I’m currently on a solid run focus (6 days a week 40+ building to 50+ miles per week). I’ve gone on a couple rides recently and know that my bike strength has definitely dropped. Last winter I went on a very strong bike focus and it definitely paid off as my 70.3 bike split dropped by 16+ minutes and I had a better run. This year I’m making the jump to IM distance and am starting to add riding back into my training. I plan on keeping the run focus through the end of the year then shift back to a more balanced training load come January. My plan is to keep running 6 days a week (40ish miles) and ride 4 days a week (20, 20, 30 & a long ride). The long ride will be my weekend ride that will build to 100 over 6-8 weeks from 50. As long as I can keep healthy on this training load I will run that through April and then take one of my run days out and add 2-3 swim workouts a week (which is more than I had last year to swim a 33 70.3 swim). The swim isn’t terribly hard for me to build into because I’ve always been around water even though I only swam competitively through middle school in the summers. I know I’m not going to be anywhere near first of out the water, but should have a solid bike and run with the right work.
So is 4-5 hours of running and 8-10 hours of riding an appropriate balance, or do I need to slide the scale one way or the other?
That being said I live in a cold climate to during the short biking season I go up to 10:1 during the summer but 1 1/2:1 during the winter.
My goals for IM were 20x the distance for the previous year 190Km swimming, 5,600 miles biking, and 1,310 miles running. I always made the running, and often made the swimming, but biking 5,600 miles was definitely a stretch goal.
My monthly targets are somewhere around 160 miles running, 550 bike, ~20mi swim with a little more or less depending on if I’m doign a particular focus. Running could go up to 200, and biking up to about 700. Probably won;t swim much more except a couple times in winter during hte crappiest weather… I’ll probably do a swim focus.
My average during 4 months leading up to IM are around 5.5 hours per week run, around 8 hours per week bike, around 2 hours per week swim.
That doesn’t tell you much though because I will have plenty of hard bike weeks up over 11 hours, plenty of long run weeks up over 60 miles, and I don’t really introduce swimming until a month into build, for there I am usually 3 hard hours per week.
2 IMs, 10:2x, 9:5x. Planning on a sub 9:30 in near future.
Wow. Avg 40 miles running per week? Peak 50?
When is you next Ironman?
My monthly targets are somewhere around 160 miles running, 550 bike, ~20mi swim with a little more or less depending on if I’m doign a particular focus. Running could go up to 200, and biking up to about 700. Probably won;t swim much more except a couple times in winter during hte crappiest weather… I’ll probably
do a swim focus.
I’m currently on a solid run focus (6 days a week 40+ building to 50+ miles per week). I’ve gone on a couple rides recently and know that my bike strength has definitely dropped. Last winter I went on a very strong bike focus and it definitely paid off as my 70.3 bike split dropped by 16+ minutes and I had a better run. This year I’m making the jump to IM distance and am starting to add riding back into my training. I plan on keeping the run focus through the end of the year then shift back to a more balanced training load come January. My plan is to keep running 6 days a week (40ish miles) and ride 4 days a week (20, 20, 30 & a long ride). The long ride will be my weekend ride that will build to 100 over 6-8 weeks from 50. As long as I can keep healthy on this training load I will run that through April and then take one of my run days out and add 2-3 swim workouts a week (which is more than I had last year to swim a 33 70.3 swim). The swim isn’t terribly hard for me to build into because I’ve always been around water even though I only swam competitively through middle school in the summers. I know I’m not going to be anywhere near first of out the water, but should have a solid bike and run with the right work.
So is 4-5 hours of running and 8-10 hours of riding an appropriate balance, or do I need to slide the scale one way or the other?
5-6 hours a week of running and 8-10 hours per week of riding sounds like a better balance. Add in 3-4 hours of swimming per week and you’re at 16-20 hours total per week.
I actually have run about 5 hours a week for quite a while, while swim/bike volume goes up and down.
Google Jesse Kropelnicki, critical volume subject. You will likely get answers you are looking for from a coach that has many athletes to draw on. Critical volume was something he wrote sometimes back, he also covers bike to run training ratios. He has a good rationale behind it. You can also google qt2 systems, look for his blog.
I would rather point you to something like this than, I do this…because you have no idea where I am coming from, what my weaknesses are and why I do things in a certain manner. Just because I do it, it does not mean it is correct or you should do it.
You will have most of your questions answered from that blog.
If you break it down in terms of time you should be somewhere around 50 / 30 / 20 for bike, run, swim. You need to consider intensities though because they are not all easy or hard miles.