I am doing my first Half (Steelhead) this season and will have one more Oly race (Chicago on 8/24), but want to run the Chicago Marathon on October 12th.
I am concerned with bridging the tri training to heavier run training - at what point in the season? After Steelhead? Wait until after the Chicago Tri? Should I just do the Chicago Sprint rather than the Oly or would it matter?
I assume this means pretty much putting the bike away after 8/24.
This would be my first open marathon, with my previous long race (and long run) a half marathon last September.
Personally I would still ride a bit while training for Chicago if you can. I made the mistake of running only after my last 1/2 IM in September of last year and wound up teraing my calf. Cross training with aerobic benefit can only help you and might keep you injury free.
I did pretty much exactly what you’re planning last fall. Steelhead, my first HIM, followed by Sylvania Oly the following week. The Oly was terrific, as my fitness carried over extremely well and I had no problems with recovery from the HIM.
I switched over to almost exclusively doing run training and did the Free Press Marathon on 10/21, improving on my marathon time dramatically (40 minutes) from the prior year. I ran 40 to 50 miles per week (a lot for me) with a max of 54. One tempo or hill run per week; one long run per week. I thought I would do a fair amount of cross training, but found the running took up almost all my available time.
Last summer/fall I did almost exactly the same thing: Steelhead HIM, Chicago Oly, and then Detroit Free Press Marathon. After racing Steelhead, I took about a week off from structured training. After that, kept up running 4x per week, but added distance on the long run day (think I did 15 miles two weeks after Steelhead), and cut back on the mileage on the bike and swim training. Found I had a good base built up for a strong Oly in Chicago. After Chicago, I pretty much stopped riding until the marathon, and just swam once or twice a week if I felt like it. PRed the Free Press marathon by 30 minutes and had a great race.
I loosely followed Hal Higdon’s intermediate marathon training plan to get the long run mileage, which I thought worked pretty well with the mileage I was doing for Steelhead training.