I recall reading from Rich Strauss and others that these should be part of your regular training plan from now until the end of time (or as long as you wish to continue competing). Is my recollection correct (not doing one of his training plans this season)? Wondering if I should continue doing these week-in/week-out (except recovery weeks) pretty much from now until the IM taper weeks? Basically trying to figure out how to structure a 4/5 day per week cycling portion of an IM training plan.
Yes. However, to avoid boredom, recommend any combination of 8-20’ repeats at 95-100% of FTP. Longer is better but 20’ repeats until the end of time can get old. Mix it up with pyramids, etc. Then track total time @ FTP across the week and set goals for yourself. The rule I use, personally, is if I’m not TT’ing at FTP I’m rarely if ever riding at less than 80-85%…not on purpose anyway. I consider sub 80% to be sorta a waste of time. Caveat, I’m not training for Ironman but have aggressive FTP goals and want to be time efficient.
Also, I don’t recommend 4-5 rides per week for an IM schedule. 3/wk is enough and easier to integrate into an IM schedule with 4-5 runs/wk.
OTD for 3 x 20’ @ 100-105% on my local hill 
Shweet, thanks Rich. Incredibly helpful!
P.S. I’ve never found these “boring”. In fact, always dread/fear these workouts. What’s the old line, “It never gets easier, you just get faster.”
I wouldn’t rule out doing some SST for 60-90 minutes in lieu of 2 x20, especially as the race approaches (i.e. build period). General → specific.
Some folks find slightly larger durations of slightly lower intensity work better than 2 x 20. YMMV.
While those training session can bring you some good adaptation in the right period of the year… you could spend your energy and time better when coming closer and into your ironman build phase. At this point, it s very simple…specificity is important and threshold isnt exactly it for ironman. Doesnt mean you can do any but not at the price of good steady state session…long rides and runs…
Get some longer steady state session in both bike and run, and make 3-4 of those session your main goal of the week… (2 on the bike, 2 on the run) it will pay off!
I’ve read in other threads that the key to a good IM run is a strong bike, which means BIKE BIKE BIKE and BIKE some more.
Yet here you’re saying that 3 bikes a week is enough for an IM schedule?? Can you explain?
The key to a good IM run is good bike execution. If you concentrate too much on the bike in training, you won’t have the run legs to benefit from the strong bike.
Sorry for the n00b question, but what is FTP?
FTP = Functional Threshold Power. Without getting into a discussion on how best to calculate it, it is the average power you can hold for an hour.
I’ve read in other threads that the key to a good IM run is a strong bike, which means BIKE BIKE BIKE and BIKE some more.
Yet here you’re saying that 3 bikes a week is enough for an IM schedule?? Can you explain?
Define “more.” More doesn’t always = faster, or more fitness…it’s often just more time spent on the bike. Instead, consider how much training stress you deliver to your body for each hour ridden. With focused riding, hard intervals, etc you can get in Ironman levels of training stress with a 4-4.5hr bike vs 5.5-6+ hours. 80-85% of FTP is the default riding intensity of our athletes and you can rack up a lot of training stress quickly at this level. They do FTP intervals (makes them faster) before dropping into this gear for the majority of their long rides.
In my experience, cycling frequency (# of bike sessions per week) is more costly to age group athletes than run frequency. Nearly any bike ride involves about 90’ of total ride and logistics time, many athletes can’t just ride from their door, etc. 3x/wk, if you do it hard and focused enough, is more than enough and you can focus on running frequency instead (4-5/wk).
Great question, I’ve been wondering the same thing.
involves about 90’ of total ride and logistics time, many athletes can’t just ride from their door, etc.
IMO - that’s what they invented bike trainers for; it’s nice to, but you don’t have to ride outside everytime you get on the bike.
That said - it’s unwise to ONLY bike inside - you need to work on your bike handling skills sometime
Knowing you, your FTP is already were it needs to be as a PRO. As a result, Steady-State riding 2x/wk and IM race pace runs 2x/wk is likely the mainstay of the IM Build for you.
Right???
I’ve read in other threads that the key to a good IM run is a strong bike, which means BIKE BIKE BIKE and BIKE some more.
When you cross the finish line does the clock read your bike split or your overall time? Sure, the bike is important, but the difference between a good bike split and a mediocre one in most peoples minds can be as little as <20 minutes. The cost of that 20 minutes saved by hammering on the bike can manifest itself into hours of walking on the run. As it was stated, the key to a fast run is all about execution, all of the fitness and bike volume in the world isn’t going to help if you ride like an idiot on raceday.
I’m not Coach Rich, but as far as the 3x per week thing, its not always about the volume its about what you do with the time you are riding. Most athletes have jobs, family, responsibilities, personally its not very feasible for me to be riding much more than 3x a week the majority of my time, do during these earlier blocks I am favoring much higher intensity to better utilize the time that I have. As we get closer to the actual raceday, it is more feasible and expected of me to start building larger IM-level volume, but I’m certainly not going to start with that 20 weeks out.
Sorry for the n00b question, but what is FTP?
Functional Threshold Power. The short version is it’s the maximum power you can sustain for an hour, but read up at your leisure:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/cycling/what-is-threshold-power.aspx
chiro18 and I have had this conversation many a time. While I can acknowledge that 3x biking (or swimming minimally until just before your race) works for some use cases - it’s not the way to get there - at least not for me.
Yes we are triathletes, but I simply don’t understand why we think it’s OK to prepare for 112 mile time trial - which takes place after a 2.4 mile swim warm-up and is capped off by a 26.2 mile run - to only ride 3x per week. No cyclist would roll up for even a 40k TT with only 3x week on the bike and expect to have any sort of success.
IOW - why run 5-6 times a week when you aren’t doing the work in the other sports that will allow you to get to the run and leverage those 5-6 runs/week.
My athletes, during IM race prep, ride 7-9hrs per week as:
~90’ interval session, weekday~4hr Saturday ride~3hr Sunday rideIn my experience, most age grouper IM cyclists are riding 7-10hrs per week, similar to my folks above. However, I like to think (I know from looking at power files) that the quality of our rides have them getting in the training stress, and then some, of the typical IM athlete’s 10+hr cycling week. So my reply is if I can help you get it done in 8hrs vs 10hrs and 3 rides vs 4rides, why would I ever waste 2hrs of your time if I don’t have to? That’s 8hrs/mo of NOT riding your bike. What is your $/hr worth to you? Personally, if someone told me they wanted to spend $800/mo of my dough, they better have a very good reason. I don’t have one.
Over the years I’ve tried countless variations of basic training weeks, trying to figure out the best mix of workouts that works the best for most people – busy age groupers. The fact is that there are only so many places on the calendar you can slot in bikes and runs before they start to significantly impact other sessions.
In my experience, that 4th ride is usually rather unproductive and significantly increases the total time/lifestyle/logistics cost of the training week without a commensurate return on race day. That said, yeah, there are some who have the life and recovery resources that allow them to ride 4x or more just fine. But they are the exception, not the rule.
A few questions:
- Is SST = Steady State Training?
- Also, if you train w/ power how do you define SST relative to FTP (i.e. 80,85,90%)?
- Can you provide some sample 60-90 minute workout(s) you would suggest/like.
What Rich suggested is precisely what I’ve been focusing on during the other session. So in addition to the FTP sessions which are meant to help this pathetic MOP raise his top-end, I’ve been focusing on riding the other sessions at 80-90% FTP in various intervals (8’ work/2’RI, 25’ work, 5’ RI, etc. at various powers but always above 80%).
So the recommendation of riding 3x a week is based on the assumption that the athlete is a busy AG’er?
So hypothetically, if one is able to ride 4-5x a week:
- with each ride being in the 80-85% of FTP range
- without affecting the ability to have 5x runs a week
would that be preferable to your recommendation of riding 3x a week and using the extra time (from riding another 2x a week) into running more? Basically, I’m asking whether you think the best returns for biking is done in 3 hard sessions a week, while more can be gained from running more?
Thanks.
Rich…then you guys like me who ride 12x per week, but 0x per week sitting in a car…I just get to ride my bike to work instead of driving…but of those 12x only 3x are bread and butter rides as you described (sometimes a 4th)…the rest are transportation done at IM race pace, or as a warmup for a run done at the other end of the ride to work before work starts.
I agree with the other poster on “that’s why they invented trainers”. You could actually add a 4th quality ride very easily into the week…something like this: 10 min warmup, 30 min@ FTP, quick transiton and 30 min run at half IM race pace. That’s only 70 minutes for a full workout and you can do the entire thing at home or literally on the street in front of you house…go mark off a 1/4 mile loop with every 1/8th of a mile marked so that you can dial in your run race pace…you literally don’t have to venture away from your house.
Dev
Yet here you’re saying that 3 bikes a week is enough for an IM schedule??
N=1. I had many weeks where this was my cycling: one 4 -5 ride at close to IM race pace. one hour long tempo ride or good warm-up, then 10 mile/20min TT effort then warm down. One interval type of workout or hill reps in a big gear. This lead to 5:00 flat IM bike splits several times. Your milage may vary.