Hey all. I’m hoping I can get some feedback from you guys on my offseason plan.
My starting point is probably pretty light in terms of my base; I did my first triathlon a couple months ago, with about 6 months of training. Unaware of the relationship between an aerobic base and high intensity training, I probably spent half of that 6 months doing speed work; My thought process was that if it wasn’t hurting a lot, I wasn’t doing it right.
So after some time off, and some research, I have tried to put together a plan for the offseason to properly build up my base and get ready for next year. Here is what I have for weekly goals:
1 long run (2:00) at a very comfortable pace.
1 medium run (1:00-1:30) still comfortable, but pushing a little bit during some of the fun trail sections.
1 hill session (1:00-1:30) again at a comfortable pace.
1 long bike (3:00) at a very comfortable pace.
1 medium bike (2:00) same idea as the medium run.
1 short bike (1:00-1:30) mixing up low cadence/high cadence work.
My plan is to do 2 6-week blocks of this, which should get me to 2012. I have 1 week in the bag so far.
So what does everyone think? What would you change?
Some specific questions regarding this plan:
Should I do anything special with the medium run like pick-ups or sections at a higher pace, or should these wait until later in the year? Same question for the bike.
Is there any value in doing hills at a comfortable pace? Or should hills be ran at a higher intensity and be considered as speed work for later in the season?
Other details that may be relevant:
I don’t train with power on the bike.
I do have a heart rate monitor I can use. If it helps for specific drills, I did a 30min TT before Calgary 70.3 and the avg BPM over the last 20min was 174.
Edit: 70.3 is going to be my distance of choice for the time being. I would like to do 2 next year.
So are those runs your only runs, or are there other day-to-day runs? If those are just your special runs and you are running every day with just “going out and running” runs then you are probably fine. If you are running 4-5 hours a week on three runs … well, that is not a good plan. Run speed for triathlon purposes can come from going out and getting decent volume day after day. If you are only going to run 4 to 5 hours then it should be more like 45, 45, 1:30, 30, 60, 30 with a rest day each week. Plus, I would never recommend anyone run two hours on one day when they are only running 4 hours total.
Heart rate is better than a poke in the eye, but most useful if you are going to do long intervals. I’m never sure what cadence work is supposed to do, but I found it useless. If you need more load, ride harder. Cycling isn’t about leg strength.
If I had to leave behind power training and go back to training with heart rate I would probably do something like this (Assuming you are still going three days a week and training for half IM):
One recovery ride where I go out and ride for a bit, check my heart rate after about 15 minutes and then keep it there for the rest of the ride.
One threshold ride where I go out and ride about 40 minutes at my best estimate of threshold or slighly below. 174 probably respresented high threshold for you, maybe above FTP. I would guess you want to hit in the area of 160-170, meaning 160 in the beginning when it feels easy and then with HR drift ending near 170.
One long ride of three hours is good, but I would make the middle hour at Half IM HR. Hopefully you know that that is. Based off the above it may be 145-160.
The key here is to find the balance between run and bike and doing as much as you can, but no more. No one workout should be so hard you can go out and do the planned workout the next day. Because running is the hardest and takes the greatest toll physically, I make sure I run first and then do the other sports.
Ok, I’ve rambled on enough. Questions are welcome if you think I wrote anything intelligent above.
I would try and throw in some brick workouts. Since your bike rides are short and not very intense (not that it matters), go for a 30 minute run after your bike rides.
I have been doing this for the last few weeks and I feel awesome afterwards.
Yes these are my only runs. I can probably add in a 30-45min run on my long bike day, and maybe another 30min brick on my medium bike days. What sort of effort level should these short runs be at?
Is there a better way to estimate my threshold heart rate for the bike? Is one threshold effort of 40 mins good for the week on the bike? Currently I’m not doing any.
In my experience, if you are not running around 40 miles a week minimum, then you need to build up with daily running until at least that. Running a 10K in an o-distance or a half-marathon in a half-IM are really like running the last 6 miles of a half marathon or the last half of a marathon and trying to race either of those on minimal run miles is just not going to be very effective. I had this lesson driven home back in '02-03 when I averaged 22 miles a week with lots of speedwork. I could run around 16 min for 5K and did a 33:30 for 10K. In the fall of 03 I cut off doing speedwork and built up to 40-50 miles a week. My open times stayed about the same without speedwork, but my longer and tri-run split times dropped quite a bit. After about 4-5 years of averaging 5-6 hours a week running, my tri/duathlon run splits were as fast as my former open PRs.
I would say a minimum of five runs per week, but six would be better, with a day off on Sunday.
For the bike, I would go out and do a very hard ride for 45-60 minutes. If you can download it then look at the drift. In the beginning it should be lower, then for a large period in the middle it should be steady and then it will start to drift up again. That steady area is where you want to be within 5-10 percent. Heart rate can be funny though, so you really have to compare heart rate with percieved exertion. I’m feeling old these days and I can basically do one hard threshold ride and one hard run per week for a total of 5:30 running, around 3 hours riding with some swimming mixed in there. If you are younger and can recover, then you can do more each week.
During the off-season I would also spend some time doing some cross training. Things such as indoor rowing, using a cross trainer to take the pounding off your legs for a little while.
Are you planing on doing any other form of exercise or strength during this time?
I would highly recommend that you add some strength training to your schedule, including weights, plyometrics. This will have a two fold effect - it will make you stronger for the season to come and will aid in injury prevention.
With regards to the sessions that you want to focus on, I would incorporate interval training in there.
Long runs will not help you with speed and building up your resistance to lactic acid, the long runs will only aid you with endurance.
With interval training you are not only increasing speed, you are also increasing your lactic acid threshold and as a result you are also building your level of endurance.