Any tips for balancing the two? I know I can, its just that my coach thinks I can’t. I want to do well in track, which requires running 6 days per week. I want to train for tri’s too but I am confused on balancing hours. Tips?
High School, college, pro?
I’ll assume HS. Do all the running as prescribed by your coach. Add in light cycling and swimming. Aim for 3 workouts per week of both, but they should be easy, basically recovoery type efforts or about 30 minutes. When track is over ease up on running and emphasize swimming cycling. If you are starting HS vs senior join the swim team.
Styrrell
You can never run fast enough in a triathlon. Focus on developing as a runner right now, maintain the rest.
Speed slays your opponents. How many times have you heard triathletes say I ran just too damn fast for everyone. Not often. I heard I just couldn’t close the gap on the run, or they just had more then I did on the run 100x more often then I hear I crushed them all on the run.
I agree with desert dude. Focusing on Track for 2.5 months out of the year is not going to do anything but make you a better triathlete.
Go for a long ride on your 7th day of the week (but make it a slow, long ride) and swim on Saturday evenings.
Your track coach doesn’t need to know about this, and in that vein, make sure you don’t complain about tired legs or tired shoulders in his/her presence. 
It wouldn’t hurt to join the swim team too and focus the same way on swimming during the winter months.
Doing this may not give you the best possible triathlon performance this year, but in the years to come the focus you put on individual sports will converge and make you a better triathlete in the end.
I did track for two years while competing in tris. My coach never realized how much racing I was doing until I went to a tri that used a really good permanent marker for markings and I couldnt wash them off in time for my monday meet. Lets just say when we lost the 4x800 and he saw my body markings he was not happy. In season I swam one weeknight after pracice, just do drills and easy stuff. I swam once on saturdays, usually a longer pulls and did a long bike sunday as well as biking easy to school everyday. You can do it, just have focus and know which one is more important. And as previously said you can never run too fast.
Doing this may not give you the best possible triathlon performance this year, but in the years to come the focus you put on individual sports will converge and make you a better triathlete in the end.
This is a valuable message for anyone to heed.
Exact same thing happened to me… just that I run XC for a D2 school on LongIsland. Coach saw my numbers (that would not come off) and was kind of pissed I dared to race during my XC season. I know it was a stupid decision to make on my part…but I just needed to see how much XC effected my Tri run performance.
The sad thing is you didn’t even need to do a triathlon to check that out. You could have just used your XC results.