do lots of high and low cadence climbing. )
I don’t think this is much of a science and it all depends on how your body reacts. I had really terrible shin splints this year and drastically increased my bike miles. I went out to run my first 5k since early this year and made a huge improvement in my running even though I’ve barely been able to run at all this year. My impression is that it’s important to keep your legs strong, but much moreso to keep your heart strong, so I really think you’ll be fine.
I am living proof. This year trained for boston marathon early in year. Virtually no riding or swimming. Run times improved dramatically. Running fitness translated fine to the bike this summer once I taught my legs to go in circles again. However, I have found that running is more beneficial for cycling than cycling is for running. Not sure how swimming fits since as it is primarily technique. With a swimming background I know that I will be fine after a few weeks of interval efforts.
Besides as someone else posted, the mental break is good for you.
I’m planning for a winter marathon, so my run training will obviously pick up and I’m planning on scaling my biking back to one, maybe two days a week. This isn’t to difficult, since I’ve found my cycling tends to suffer when I pick up my run mileage. Swimming will also go from 3-4 days down to 2! It always mentally stresses me out when I bring the three sports out of balance, but I always seem to come back just fine, so I’ll deal with the mental issues accordingly!
Im not sure what to do? My run is definately my weakness. Im a decent swimmer if I swim but still have alot more room for improvement. My bike is good and probably my best of the 3, but I want to go faster. I am thinking that concentrating on my run and bike over the winter will give me the best benefits.
You’re right… not what I was thinking. But it gives me an excuse to drop swimming.
I swim three times a year (my three races) plus maybe one or two other times just to keep my form up…I think I’ve lost 1 or 2 minutes over the past 3 years from when I was training hard in the swim. Also, last year’s right hip injury hosed my running capability and I concentrated the whole season on the bike. This year I am ahead of last year’s paces by about a 0:30/mile average at similar temps. (You can’t compare fast winter runs at 60F to summer runs at 100F where my limitation now is sweat rate/hydration and overheating.) I probably lost 0:30/mile at the beginning of my winter running season but gained it all back within a few weeks. My cycling on the other hand drops tremendously fast in long distance rides.
Hmm, it may be a personal thing. I had been riding for about 2 years before I took a single stride running (since college, 15 yrs earlier). I could ride a century in <6 hours, hang in Cat5 crits, etc., but my first 2 mile run was… torture. It took a couple months to get up to 5 miles without being gassed. My HR at a 10min pace was similar to tempo on the bike!
I sure hope that running translates better to the bike!
Trouble with the emphasis on one sport is that if I skimp on one (say the bike), I’ll want to make that one session/wk meaningful. Read: intense. But meanwhile, I’ll want to throw more intensity into the sport of focus, too (swim, and/or run). Before I know it, I have nothing but intensity!
Agreed that initially you might feel inept on the bike, but after a few weeks of say 150 - 250 miles/week on the bike do you regain your old form. For me it is mechanical - once the legs learn to spin again I am OK.
