Hi all-I’m a bit of a newbie looking for some training advice here… I’m planning on training for my first half IM in March, but I was also planning on working pretty hard for a marathon in January- last time I trained for a marathon I let the biking and swimming slide for the most part. Should I drop some of the running milage in order to keep my biking/swimming up to par, or add it on top of the running if I have the time? I realize that I have 2 months between the two, so it’s not that bad, but I’m afraid that i slack on my biking at all my first 1/2IM is not going to be a pretty sight. I’m slow, but I don’t want to be THAT slow…
You’re doing the Ford Half in O’side right? Me too. If you’re marathon fit, you’re a major step ahead of most people I think. I would say you could ride your bike a couple of days/week, maybe 25-30 miles during your mary training, and then after recovering from the marathon, start upping your bike miles a bit each week, peaking out over race distance by late Feb/early March. I’d also suggest putting in at least one swim a week for an hour and then up it after the mary. That’s my advice, as unprofessional as it is. Take it for what it’s worth. See you at the race!
sounds like the OC mary followed up with oceanside 1/2 IM, if so I’ll see you at both. I would definitely second the book Gary T mentioned above, and for my own two cents suggest to find a few group rides…then move some of your shorter runs to happen right after you get off the bike.
I ran the LA marathon in March this year and then had a great early spring season of races in April.
I tackled it this way. My bike/run miles in Nov., Dec. and Jan. were exactly even at 96 each (for the three months, not per month). Then I backed off the run in Feb. and maintained a decent number of bike miles. I raced LA on March 5 and did no run miles with about 8 hours on the bike the following week. After that I really put in heavy bike miles and slowly worked my run miles back up over about five weeks. In the month of March following the marathon I set my record bike-month training high.
In April I was really flying on the bike and run and regretted the fact that the pool was closed and that there are almost no half-ironman races in Southern California after the Camp Pendleton race in March, which is way too early.
You need to keep up at least 50-50 ratio of bike-run miles so that you can use the run recovery time following the marathon to put in a lot of bike miles. It worked very well for me.
