Anyone ever do a HIM training with only two bikes a week? The bike for whatever reason is hard on my knees.
Running=NO problem, 40 miles plus= easy. 3 Bikes-ouch!
I just got “refitted” for the third time on my bike. I am trying to spin the easiest gears on the damn thing (because I do have a tendency to mash)
I am not trying to win my race, just finish. I want to get into Ultra running next year, but I still want to keep my Tri options open.
Just curious if others have had this type of experience?
If your goal is only to finish and you are running a fair amount, I can’t believe this would be a problem. However, I doubt there is something unique about your physiology that allows you to run without a problem but makes cycling hurt your knees. I would debug the issue thoroughly - maybe try different shoes or pedals.
A year and a half ago, I hurt my knee riding 40 miles on a poorly fit bike. The bike was then properly refit to me, but the initial injury was bad enough that I had to go off the bike for about 3 months before I could get back on comfortably without the knee hurting. (Meanwhile, I was running lotsa miles and never so much as felt a twinge from the knee during running.)
Depending on your race timing (and your patience letting an injury heal itself) you might consider going OFF the bike till the knee no longer hurts. Once it’s healed, you’ll be able to ride as many times per week as you need to. A downside is you will lose a lot of bike fitness and will have to rebuild your long rides. The upside is that if you do have an “injury” this method might allow it to really heal (rather than dancing around it as you are now).
I trained for my first HIM with one 30-miler a week, 1 56 miler, and one 15 miler a week on the bike. Now I train more, but I finished that first one without issues.
Not quite 2 rides a week, every week (sometimes it was), but…typical week for my first HIM was one hard mid-week ride, one long weekend ride, and one very short, very easy small-ring spin (always the day after the long ride)…this extra spin was purely a gentle warmup for a brick run and usually no longer than 90 mins, but again, no intensity in this ride. Had a successful first race. So IMHO it’s certainly possible…not optimal, but possible.
I think you have more important issues though (knees, fit, technique, etc)…bike frequency on its own probably wont address them.
If you have some knee problems on your bike, set it up on a trainer and video tape yourself pedaling from the front.
Play it back to see if your knees are going out to the sides. Put a straightedge on the screen to see how much they are moving (if at all). Shims may be able to correct that type of misalignment.
I don’t get it. Biking is pretty easy on the knees, certainly moreso than running 40+ mpw.
Whatever cassette you are running in the back, get the next biggest one.
(ex: If you have 11-23, get a 12-25. If you have 12-25, get a 12-27. And/or get a compact crankset)
Cycling is what people who have blown out their knees from too much run volume do. Not the opposite.
IF you can ‘only’ ride 2x / wk, go with weekday short, hard, quality workout, and a longer (but still pretty hard, no loafing it if yer only riding twice) weekend ride. Good idea to T-run offa both of 'em.
As somebody else said, maybe doing an easy recovery ride prior to one of yer runs might be a way to get in some more saddle time. You’d probably only need 30-60mins of riding for this, and then tack on whatever run you were gonna do (within reason, you wouldn’t do this before your weekly long run, for example).
That’d be a pretty low-stress way to add a 3rd ride.
I often only ride 2x / wk. I do fine in HIMs.
(but I’ve always been strong on the bike, so this is a definite YMMV scenario)